Minutes

Present: C. Bailey, C. Denard, M. Godbout, M. Groth, D. Hutchinson, F. Lacomb,

N. Pellegrino, L. Purdy, W. Roberts, A. Rollo, S. Sloan, A. Staples, S. Talbot,

P. Wahlen (speaker phone), S. Zabriskie

The meeting began at 8:35 am.

· The Student Diversity Committee (?) is meeting today to review the Diversity section. (?)

I. SECTIONS REVIEWED TODAY:

· Students

· Alumnae

· History (begun, but need to continue to work on)

II. MAJOR POINTS OF DISCUSSION AND COMMENTS

Students Section

A. The question arose regarding how the student enrollment number of 575 was determined and whether this number represented a maximum, minimum, or what. It is the maximum enrollment the college community can reasonably support with current housing, faculty and support services. It was felt the wording needed to indicate that the 575 number somehow represents the max. The word “optimal” seemed to best portray the idea.

B. i. The sentiment that all academic support services do not have to come from an established Learning Center was resolved by substituting the word “resource “ for “clearinghouse”.

C. To avoid stressing and overusing the wording of “all” students, and “coeducational environment”, and not limiting this section to personal & social development, the wording was changed to “systems that support the holistic development of students”.

C.v. Not to limit this effort to only non-resident students, the words “ and non-traditional students” was added.

D. The last part of the objective appeared unnecessary. ***It was also noted the wherever the phrase “all students” appear, it should be changed to just “students”.

E. ii. Objection was made to the wording “sanitary conditions”. There was discussion regarding the problems arising from food being left in rooms and strong sentiment that this issue needs to be addressed in this document. There was equally strong sentiment that the section should not make it appear that Wells is really grungy. Changing the wording to “improve” and referring to “maintenance and housekeeping operations to achieve…” was able to resolve the issue.

F. iii. Concern that the word ‘enhance” may indicate Wells alone can change menu selections offered by an outside dining service was resolved by removing the words “and enhance”. By evaluating dining services, the college has the option to change services if the objective of providing more health food choices is not met.

*** All agreed to include a reference to “dining” in the PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT section.

A section on the College Honor Code was introduced as a last item in this section. It didn’t seem to fit. The idea of putting the Cultural Section back into the Plan was suggested as a place in which the topic of honor code and diversity would be appropriately covered. The main thing is that these ideas get into the plan somewhere.

Alumnae Section

There was minor rewording in sections to reflect the intent to attain and keep a strong and active relationship between the college and the alumnae including the methods to strengthen the financial relationship. The group was especially careful that wording in C.1. was clear about the need of a specific strength or area of expertise on the board being considered when making a selection to fill a vacancy Some phrases were removed as it was felt that they were too specific on the actions planned to accomplish the stated goals.

One major area that was identified that needs to be addressed is the use of the word “alumnae”. For this document whenever the word “alumnae” appears, it will be changed to “alumnae and alumni”. Other documents and organizations of Wells College will need to address this on a broader level.

Section D. was eliminated, moving the statement regarding the language used for alumni and alumni to section A – becoming #5 in that section.

History Section

The history section was begun, but people began leaving for other commitments and there were too few people left to get much done on that section.

A major dividing point exists on the issue of addressing the special needs of some members of the incoming class (men to be specific) that may develop during the transition period. Opposing views exist between acknowledging that the incoming males may face special challenges that Wells College should address, and the idea that treating the incoming males with special attention will further elevated them in an already male-dominated world. A feeling that the needs of all groups being marginalized should be addressed was expressed, that this is not just a gender issue.

The meeting adjourned about 11:00.