On Tuesday, October 1st 2024, the student-organized Adhoc Transparency Organizing Committee met with college president Ed Wingenbach regarding the student frustration and organizing which followed the restrictions of work study working hours to 7 hours per week. The following article is a summarization and discussion of the notes written by one member in attendance to the meeting, Raymond Kasei, F23. This article may include bias, as it is written by another member of the committee who was present at the meeting.
Wingenbach began the meeting with introductions and stating his interests and goals. He expressed interest in:
- A way to send out accurate financial information to students, and
- More student participation in the making of these decisions
The Organizing Committee began introducing our demands, specifically as they relate to clearly defining the terms of transparency and affirmative action in student hiring on campus.
Proposals of policies to assist work study students included:
- Prioritizing work-study students in the hiring process, especially BIPOC, disabled, and international students.
- Allowing work study students to access a list of jobs before non work-study students, as well as holding workshops and providing resources to work study students to assist them with the needed skills to get hired at certain places on campus.
Wingenbach claimed to agree wholeheartedly with the demands for affirmative action in student hiring, and explained that the reduction in student hours was a last minute, “duct taped together” attempt at doing so. The stated goal is to reduce the amount of hours current students are working to allow for more work study students to be hired. Wingenbach explained that this originally came from the desire to restrict the hiring of non-work study students, but this was seen as too much of a last minute decision that would cause too much chaos. He offered to members of the committee a place in creating a new work study policy that could be implemented the following school year.
The conversation then shifted to the topic of transparency, beginning with the question of why this information behind the decision wasn’t given to work study students. Wingenbach explained that he didn’t anticipate the effects which the reduction would have on students, and expressed difficulty in disseminating information to campus, using examples of Daily Digest along with expressing concern that his emails weren’t actually reaching all students. Members of the committee reassured him that his emails do in fact reach far throughout campus (and even other emails not sent by the president, with students making reference to RLC Ben Schwartzberg’s red lentil soup recipe mentioned in one of his popular emails.)
The board proposed our demand for a quarterly report sent out to students on the financial go-ons of the college, as well with footnotes linking to more detailed information and sources. Wingenbach expressed concern with issues that could be created through simplification of budget information, and the committee expressed our hopes to bridge the gap by providing both a simplified version of the budget information along with direct reference to the sources for more financially literate students to look at if wanted. More discussion followed, surrounding the ideas of workshops for students on personal and organization financial literacy, as well as a proposition for the creation of a college budget FAQ email where students could direct their questions.
The meeting ended with a copy of the list of demands being handed to Wingenbach, as well as the immediate demands for an understandable and comprehensive report on the college’s current financial situation and later meetings of the Adhoc Transparency Organizing Committee with Wingenbach to ensure that demands are met.
The writing of this article summarizing the meeting was mentioned at the end of the meeting, and President Wingenbach requested that a copy of the article be sent to his office so that he could ensure that our takeaway was the same as his. However, he explicitly stated that he was not requesting that the article be withheld until he had reviewed it, nor was he requesting that he have any editorial authority on the article.
As such, Wingenbach has not had any influence on the writing of this article. He will be provided a copy of the article, and any commentary he may wish to add will be published in a future issue of Leapfrog.
DISCLOSURE: Both the author of this article and the editor of Leapfrog are part of the Adhoc Transparency Organizing Committee and were present at this meeting.
