At its first meeting of the semester, the Boston University Student Union held a forum to draft a Strategic Plan and discuss student concerns for future meetings, each of which will focus on one specific issue, Union President Brooke Feldman said.
The Union plans to “tackle a lot of the small loopholes within the constitution” as part of its Internal Strategic Plan, GA Vice President Mark DiCristofaro, a College of Communication junior, said at the beginning of the meeting.
The “Windows on BU” forum aimed to assist the GA draft its Strategic Plan, intended to inform BU students of the governing body’s overall purpose and short-term goals, Feldman said. She said she developed the idea from a similar forum last semester.
“We’ll have a discussion focused on one aspect of student life at each meeting,” the School of Education and College of Arts and Sciences junior said. “We’re going to take the minutes and everyone’s comments and create a policy paper that will be submitted to the student body via our web page and press releases.”
Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore and other administrators chatted with elected representatives to the General Assembly about different aspects of on-campus student life, including social events and diversity.
In an attempt to encourage discussion on how students celebrate the university’s diversity, Elmore compared BU to ancient Mesopotamia in diversity and eclecticism and contrasted it with more “conformist” college campuses like West Point and Boston College.
“There’s not one way every student experiences this place,” he said.
However, many students expressed a different opinion. COM freshman Jack Wray said he disagreed with Elmore, lamenting the BU campus’s lack of unification.
“I think the problem is that we’re too individualized here,” Wray said. “We don’t have a common fabric that ties us together.”
Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Science junior Elena Quattrone said students’ unwillingness to get involved in on-campus activities contributes to the student body’s disjointedness.
“A lot of BU students are totally content with just having their group of friends,” she said.
CAS senior Ashley Robshaw agreed with Quattrone, urging students to get involved as freshmen or face social consequences.
“I have friends in their senior year who are realizing that they never developed a social life,” she said.
Elmore often interjected and said students should focus less on what they believed were the university’s problems and more on what they could do to solve them.
“We can complain about academic advising, but tell me how it should be,” he said.
Commenting on the lack of advertising for campus events, SED sophomore Leo Gamery said there should be increased publicity efforts to attract student attendance and participation.
“Trying to make the student calendar more accessible would be helpful to students,” Gameng said, directing his comment to Student Activities Executive Director John Battaglino.
Feldman proposed BU open a 24-hour social center that would serve food throughout the night.
GA student committees communicated their plans and goals for the semester, including mailroom service improvement, an increase in convenience points and an environmental campaign distributing Nalgene water bottles to discourage students from discarding water bottles.
Feldman compared the GA’s Strategic Plan to that of the university, a comprehensive departmental evaluation and improvement strategy.
“Almost every department in the university was charged by the Office of the President with creating a strategic plan,” she said. “We need to play a critical role in that discussion.”