Last Wednesday, Dr. Jackson held a town meeting in DCC 308 to discuss the “State of the Institute.” Presumably, the intent of the meeting was to update the campus community on the progress of The Rensselaer Plan and to provide an opportunity to voice issues of concern pertaining to the campus.
Judging from the turnout, though, you probably never heard about it. Hopefully it was just an oversight on the part of the administration that the event was poorly advertised, especially to the students most likely to be interested.
One of the few methods of publicizing the meeting was to distribute flyers for RAs to post in residence halls. This tactic reaches very few graduate and commuter students, groups which are certainly likely to have many questions for the administration right now.
In addition to the flyers, there was an advertisement in this newspaper—but only on the day of the meeting. Similarly, the meeting appeared in the Campus.News e-mail bulletin two days beforehand. For the majority of interested parties on campus, more lead time is necessary to fit the meeting into their busy schedules.
The only place that the town meeting was advertised more than a week ahead of time was on the RPI home page, and most students look at that page maybe once a month, ignore it completely, or use it as a tool to check the weather on campus.
The point of a town meeting is to have the “town” participate. So is there any question why less than five questions were asked at the meeting? Odds are that a public forum such as this is planned out well in advance. Next time, the administration needs to do a better job of reaching out to the people most likely to be interested, and of letting the campus know sufficiently in advance.
