Community Participation (2011 Strategic Plan)

Hampshire’s participatory system of governance ensures that community members have the opportunity to be involved in the ongoing activities of the College. Governance structures should allow all voices to be heard and weighed in ways that do justice to both majority and minority perspectives. This has been hampered by the lack of defined, representative governance structures. The GTF recommends the creation of the following new structures to address this lack:

• Student Government Association (SGA), a governance structure that can represent the interests of all students to better serve their needs. Specific charge and membership to be determined.

• Redesigned Staff Advisory Council and related structures (SAC) to provide staff more voice in campus affairs. This includes redistricting, adoption of the Staff Meeting as a regular component of staff governance, and the creation of the Staff Meeting Subcommittee.

• Faculty Advisory Board (FAB) that has the primary duty to study and deliberate issues thoroughly and bring motions to the Faculty Meeting for a vote. FAB sets the agenda for the FM, deliberates all non-academic issues, decides which motions will be on the FM agenda, conducts the FM, brings to the faculty all issues that need to be addressed, and reports information back to their respective schools. Membership: one faculty member elected from each school, plus the chair of EPC, ex officio (voting member) and two deans and the VPAA/DOF who serve ex officio (non-voting). A faculty leadership body can provide a cadre of faculty who can study issues in the kind of depth required before bringing them to the faculty for a vote.

• All-College Tri-Council, a campus governance body that brings members of governance bodies together to address issues that affect the entire campus community. Membership: the leaders of the three primary governance committees (FAB, EPC, SAC, and SGA). Key responsibilities are to meet with members of the administration to discuss important campus concerns and to make recommendations, and call all-College meetings when appropriate; can mandate that agenda items be brought back to their representative constituent groups for discussion and possible action; and other duties as stated in the GTF report.

• Community members who have significant policy decisions to make should bring them first to their representative constituent organization, then pass them on, when appropriate, to the Tri-Council.

Comments
Please include your thoughts on the importance of the initiative, how to frame the issue, things that may be missing, and any additional comments here (you can do so by logging into Hampedia and clicking edit):


 * I think that Marlboro College's Community Government is a pretty good model for a truly democratic and participatory system for a college. Not that we should just copy what they do (as that alone would be an undemocratic process, and not all situations are the same), but perhaps lessons of governance can be had from Marlboro.  I'm a little wary of how effectively bureaucratic or representative structures would really represent everyone's interests in comparison to a more direct democracy. I don't reject these boards/councils outright, but from what I've seen I feel like problems people have with Hampshire often stem from webs of councils controlling everything rather than the community as a whole.  Would community-wide participation simply be composed of, for example, nominations and votes for student representatives once a year that get to decide everything, or would we be able to vote more directly on issues that affect us? Perhaps these boards/councils can include the entire community more directly in decision-making than we're being included now, if so, is more specific wording necessary?  Maybe, if large in-person meetings aren't desirable, enabling representatives to consult their constituents online would be an option worth considering (for example, people could vote/leave comments on an issue in an online poll)?   -Adam Quinn, student
 * I'm with Adam. There are way too many committees, and that alone is a problem for participation--the same people end up serving on quite a few of them, which takes away time from work and study. Ellen Green
 * I think that this is a step in the right direction towards transparency and accountability in the governance process at Hampshire. The three committees, SGA, FAB and SAC are all very important spaces for constituents to address problems. But we have to realize these are on top of all the responsibilties and expectations of being a staff member, faculty, or student.  This is not a road block but an opportunity for creativity.  Staff ability to participate in governance needs to be supported institutionally and staff need to have more of a binding voting power.  Also, social justice ethics like living wages, maternity/paternity leave, and the explicit freedom to discuss issues of worker organization. This last point was emphatically made by our previous president, Marlene Fried, and it is time to make that statement on the rights of employees to unionize a part of our by-laws. She was not fabricating some embellished polemic on the rights of workers. She was simply reiterating what is legally on the books and are rights for us all: we can convene and we can organize without fear of retribution. The staff meetings that are to be standardized and adopted? A recent on featured a lawyer from the National Labor Relations Board who clearly made the point that we can think and talk publicly about these things without fear.  -Jaymes Winell, student
 * the Students for Freedom to Unionize will continue hosting social staff/student lunches! We would love to hear ideas, feedback and anything else from the hampshire community. These have been fun times to build relationships and share meals. It is our personal relationships that all of the above community participation rests upon. May we meet each other often enough face to face!! Please contact us (we're searchable on Hampedia) if you have anything to say or want to get involved.   -   &lt;3  SFU