Next Tuesday, February 1, the Student Senate’s Committee on Student Life and Vice President Eddie Knowles will be hosting the first instance of “Pizza with the President,” a series of free lunches where students can meet with, and ask questions of, President Shirley Ann Jackson. Pizza will be provided by the Senate, and the program is open to all students. It will begin at noon in Mother’s, and is expected to run until about 2 pm.

As part of the Committee on Student Life’s efforts to improve Rensselaer student morale, participation, and interest on campus, committee members set out on a course to improve the student feedback mechanism so that concerns would be better heard by the administration. They hope that the “Pizza with the President” events will be the first step in doing just that, helping make Jackson more visible to students, and giving students a forum to share their concerns.

“It is the perfect venue for it,” said Senator Max Yates ’06, the committee’s chair. “I think we’ll get a full Mother’s.”

The event started off as “Brown Bag Lunches,” in which President Jackson planned to eat lunch in the McNeil Room once a month, inviting other students to bring their “brown bags” and join her. However, the Senate rearranged its budget to allow for financing of pizza events, and funding has been included in its approved budget for the 2005-2006 academic year.

“The president really enjoys interaction with students,” according to Student Life Vice President Knowles. “She wanted me to help her to have more interaction with students, and I said, ‘Why not have brown bag lunches in the Union?’”

Dr. Knowles indicated that a number of students took Dr. Jackson’s suggestion to schedule time with her individually after her annual presentation to the Student Senate in September, and that she wanted to expand that opportunity to include more students.

Senators are clearly excited about the prospects for this series. “I think students will get to know Dr. Jackson, and see how she is really concerned about students,” said Senator Dan Horvath ’08, vice chair of the Committee on Student Life. He also thought that as a result, Jackson will “be a little more connected to students than just through the student government leaders. We’re not the whole story.”

Everyone interviewed indicated that the success of the forum depends on student attendance and interest. Ben Levinn ’08, a computer science major, noted, “I think that communication is always a good thing. How productive [the forum] will be depends entirely upon the agenda. It has the potential to be a very good thing.”

“Pizza with the President,” though planned during the last semester, comes on the heels of the Faculty Senate’s Chain of Command Satisfaction Survey, in which President Jackson scored poorly on issues of communication with faculty. Administration officials have disputed the findings of the survey, also noting that it does not address student concerns.