In the editorial published on September 7, 2016, Make conversations more accessible to all leaders on campus — not just ‘the most involved,’ the editorial staff addressed the issue of hyper-involved students holding leadership positions in administrative-level forums about change on campus. While we maintain that the administration needs to seek out voices of less involved students, our editorial glazed over facts pertaining to the many steps taken by the Presidential Task Force on Social Climate and Out-of-Class Engagement.
The list of 42-recommendations was a product of countless initiatives created to gather as much student input, from as many pockets across campus as possible. Co-chairs of the task force Naeemah Clark, associate professor of communications and Jon Dooley, assistant vice president for student life placed intentional, deliberative and purposive thought into where and how these student opinions would be gathered.
Clark and Dooley reached out to the general community through an Op-Ed published in The Pendulum to ask students to send input. Many did.
Clark said there were many one on one conversations — often through students' tears — with those that were struggling. Three students who were hesitant to meet face to face sent lengthy emails about their experiences. As a result, a student was also hired to work on the task force organizing and contextualize the qualitative data, making sure that it rang true. Dinner meetings with less involved students who reached out to Clark and Dooley were also held.
Several focus groups were held with specific groups of students — athletes to members of academic clubs to Watson/Odyssey students — to be sure we had a range of participants. Clark said she showed up — often unannounced — to half a dozen Elon 101 classes to hear from the first year students that didn’t even know the task force existed. In addition, to reach students who didn’t want to discuss their thoughts in person, close to 900 students responded to a survey and dozens of students wrote on idea walls.
While the culture of involving less involved students in conversations about change on campus is something we feel strongly against, Elon News Network regrets presenting the work of the Presidential Task Force on Social Climate and Out-of-Class Engagement in a way that didn’t do justice to the opinions the number and variety of student voices they included in their work.