English professor Barbara Will stood in front of Thursday's class meeting of “Social Entrepreneurship,” an upper-level economics class. Introducing herself as the chair of the steering committee for Moving Dartmouth Forward, Will urged students to send in their feedback to the initiative, which the committee will collect this summer and synthesize into a report, with recommendations to be presented to College President Phil Hanlon this October.
The feedback gathered by Moving Dartmouth Forward, an umbrella initiative that intends to drive change on campus, will impact various student life concerns from housing to Greek life, Will said.
The recent emphasis on feedback from students and faculty is spurred by a recognition that policies will not be effective without community buy-in, Will said.
“Talk-down initiatives don’t work very well because it just feels like it’s coming from someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be on campus,” she said.
Moving Dartmouth Forward has employed various methods of collecting feedback, including holding open sessions called “Campus Conversations” and reaching out to various student organizations. Will, physics professor Ryan Hickox and math professor Craig Sutton are asking for feedback in as many classes as possible.
This past Tuesday, Will held office hours in Sanborn Library from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Three people showed, she said.
“These are not simple problems and they have to do with...sides of students lives they are not comfortable talking about in large groups,” Will said. “I think that’s important for anybody to come in and just talk. I’m not sure how efficient that is. I’m trying to figure out how to move forward with the office hours idea.”
One-on-one conversations, though time-consuming, are one of the more effective ways of getting meaningful suggestions, Will said.
John Damianos ’16, one of three student members on the presidential steering committee, focuses on student outreach. He and the other student members of Moving Dartmouth Forward host facilitations with student organizations to discuss binge drinking, sexual assault and inclusivity.
“We all have ideas on how to make Dartmouth better,” Damianos said. “The challenge comes in how to express those ideas. In having discussions by the students, for the students, we are giving them a forum where they know they will be heard.”
The steering committee is working with Improve Dartmouth, an organization that aims to centralize ideas on how to enact change on campus. Most notably, its website “Improve Dartmouth: On the Ground” created an online forum for community members to post ideas and feedback. Improve Dartmouth is forwarding the feedback they gather to the steering committee.
“You can never be sure that any initiative will be successful,” co-founder Esteban Castano ’14 wrote in an email. “But I do believe that the climate is right to make meaningful progress on campus, and I believe that the actors necessary to make the changes — the President, Board of Trustees, faculty, staff, alums and students — are all at the table.”
Of 10 students interviewed, eight had participated in some form of feedback mechanism, even if it was just “agreeing” with particular posts on Improve Dartmouth.
Keaton Renta ’16, summer Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity president, said he enjoyed a facilitated discussion at Tri-Kap. Members broke into small groups and discussed suggestions on addressing problems like high-risk behavior, he said.
“Bringing it to the attention of the brothers is a good step forward towards progress,” Renta said.
Damiamos said that later this summer, the committee will examine “every single idea” they have received.
The committee will publish a draft of its recommendations in September before it presents its report in November. Members will then again solicit feedback from the community — what Will described as a “crucial moment” in the process. The final product will be presented to the Board of Trustees this November.
The steering committee is one of several administrative initiatives culling feedback this summer.
Administrators are also beginning reforms to housing on campus. John Steidl, the project manager for the shift to a new housing model, said they have collected data and suggestions from various sources — visiting other universities with residential housing programs, holding open meetings and sending out surveys on how students use campus spaces. The goal is to have a set of preliminary scenarios and recommendations ready for the September board meeting.
One prevalent idea garnered from housing feedback has been the desire for more student-faculty engagement, Steidl said.
Advocates behind the recently-enacted sexual assault policy, announced in March, also solicited feedback at an April 22 Campus Conversations session.
Community members had a one-month period to submit feedback on the proposed policy either to Improve Dartmouth or a private email account. Four did so on Improve Dartmouth, though the numbers for private submissions were not provided by administrators once the deadline passed.
Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault summer president Shanet Hinds ’16 and SPCSA president Sophia Pedlow ’15 did not respond to two requests for comment.
Hanlon, Steidl said, has been seeking student feedback more vigorously than he has seen in the past three years during his time at Dartmouth, though this might be because of the nature of the issues Hanlon is trying to tackle.
“Once we look at what scenarios the president and board are more interested in pursuing, then we have to dig deeper into specifics of what that means, and more questions will come up,” Steidl said. “As we find new questions, we’ll look at how we source community input.”
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended (6/27/14):
Will spoke to "Social Entrepreneurship" in a Thursday class meeting, not Wednesday, as was originally reported. JohnDamianos '16 is one of three student members, not four, of the presidential steering committee.
