The final composition of the Student Response Task Force was announced yesterday, marking the beginning of the next stage in the process of implementing the Student Life Initiative.
The additional student members, Kevan Higgins '00, Emily Anadu '00, Elizabeth Agosto '01, Jon Sussman '02, Kate Laswell '02, Amit Anand '03, and Lauren Foley '03 will complete the Task Force and join the two other student members, President of the Student Assembly Dean Krishna '00 and graduate student Andy Mengshol, as well as four administrators on the committee.
Dean of the College James Larimore said the members were chosen with the intent of having a diverse cross-section of the campus comprise the Task Force.
"We looked for students who had been involved in a variety of things -- we tried to make sure that we had a balance of affiliated students and non-affiliated students -- We also looked at gender and other diversity factors," he said.
Larimore also said that while the committee was initially going to have six additional students, the decision was made to add a seventh in order to ensure there would be at least two students from each class.
Sussman, Laswell, and Anand were nominated by the Student Assembly. The other four members were chosen by Larimore.
According to Vice President of the Student Assembly Margaret Kuecker '01 the Student Assembly selected the students from a pool of approximately 15-20 applicants.
"We were looking for students who demonstrated an interest and ability to help with gathering student response," she said, "not [someone who was] representing a specific point of view."
Larimore said he was looking for similar characteristics in the members of the Task Force that he selected.
He said that he started with about 25 students, some of whom who were self-nominated, others of whom were nominated by other members of the campus community.
Anadu said she believes she was selected because she is active in many different activities on campus.
"I think he doesn't want to miss any section [of the campus]," she said, describing the composition of the committee as a fairly "random bunch of people."
Larimore said the goal of the committee will not be to formulate its own proposal to present to the Board of Trustees, but rather to collect input from several campus organizations and create a "descriptive summary" of the various proposals.
"The Board is interested in getting as much information directly from students as possible," he said, the Task Force's goal is "to make that material more easily understood."
He said the report generated by the committee will probably be similar to the report published by the Residential and Social Life Task Force early last summer. That report consisted of a 50-page indexed executive summary along with a several hundred page appendix that contained the specific proposals of campus organizations.
Larimore also said that committee served as a model in the creation of the new task force this winter.
