The “big man on campus” that no one ever sees, Boston University President Robert Brown, was in danger of seeing a jail cell thanks to a spat with the Boston City Council.
To rewind, Brown was invited to a City Council meeting on diversity at Boston-area universities on Oct. 24. Despite having ample time to confirm his attendance, Brown did not reply until the morning of the meeting, when he informed the Council that neither he nor any representatives from BU would be able to attend.
On Nov. 24, the Boston City Council issued a subpoena to Brown demanding he attend an Education Committee hearing scheduled for Tuesday, a summons he took to court hoping to postpone the mandatory meeting. An agreement was reached Monday to postpone Brown’s attendance at the hearing to Dec. 19.
Although an agreement was reached, City Councilor Tito Jackson, who filed the subpoena, said the University has not been cooperative in sharing their efforts to improve diversity with the City Council.
“It makes me wonder what is there to hide,” Jackson told The Daily Free Press. “We gave Boston University all reasonable opportunities to attend. Boston University has over 8,000 people on their payroll, and it chose not to send one person to send to represent the university at 10 in the morning on Oct. 24. It shows a level of disrespect and lack of cooperation.”
When BU responded with legal action of its own on Wednesday, the court papers stated that Jackson only took such a bold move to “harass” Brown and asked if BU could send a panel of senior officials in Brown’s place to the Tuesday hearing.
“We were a little surprised to see that [the subpoena] show up, given that we had reached out to him [Jackson] specifically to set up a meeting to talk about his request,” Stephen Burgay, senior vice president for external affairs of BU, told The Daily Free Press.
While Brown (probably) won’t be behind bars anytime soon, his blasé attitude toward the entire affair is somewhat symbolic of his attitude as president of BU. Brown is notorious for his lack of presence on the BU campus. Few students have gotten the opportunity to see Brown walking down Commonwealth Avenue, let alone have a conversation with him.
So Jackson’s subpoena was a little dramatic. He brought a private argument with Brown and BU to a public setting and called undue attention to Brown’s failure to comply. The original hearing on diversity was intended to gain BU’s insight on the topic as the largest university in the city, not to investigate what BU “is trying to hide.” Brown’s presence at such a hearing would not only have given BU a larger voice in the city it claims to be so deeply ingrained in, but may have resulted in real changes to a racially imbalanced student body.
BU’s diversity isn’t perfect. The undergraduate student body is 42.9 percent white, with scanty amounts of representation from most other ethnic backgrounds. Then there’s the ambiguous “international” category on the BU Admissions website, amounting for 20.6 percent of the student population. Yet the term “international” suspiciously ignores the races of said students, who could very well be from European, Caucasian backgrounds. Although BU may not have anything to hide, these diversity deficits could use addressing, and Brown’s presence at the City Council meeting could prove to be valuable.
The truth is that Brown’s indifference to the City Council’s request would not have been such a big deal if Brown played a more active role in the campus community. As president of such a large university, there is no doubt that Brown has a packed schedule. But on the flip side, as president of such a large university, that schedule should also include activity within the student population and city as a whole, two bodies that Brown largely ignores.
Brown may have gotten his way this time, but the damage to his reputation has already been done. BU plays a large role in the city of Boston, and as BU’s president, Brown should prioritize representing BU’s presence in the city, even if he can only pencil it in.
