I have read with curious interest the sentiments of the student body and teaching core at Boston University continue to voice their utter and complete lack of faith in the Board of Directors over the last month or so.
I remind the students at Boston University that sentiments of this kind have been expressed at schools such as Villanova and Adelphi where they were successful in gaining the resignation of a school president (Villanova) and the resignations of an entire Board (Adelphi – where coincidentally Dr. John Silber was a current Board member at that time).
The student body and alumni represent the most powerful influence within a university community by virtue of the tuition that is paid, and the donations that are made. If tuition bills and donations to the university stopped on December 31st and continued for exactly one month, the University would come to a screaching halt.
If the student body wants to have a new Board of Directors they need only to point to “Fiduciary Responsibility and Conflicts of Interest” as reasons to submit a “No confidence” vote for better control over the University. Anyone worth a grain of salt as a researcher has a library filled of circumstances and outrageous administrative behavior within the Administration and the Board of Directors to point to for support of the case.
So the question goes: “If you want change, then are you ready to fight for it?” The opportunity is at hand to seize control, do you really want it?
If yes, then publish the President’s phone number in every media source in New England asking alumni and the student body to call that number and voice a complaint for change.
Do not stop this campaign for several months. Students needs to have calling groups for each hour of the day that the Administration is in operation. Write letters (thousands of letters) to the President and continue to raise your “no confidence” vote in the current Administration and the Board.
The only way you can change something is to first believe that you can make a difference by actually doing something about it. If you think the opposite, which has been the case for 32 years of the Silber-era, then the Administration will brush this controversy aside like the $100,000,000 Seragen fiasco.
Thurston J. Hartford CAS 84
401-721-9996 20 Mill Street Cumberland, RI 02864
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
