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Dean of the Faculty/Vice President for Academic Affairs

FACULTY MEETING

November 2, 2012
Gannett Auditorium

MINUTES


President Philip A. Glotzbach called the meeting to order at 3:34 p.m.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

President Glotzbach asked if there were any corrections to, or comments regarding, the minutes of the Faculty Meeting held October 5, 2012. Hearing none, he announced the minutes were approved.

PRESIDENT鈥橲 REPORT

President Glotzbach reminded everyone that the candidates for the DOF/VPAA will be on campus over the next two weeks. He asked everyone to participate in the process and provide feedback so that the search committee can have the necessary input to assist in making their decision.

President Glotzbach reported on a very successful meeting last week with the Board of Trustees. This set of meetings focused on admissions and financial aid; in these meetings, we discussed the role of financial aid in bringing in each new class, the national issue of merit aid, the pressure 三亿体育官网 is facing to offer more merit aid, the meaning of the discount rate, and efforts to enhance 三亿体育官网's external reputation. The goal of these discussions was to help the Board understand in more detail the admissions process and to hear their advice on a number of important topics. In addition to discussing admissions and financial aid, the Board received a presentation on science planning and reviewed preliminary designs for a new admissions building. The Board will be holding a special meeting at the end of November in New York City to continue its consideration of science planning and moving toward plans for a building. We also welcomed five new members to the board, including a new young alumni trustee (Jonathan Brestoff, Class of 2008), two alumnae (Nancy Wells Hamilton 鈥77, Julie Traylor 鈥68, returning), and three 三亿体育官网 parents (Harry Alverson, Maria Markowitz, David Marks).

President Glotzbach announced that 三亿体育官网 has received an award from the Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), a national organization dedicated to sustainability. The award came to us for our innovation and effective use of geothermal heating and cooling in our new and renovated buildings 鈥 Northwoods, the dining hall, Zankel, Filene, Saisselin, and the Scribner Village replacement. With the completion of these latest projects, approximately 35 percent of all our campus building space is now heated and cooled using geothermal energy; with additional projects under discussion, the goal is to reach at least 50 percent by 2020. 三亿体育官网 was one of four schools receiving this prestigious award, which recognizes the work of many people involved in the design and construction of these buildings as well as the understanding of the Board of Trustees of the importance of sustainability and the life of the college. A congratulatory round of applause was given.

Thereafter, in response to a question raised by Professor Regina Janes at the faculty meeting held in September regarding student debt, Mary Lou Bates, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, shared a PowerPoint presentation regarding student debt relative to the Class of 2012 (see attached).

President Glotzbach addressed incidents that have occurred over the last few weeks involving bias and verbal abuse. When these incidents occur, it is a violation of 三亿体育官网's fundamental values, and the students who were affected need to understand that, as a community, we do not accept such behavior. We also experienced some difficult moments during a panel discussion of 鈥淲hiteness鈥 that brought home the difficulty of having serious conversations around such charged topics.

What do we learn from these events? First, we need to keep having these conversations; they are too important for us as an institution and for our students to be neglected just because they are uncomfortable. Second, these conversations operate at different levels, and we need to account for that fact. As an academic institution, we are concerned with theoretical aspects of issues. We want our students to understand how to engage with us in theoretical analysis, and that work is indeed important. That is where we live as a faculty 鈥 we live in concepts; we live in theories; we live in the conceptual realm. At the same time, for our students and for many of us in various ways 鈥 particularly faculty members of color and others 鈥 these are not abstract issues. They are existential issues that directly affect their lives. If a student has been the subject of a face-to-face incident of harassment that involved racial epithets, we need to acknowledge that this is not an abstract issue for that student 鈥 and it should not be just a theoretical issue for our community.

Our challenge for us as a faculty is how do we help our students and all of us have these conversations? We are a teaching institution so we are focused on our students. How do we help our students understand how to enter into this discourse and accommodate the fact that many of them are dealing with these issues on an existential level, that these are real and personal issues for them? How do we do it? One way is to think about the different epistemic levels of this kind of discourse, as referenced before. Usually, one cannot legitimately challenge another person鈥檚 statement that he or she has had a certain kind of experience. But as soon as one talks about what that experience means 鈥 as soon as he or she starts interpreting that experience, there is room for analysis, there is room for argument, and there is room for serious conversation. Already, at that level, we can begin talking and having arguments and reasonably disagreeing. And of course at the next level up, what does that experience mean in a larger sense? What does bias mean and how does it operate in this society? What about social identities, what about unconscious bias, etc.? How do these things operate? What do they mean? How do we as a community deal with stereotypes/stereotype threat? Dr. Joshua Aronson is going to be making a very interesting presentation on November 5 on this topic and President Glotzbach recommends that everyone attend his presentation.

When we are operating at the higher theoretical levels, we have lots of room for argument and analysis. Sometimes it is just helpful for our students to understand the difference between these different levels. In some cases we are dealing with anger and feelings of being hurt or assaulted. If someone says that he or she is angry, that certainly can be a true and revealing statement. But it doesn't mean that the next statement out of his or her mouth is true. It doesn't validate the next thing that is said, depending upon what that next statement is. We need to help all of us understand that.

For President Glotzbach, the broader context of this discussion is civility. That concept can be a contested one in this realm. Some people object to invoking civility, seeing it as a way of stifling criticism. But President Glotzbach argued that in appealing to the notion of civility he is talking about establishing a context that enables us to engage in difficult conversations. In fact, the more difficult the topic, the more we need to affirm the boundaries of how we engage it in discussion.

Civility begins with respect. It begins with an attitude of respect toward the person you are talking with 鈥 which means you don't dismiss out of hand what that person is saying, whether it is dismissing it verbally, through body language, or attitude. And we don't cross certain bounds that replace conversation about issues with personal attacks. We don't do this for a number of reasons. First, if we truly are concerned about dialogue, if we are concerned about discourse, we have to stay focused on the issues and not get distracted by what can happen if we veer off and allow ourselves to make the kind of personal attacks that count as violations of civility. Second, personal attacks serve to marginalize the person targeted 鈥 to take him or her out of the conversation 鈥 which runs counter to our commitment, as an educational institution, to creating inclusive contexts for discourse.

Above all, the argument for civility is rooted in the acknowledgment of our own fallibility. If one is omniscient and has never said anything that one wants to take back later on, one can bring a certain level of arrogance to a discourse. But if we are all poor, dumb, fallible beings, then somehow we need to leave an opening for the possibility that what one believes at the moment is perhaps not something one is going to believe tomorrow. Maybe someone else has a better view that one should adopt. We need to leave some room for that possibility 鈥 for the possibility of being instructed, which is the opposite of being uncivil, dismissive, and ultimately arrogant.

That does not mean, however, that we have to be tentative or wishy-washy in the way that we enter into these conversations. Civility creates a context in which we can have the most vigorous kinds of intellectual debate 鈥 where we can really go after an issue. As we think about how we do this, if we can give a little bit of thought to helping our students and all of us understand how to ascend that epistemic ladder and understand at which theoretical level we are having the conversation, then perhaps we all can be a little clearer as to what we are talking about, and how we might resolve our differences. This is not to say that we don't deal with issues on the existential level, on the level of emotion and experience. We have to talk about those things as well. But we need to understand how the arguments work at those different levels. If we can help our students understand that and understand the importance of staying focused on the key issues, then we keep open possibilities for learning.

There are other questions at work here as sell: How do we have a truly heterogeneous community in which people don't always have the same background and yet find ways to talk with one another? How do we have a community that is a real community that includes people 鈥 in some cases students of color, international students, gay, lesbian or transgender students 鈥 who don't automatically feel that this is their place? What happens when they are subject periodically to certain kinds of harassment, which brings home the message that they are not really welcome? How do we deal with that? How do we forge a community where we really do care about the values that we say we care about? We need to have these conversations. We need to call each other on uncivil behavior that violates these values, and we need to call our students on it when they cross those boundaries. It is a sign of a vigorous community that sometimes we get into arguments, and we want to have vigorous conversations and vigorous debate. Conversations involving diversity are complicated and difficult. It is hard to do this work, and there are a lot of folks who know that even better than President Glotzbach. Even so, he encourages everyone to stay engaged and to have these necessary discussions.

In concluding, President Glotzbach quoted an exchange in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons:

Wife: "Arrest him."

More: "For what?"

Wife: "He's dangerous."