School News
Open Letter to the SAIC Community From Student
Government 2001-2002
Having served one year's time running from ring to ring, we outgoing Student Government officers would like to muse on our experience, laud, question, challenge, and finally just hurl some of our product at the opposite end of the cage. Our comments range from the abstract to the very specific, but all are significant.
Communication and Unity:
SAIC needs a student center. The physical fragmentation of our school environment translates very well into fragmented services. These issues are related and both need to be dealt with.
SAIC needs a centralized information desk. Where a student should go to get an answer to a simple question is a matter of monumental confusion.
The school's website needs improvement. It should provide more functionality for the currently enrolled student, such as access to account data, registration information, and an events calendar.
Policy Making:
SAIC is too secretive for its own good. This is a difficult claim to ground, but let's try. When a student has a conflict with school policy, the discussion about how to proceed should be more open. One way to accomplish this is to invite representatives from Student Government to sit in on disputes. There are even examples of significant policy decisions that Student Government was not informed of until a decision had been made. While it is true that the school needs to operate on a daily basis and cannot conceivably involve students in every decision, that does not discount the need for more openness in policy-making and more student involvement. School policy can be reactionary. We feel, if the process were truly open, there would not be the need for such reactionary policy. We held the Bermuda Triangle Marathon (a student "run" last year directed at raising awareness about problems with student financial services) as one example of a direct student action that resulted in a reactionary adjustment in policy and procedure. While we congratulate the administration for taking these concerns seriously, such reactions, ideally, would not be necessary in an environment where these important conversations were already taking place.
Museum policy affects school policy way too much:
Our priorities should be 1) to exist and 2) to educate. On #1: If we are not here, we can't educate; we acknowledge that we need to remain solvent as an institution. On #2: Education includes many things which we will not attempt to specify. It does not include catering the public image of SAIC to the satisfaction of certain political or financial concerns. The sacrifice attached to making such adjustments is too high and infringes upon the individual liberties of the student. This relates directly to our next point.
No student should ever feel concerned that the content of their piece may impede the opportunity for display of that work. We doubt that anyone here can honestly say that this is the case. We also doubt that anyone can honestly discount the effect of the conservative policy of the museum upon the mentality at the school. Again, mitigating circumstances excepted, we think there is a real issue here.
On recent events:
There needs to be a clearly stated procedure for assessing exhibition concerns. A student should not experience any ambiguity in a review process when the alteration or removal of their piece from display is a consideration. Currently, the process seems too arbitrary.
Following are two modest proposals for the short term:
Wildly advertise the student help email address (studenthelp@artic.edu). No one knows about it. Institutionalize a yearly (at least) all-school address to be given by the president. It should not be a responsibility placed upon the students to organize a forum for open exchange with the administration. The administration should want this and make it happen.
Thanks to all for letting us serve this year.
Yours,
Amy DeWitt
Ethan Roeder
Hannah Simpson
Lynsia Wade
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