VSA to report on midterm progress

Hayley Tsukayama Staff Writer

The Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council will release a report on this year’s progress early next week. VSA President Abel McDonnell ’07 said that the Council feels the fall semester was largely a success. “We set goals…at the beginning of the semester,” said McDonnell. “We’ve achieved many of those goals.” According to McDonnell and the rest of the VSA Executive Board, the largest goals from last semester were to get Council members more involved in the community and to examine the best ways to deal with many standing issues on campus.

The report will most likely include the recommendations of the four ad hoc committees that the Council created last semester to look seriously at different VSA organizational functions. These four committees investigated issues with campus Residential Life policies, student involvement in curricular decisions and faculty evaluations, the state of various majors’ committees, and the elections process. Members of the Executive Board headed each ad hoc committee, and three of the four groups have made their final recommendations to Council. The Ad Hoc Committee for Student Input on Teachers and Tenure (ACSITT) will continue its work into this semester, according to VSA Academic Executive and committee chair Rachel Zoghlin ’07. The VSA Council has also been working with the administration to improve campus communication. For example, last semester McDonnell and VSA Organization Executive Sam Charner ’08, became the first students to sit on the College’s Priorities and Planning Committee (PPAC), a top committee that oversees decisions like increases in tuition.

The VSA Council is also trying to foster more community involvement in campus politics. “We’re trying to be as open as possible,” said Zoghlin. Responding to criticism that the Council has been doing little but forming committees this year, Zoghlin said that assessment was “unfortunate and erroneous.” This fall, said McDonnell, the Council formed many groups which “took an issue and examined it, and now we’re able to do something.” The mid-year report’s function, said Charner, will “lay out [Council’s] priorities” for the coming year, now that the committees have made their recommendations. “We’re working on reform[ing] the structure, implementing changes, and expanding our scope,” said McDonnell.