Tulane University - Jambalaya Yearbook (New Orleans, LA)

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The University ' s Academic Council suggested a conference of all segments of the University Community to try to answer some of the critical questions the University faced; and somehow, the 1970 Summer Conference got off the ground. For three days, students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and others sat opposite each other and talked (or shouted, or argued, or accused, or denied). The members of the Board of Administrators claimed that they were only businessmen and, consequently, amateurs at handling academic affairs. They specialized in handling the University ' s money and had hired the president and all the other administrators to handle academic affairs, they said. The administrators feigned shock at the paralyzingly slow process of change in the University and said they only wanted to handle matters affecting the financial situation of the University. An idea began to take root: lower-level administrators could make decisions and act on them without having to endure the stifling committee process. Students, faculty, and administrators began changing the decision- making process of the University so that the buck would stop with them. New constitutions and by-laws flourished. Changes began to occur in less than a year, less than a semester, sometimes even less than a month. Administrators were beginning to have a function besides trying to placate and further delay students already infuriated by frustration. And now that administrators could actually DO things, another new idea began to take shape: it actually does some good to talk to people; something might actually get done even if no demonstrations take place. Students, faculty, and administrators began to talk to each other and things started getting done. An outgrowth of the same ideas that created the Summer Conference also created the weekly University Forums. Originally, the Forums were designed to increase the amount of contact between the president and the student body. However, during the early Forums, the president almost invariably referred questions to one of the lower-level administrators in the audience in whose special province the question fell. The students soon caught on. By second semester this year, the Forums consisted largely of students grilling all of the administrators, alerting each of them to problems in his specific area. Action-producing conversations are now taking place on a lower-level and things are getting done. The result? For the first time in many years at Tulane, a president of the student body has said that there is good communication between the students and the administration. PAGE 13