Trust is not given. It is earned.
Undoubtedly Dr. Tripathi, Chancellor Zimpher, President Emeritus Simpson, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Hayden, and the other dignitaries in the room during Monday's Board of Trustees meeting felt uncomfortable at the presence of twelve students who stood in awkward silence, gagged with tape, observing the proceedings. As well they should: neither President Emeritus Simpson nor Chancellor Zimpher have very good track records of including students in decision-making, a betrayal of the democratic legacy of student government and public service that this university should proudly carry.
We sat, and then stood, in the Center for the Arts gallery because we were dissatisfied with the closed nature of the search as well as the dismissive attitude of the administration. The lack of acknowledgment from the Trustees and the media seemed to be icing on the cake. The message to us was clear: student voices don't matter. As we left the meeting, I overheard President Emeritus Simpson remark loudly to his neighbor that we did have representation: SA President Nischal Vasant and UB Council Student Representative Joshua Boston carried that responsibility.
I think Mr. Vasant and Mr. Boston have served the student body to the best of their ability, but we should challenge the assumption that two elected officers' presence means that student voices are heard. After all, they represent only two of over 30,000 students at this university, from freshmen to doctoral candidates polishing their dissertations to young doctors completing their residencies to tomorrow's business leaders and lawyers. Our backgrounds are as various as our research interests and programs of study. Try as they might, two elected officials – one of whom is only elected by undergraduates – cannot possibly convey the ideals, aspirations, and possibilities this diverse and brilliant student body has to offer.
The last I heard from the search committee for the new president was during the listening sessions they held during the fall term, where I expressed concern about ensuring the new president would be an advocate for state funding, respect the collective bargaining process regarding all employees, and be willing to address the parts of UB2020 that are deeply problematic and have been part of the reason the plan has failed. I left the meeting feeling as though my thoughts and concerns were dismissed by the search committee, and despaired of being taken seriously by the people who had been chosen to speak for me.
Later during the search process, a group of friends and I did some of our own research in an attempt to propose a candidate we thought might embody some of the values and ideals that I spoke about during the listening session. I thought we did an excellent job of finding a candidate who has served as the Provost of a public research university for the past several decades. I gave Ilene Nagel, the consultant from Russell Reynolds Associates who was assigned to UB's Presidential Search, a phone call and my nomination was greeted as smart, interesting, and well-researched. Of course, since the search process was entirely closed, it's not clear if this candidate was even looked at by the search committee.
The precedent of the closed search, of President Emeritus Simpson's call for us to be "UB Believers," of Chancellor Zimpher's invocation of the economic clout of the SUNY system, of the advancement of UB2020 as the only alternative to a broken system of government involvement, doesn't make me optimistic. The university's attempts to evade the public eye and oversight concerns me deeply. There is a litany of problems with these and other things we've seen here at UB that make me skittish about trusting Dr. Tripathi going forward.
Trust is not given, it is earned. And in the past two years I have spent at this university, I haven't seen much that is deserving of my trust. When the Chancellor and Search Committee Chairman Jeremy Jacobs asks me to trust them, Dr. Tripathi is the best choice, I don't have much reason to. Between Mr. Jacobs' wholehearted support of UB2020, which poses problems for university employees and the neighborhoods surrounding our campuses, and Chancellor Zimpher's advocacy for the university primarily as economic driver rather than place of service and inquiry, I'm not confident in these leaders' willingness to advocate for my interests as a student, public employee, and concerned member of the community.
I hope that these reflections reach Dr. Tripathi's desk, and that he takes seriously this call: include students and the community now, in meaningful ways, and earn our trust. Otherwise, expect resistance. I don't write letters, organize protests, and speak out because I hate UB. I do it because I love UB, and public higher education in general.
We want the leaders of our public institutions to be beholden to the people, because many of the institutions, programs, and services we rely on as a society weren't given: on the contrary, they were fought for, and won, by people. We can use this moment as an excuse to impoverish our cultural and intellectual heritage, or we can use it as a springboard to imagine an optimistic future of collaboration, innovation, and education for all.
Dr Tripathi: I'm here posing these problems because I think we can work together to fix them. The last thing I want from my administration is for them to expect my support, trust, and loyalty. That's contrary to the mission of higher education, which should be to foster inquiry into everything. Whether in computer science, medicine, media art, or the craft and process of governance, we have some big questions to answer. Don't miss this chance.
Cayden Mak
Teaching Assistant, MFA Candidate
Media Study, University at Buffalo
Letters to the Editor are not edited by The Spectrum.
