Senate discusses new books for students

Hopes to write course evaluations, college governance books

The College's Admissions department staff members aren't the only group at school trying to improve campus publications. At Student Senate's Sunday night meeting, senators discussed publications they hope to write for the benefit of students in the near future.

Senator first-years Erika Hansen and Nnenna Onumah, co-chairs of the Senate Affiliated Initiatives Advisory Council, brought up the idea of publishing a course evaluation guide for students as a supplement to the College's course catalogue. The booklet would explain professors' expectations of their students in each particular course and describe what the focus of each class is more fully than the course catalogue does.

"Also, now when students fill out course evaluations at the end of the semester they go into professors' confidential files. We're trying to have some more input from them to share with students without stepping over lines of confidentiality," Hansen said.

Hansen and Onumah said they wanted to distribute posters publicizing the advisory council so more students could join and participate in creating the booklet.

The Senate also heard senator junior Laura Iverson's proposal to draft a booklet explaining the College's faculty governance system.

"Over the past year I've heard a lot of complaints about people not knowing what exists on campus and what office is responsible for what. I've also heard complaints from administrators who say students don't know basic information. I think the majority of the student body doesn't know what's going on, and one way to help them is with this booklet," Iverson said.

The proposal stipulates that the booklet should be "easy to understand and fun to read" and should be drafted with the aid of multiple College department officials. The benefits, according to the proposal, are that the booklet could "introduce students to the concept clearly, and also be an aid to students that would like to 'work' the system in order to create change."

Iverson added she would like to begin work this semester and finish the booklet by the end of the summer for use in next year's first-year orientation program. Aside from information about governance, the booklet would include tips for new students on how to find their mailboxes, dorms and other essential locations.

Senators had mixed reactions to the proposal.

Senator first-year Micah Thorner thought the booklet's focus was too broad. "Having gone through orientation myself earlier this year, I don't think people in the orientation process would want to deal with the student government at Oberlin right away. They're more concerned with getting their basic surroundings down than with the politics of Oberlin."

Senator sophomore Amy Marquardt thought the booklet would not be widely used. "I think the only people who'd be interested in the booklet are people who are already interested in governance and could find information anyway," she said.

Senator senior Dan Persky liked the idea but suggested the booklet would be a good summer or Winter Term project. "I'm not sure that it's a good idea right now. It would take an awful lot of time and resources and a fair amount of that information is already available in sources like Fussers and the Student Handbook," he said.

Senator senior Chapin Benninghoff agreed. "I think this is something we should do but the primary question is, why don't people know these things already? I don't think most people have even tried looking at Fussers or the handbook," he said. "Maybe what we're dealing with is an Oberlin culture fact that no matter what you publish, students shove it under their beds because they don't want to deal with administrative issues."

Iverson said the Fussers student directory and the Student Handbook may be ignored by students as resources because of the way they're organized.

"I believe our goal as a student government system is to inform students. What's in the handbook and Fussers is lumpy, hard to read and unclear. This booklet should be something outside of Oberlin, something small that's taken away from everything else," she said.

Although the senators discussed the proposal for a long time, no official conclusion was reached.

"I had no idea there would be this much debate over this proposal," Iverson said. "It sounds to me like I could incorporate a lot of what I wanted to get done with this into the Senate handbook we want to write, but I'd still like to work on this one over the summer."

In addition to discussing publications, senators tried to work out a way to appoint student members to committee seats.

After much debate the senators voted to wait to interview students until after this week's senate elections so new senators can pick their seats.