Trustee Membership
The Trustees have put student membership of the Board of Trustees on hold pending a reorganization of the Board of Trustees.
A Trustee-Student-Faculty-Admin Special Committee met for much of 2009 to consider adding voting student trustees to the Board of Trustees. The committee had three student representatives: USS 08-09 President and 09-10 Secretary Peter Ian Cummings; 08-09 NSSR Senator Atlee McFellin, and Milano’s Marianne Bellotti.
The committee, chaired by Trustee Bevis Longstreth, unanimously recommended having four voting student members of the University Board of Trustees. However, the full board of trustees tabled the proposal, in order for them to complete a reorganization of the Board first.
This agenda item remains a Frown since USS policy is to rate Agenda Items based on actual performance. Further, we should note that the USS Executive Board is rarely invited to trustee meetings and has only addressed the Board of Trustees once in the past 18 months, and then only for a few minutes to discuss President Kerrey’s performance during a campus crisis.
Toward student representation on the board
The New School has a relatively large 55-member board of trustees, yet about three trustees (see below) are New School graduates (alumni), and there are no student or faculty representatives. Many other colleges have student, alumni, and faculty trustees. The Yale Corporation has 18 regular members of which 6 (33%) are elected from the alumni; Vassar has 33 trustees, almost all of which are alumni, and of which 5 are elected by the alumni and one representative is the student government president; Dartmouth famously elects ALL its trustees from the alumni. Many universities have student and faculty trustee representatives.
Any board of trustees would grow and learn when it included students, faculty, and alumni. Alumni are usually a major source of support for universities. USS wants to attend trustees meetings so we can improve the university that we love.
USS and the students sincerely look forward to positive and constructive involvement with the board of trustees.
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* Board chair Julien Studley and Beth DeWoody are alums of NSGS, Susan Halpern went to Milano, and former trustee Strachan Donnelley was an alum of NSSR–he passed away during the 2008-09 academic year.