Over the next two weeks, the "Our Community, Our Future" dinner discussions between students, faculty and staff will bring a broad array of community members together to discuss their experiences and potential solutions to issues facing the College. These dinners by themselves are inherently valuable for the conversations that will happen at each event. However, considering the nature of idea creation at Dartmouth, there does seem to be a risk that the conversations and ideas that come out in these dinners will stay within the groups of individuals who attend them. If that becomes the case, then these dinners will not have reached their fullest potential as an opportunity to not only pull together ideas from all over the Dartmouth community, but also to disseminate those ideas to relevant groups on campus for implementation. In light of current frustrations regarding the shallowness and slowness of change at Dartmouth, these dinners could represent a critical avenue for students, faculty and staff to have their concerns heard. They hold promise for bringing substantive ideas about how to address these concerns to directly responsible administrative and student governmental bodies.
Looking at the suggestions that came up at the first dinner, including the need for mentoring programs, communities that last beyond freshman floors and appreciation for intercommunity dialogue, there are specific programmatic and developmental objectives for college officials and student government organizations that can come out of these dinners.
Dartmouth students, staff and faculty members know what they want to change about the College, and these dinners are a much-needed opportunity for them to express these thoughts and have them heard by the administration. Yet conversations without follow-through from relevant groups are meaningless in the long-term. For the "Our Community, Our Future" dinners to have a lasting impact on the College, it is necessary for them to leave not only ideas, but also documentation of those ideas, behind for relevant organizations and administrators to review afterwards. Only in this way can the community dinners go beyond dialogue and into substantively influencing long-term planning initiatives that will determine the College's trajectory in coming years.
Ultimately, we should be looking out for a second strategic planning working group report on the feedback that they have collected from the student body via its website and community dinners. Leaving documentation of the ideas that come up at these dinners is imperative if they are to produce actionable plans and reachable, aspiration of goals for the College and its organizations to strive for. At that step, it will be critical for the strategic planning group to be as transparent and open about its gatherings and plans going forward, and for the group to make its findings accessible to the community.
Going forward, students and faculty should keep the strategic planning group accountable by continuing to monitor the administration's movement on the strategic planning goals and projects. Students and faculty need to see what, if any, student feedback makes its way into future plans for the College, how effective the College's implementation of the strategic plan is and what effects the plan's implementation has on student life and institutional development in coming years.
With last weekend's events in mind, as students increasingly voice discontent, it is more important than ever to make sure that the voices of those who call Dartmouth home are heard. Moreover, it is essential for those with institutional memory to consider how things have succeeded or failed at the College in their time here. Those voices and opinions must be publicized for the benefit of both current and future leaders, administrators and students, who are coming to steer the College. Maximizing the potential of these community dinners is only a starting point. If done right, such a gesture could help the College demonstrate that it is committed to change and student-directed idea generation.
