The College is currently hosting a series of student forums to augment its strategic planning process. The forums, the first of which was held last weekend, are an attempt to bring student voices into the process which will determine the institutional goals of projects for years to come.

The meetings are being facilitated by the Office of the Ombudsperson, religion professor David Kamitsuka, independent consultant Elaine Kuttner and Oberlin alumnus Vivek Bharathan, OC ‘04.

Bharathan is no stranger to the issue of administrative transparency. Last year as a student senator, he led a student march on the Cox administration building to protest the closing of the Biggs computer lab and to demand that the College reveal its finances to the students.

In his new role, Bharathan is helping to facilitate student-administration communication during the planning process. He said that he is basically satisfied with the level of cooperation the College has provided.

“It’s a really strong step for the College to give us an economic breakdown like this,” he said.

According to Bharathan, the main issue that has come up in student discussions so far is trust.

“We’re trying to build a community of trust,” he said. “It’s important that as students and administrators we trust each other.”

Sophomore Matthew Kaplan has been attending the sessions on behalf of Student Senate.

“We examined the financial and fiscal management of the College and compared it to our peer institutions,” he said. “We also discussed the values that we treasure Oberlin for and how we may be able to maintain those values while being fiscally responsible.”

Kaplan also discussed some of the specific issues that have come up.

“Students just wanted to voice their concerns and make sure that issues like the black box theater, computer access and athletics don’t get ignored,” he said.

While many of these issues are longstanding student grievances at Oberlin, their completion has been made more difficult by the College’s recent budget problems. President Nancy Dye has spoken to the Review this year about the difficulty of raising the “bricks and mortar” money needed for new facilities.

“I think the school’s number one priority should be to create an economic model where we’re not losing money,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan was also very happy with Kamitsuka and Kuttner as moderators and said that they “seemed really concerned about what students had to say.

Over 70 students have already signed up to participate in the second planning session, which will be held this Saturday.

According to Bharathan, after the sessions are complete Kuttner will present student recommendations to the strategic planning committee. Administrators and students involved in the process have been unable to pinpoint a date when the plan may be released, but Bharathan feels encouraged by the level of openness showed by the administration.

“I’ve been of the opinion that student voices are absolutely vital to this process and I haven’t encountered any sort of disagreement about that,” he said. “Elaine Kuttner made it very clear that it is absolutely vital to gauge the student constituency.”

Dye and Provost Clayton Koppes were unavailable for comment.