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2.7.08
published on 05/01/08
Committee on EOAA dissolved
Brian Farkas
Editor-in-Chief
The Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Advisory (EOAA) Committee will be disbanded next year while administrators work to revamp its goals. The Vassar Student Association (VSA) Executive Board has decided not to hold elections to fill seats on the Committee.
“Council decided not to send students to EOAA simply because it has not been functioning according to its mission, delineated by the [College] Governance,” said VSA Vice President for Operations Summer’s-Grace Green ’09, noting that the Committee’s erratic meetings over the past year have made it ineffectual.
The Committee is charged with advising the EOAA Office, which is directed by Associate Dean of the College and Director of Disability and Support Services Belinda Guthrie. Guthrie works with Professor of English and Faculty EOAA Officer Patricia Wallace to oversee compliance issues and address complaints regarding discrimination and harassment.
“As it is now constituted, the Committee has been unworkable,” admitted Guthrie.
“For many years, the EOAA’s constituency made it almost impossible to find meeting times, and its vague mission—other than going over statistics—made it frustrating for all who serve on it.”
Because the EOAA Committee is written into the College Governance, any change to its structure must go through the faculty for vote and then be approved by the President.
“Based on these frustrations, I recommended to the Executive Board as well as the Board of Elections that until the Committee has been reformatted with a more accurate mission as to what it can and will accomplish, there is no reason to set students up to suffer through more frustrating years,” Green said. Wallace and Guthrie are exploring options for reshaping the Committee.
“One promising suggestion that came from our meeting with students is that the Committee might be reconceived in a way that would have joint faculty-student chairs,” said Guthrie. She and Wallace plan to meet with Committee on Inclusion and Excellence this month to discuss the two bodies’ role in promoting inclusion.
The current status of the Advisory Committee will not affect the EOAA Office’s ability to address discrimination or harassment concerns.
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