A Look into Student Life and Services

The Department of Student Life and Services has long been at the center of student debate. The Review  invited a number of students to participate in a discussion of the current state of the department. This is the first in a series of forums.

Participants:

Lara Rusch, senior
Matt Bourque, senior
Joshua Kaye, senior
Andrea Clark, senior
Clara Stemwedel, junior
Chapin Benninghoff, junior

The Ideal Dean

Review:  The Dean of Student Life and Services oversees a number of departments including Residential Life, Security, Student Health and the Student Union. What qualities would an ideal dean possess?

MB: My understanding is I think ideally in order to do the job properly that means in part being a spokesperson for the department.

CB: It's more of an administrative role and I think you need to look at what qualities are important for that kind of role. Those qualities include the ability to create a sense of community and a sense that initiative will be rewarded. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is how well is the dean supported by those who serve under her. How comfortable do they feel with her leadership? That's the central question we have to ask.

The Roots of the Problem

CB: The search committee for the hiring of Bill Stackman offered unqualified support for its number one candidate and expressed that the number two and number three candidate were unacceptable and over that weekend, without communicating with the search committee, the dean (Dean of Student Life and Services Charlene Cole-Newkirk) tended an offer to the second choice candidate. Now if she really believed the second choice was the person she could work with the best she should have hired that person, because their working relationship is very important, but at the very least she should have communicated that to the committee.

JK: I disagree with that last thing.

CB: We have a situation now where we had a very weak dean before and because of his weak leadership style, which is neither good nor bad, individual initiative was encouraged. Then Dean Cole came with her strong personal vision and she encountered a system that focused more on personal initiative. It set up a conflict within the department that has not been resolved to this day. It resulted in firings and transfers.

LR: What were the problems when she first came in?

JK: Well, one of the first things she did was to go on television and declare zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol at Oberlin College. That's only one example and I know that's more attached to some communities than others, but it's a very hard-nosed way to come into a situation.

Deb McNish

Review: In an interview with Keymasha Hall for the Voice, Cole said it was going to take time to resolve the conflict between visionary administration and self-directed departments. Are people willing to give her time?

MB: It seems to me people's complaint is not the time it takes to resolve conflict but the manner in which it is being resolved. If it takes a long time to resolve the issue because it takes a while to weed out all the people the Dean doesn't want in the office than I think people are going to have trouble with that. Over the summer, (former Director of Residential Life and Services) Deb McNish was fired and the Dean said it was her prerogative to make personnel decisions within her office. I agree with that, but it seems to me the dean has an obligation to tell students what's going on. To say there were personal differences is not enough. It seems to me it would be just common decency to provide students with reasons as to why things happen. The situation is complicated because the Dean obviously can't speak about personnel.

MB: I think that's a very good point. The problem is there's just so little information I find it difficult to make a clear judgement. We just don't know.

Scapegoating

Review: There are many rumors circulating regarding Dean Cole. Is all the fuss warranted?

MB: That's an interesting question. For me, the fact that there is a fuss means probably something's wrong because everyone on this campus is busy. They don't have time to get all worked up about something unless they feel something is wrong. Maybe these things have a clear and satisfactory answer, but I doubt it. But maybe they do, in which case students shouldn't be getting all worked up about it. They wouldn't be getting all worked up if explanations were provided.

CB: It gets exaggerated because I think any campus always breeds a scapegoat. You need someone to blame. We had S. Fred Starr and he was a fantastic person to blame. Every campus needs one of those. I think what we have to do is separate off the gigantic issues of "She's a horrible dean," and stuff like that and isolate it down. She has become a scapegoat. Things that she shouldn't be blamed for are being blamed on her. We have to look to why. I think it's small problems with her management style, small problems with way she communicates that get blown into larger things. For us to come to real solutions here we have to get beyond scapegoating and look at larger things, but to do that we have to have people stop answering every single question that gets asked with, "Can't discuss it - it's a personnel issue," or "Can't discuss it - it's an internal issue." There isn't a single thing that goes on in the department of student life that should be confidential from students.

AC: I would just urge us to keep in mind that she is a woman in an authoritative position but she does have bosses.

JK: That may be true, but there's only one person above her, and that's Nancy Dye.

AC: There are people above Nancy Dye.

JK: Yes, but it's rare the trustees will force an issue with the president unless it's financial.

MB: I think perhaps the reason for scapegoating is the dean's centralized management style.

JK: That's exactly true. Dean Cole can say to her staff, "Listen, from now on, everything that happens, I'm responsible for." In one sense she benefits from that because anything good gets attributed to her, and on the other hand, everything bad gets attributed to her.

Student contact

CB: Part of the reason she's vulnerable to scapegoating is not as many students know her as should. There's no reason why she shouldn't have that kind of contact. If she had contact with students you wouldn't be able to write her off as a cartoon figure like many people do. When she has so many of her underneath staff members like Deb McNish who place such a focus on getting out into the student body then the public face of student life becomes these people and not her, and that diminishes her capacity to lead and to put forth her vision for the school. She doesn't have support and I wish she did.

JK: In the article in the Voice she said she tries to be in touch with Student Senate as much as they let her. I've been on Senate and she never asked to talk to Senate and not been invited to do so. I think the last time she showed up at a Senate meeting was over a year ago.

MB: She has done a good job with increasing contact with students on SFC (Student Finance Committee). There was a real crisis the end of first semester last year, and she was very helpful. We went to talk to her and she was very helpful. As an SFC member, I think she has done a very good job.

Ideas for improvement

Review: What advice would you give to Charlene Cole in order to improve either her job performance or students' perceptions of her performance?

JK: She could start by listening to her staff, although it might take two years to undo the damage that's been done. Her staff is afraid of her because they see how she deals with everyone else. She makes very strong statements, she berates her staff very strongly. She is creating a cult of yes-men.

AC: Where do you get this from?

CB: As a student activist I can tell you one of the first things you have to do on this campus is figure out who's going to talk to you. Who's going to give you the skinny? When you say where do these rumors come from, I'd say 90 percent of them come from her own staff because they don't feel like they can talk with her.

AC: Nobody knows the situation. To me this is all hearsay.

CB: We need this info and I would love it if the dean would give us more information but it's not there.

AC: There seems to be certain students on campus who have inside information that is leaking from wherever it's leaking from, but to me it is all hearsay. I'm not inclined to believe anything I hear.

MB: It worries me that there are all these rumors going around. Maybe there are very good reasons that the dean can't give out information but I feel like so little information has been said.

AC: I would urge us to question President Dye about this also.

JK: Bill Stackman is now in Dean Cole's office and he's an info machine. He walks around campus talking to students. They've had to hire a new secretary because of the amount of work he's generating is so huge. You're not getting the same thing from Dean Cole who went before the GF (General Faculty) with a plan for revamping housing and dining drastically before consulting with students.

CB: In the place of broad communication we have constant emergencies, constant scapegoating.

Some final remarks

AC: I never perceived any concrete problem in the way students perceive Dean Cole until Deb McNish came up. I don't see what she's done that is so detrimental.... I feel supported and welcomed by her presence and the job she's doing. Others perceive a gap in communication, especially certain people on campus. I never perceived her as a person who would shut you out.... I think she's doing a fine job.

MB: During the co-ed rooms fiasco...students seemed frustrated because they felt they weren't getting straight answers from the administration.

LR: I've never talked to her. It's so much easier when you haven't met someone to believe what you hear.

AC: It's like the President of the United States. It's an administrative post. She can't be everywhere for everyone.

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