AIDAN POLLARD
News Editor
Though the search for Fredonia’s new president may be confidential due to a SUNY-wide policy change, the search firm Storbeck/Pimentel & Associates is still taking the campus community’s opinion into account throughout the process.
The firm was on campus Thursday, Dec. 5 and Friday, Dec. 6 for open forums regarding the search.
The Friday forum was led by Storbeck/Pimentel partner Stephen Leo, who opened the forum with a brief explanation of how the search will work alongside some credentials of the firm before opening up the floor to questions and comments.
“We are beginning recruiting very soon,” said Leo at the forum. “As soon as we have the materials from working with the search committee, which we hope to have within the next week or two … we’re anticipating that the search committee will be going to begin interviewing candidates probably in February [or] March. We’re expecting that candidates will be advanced to the [SUNY] chancellor sometime in April or May … ”
After the floor was opened up to questions, the anxieties and ideas about the confidential process within the campus community became apparent.
Numerous comments were made about diversity inclusion, as well as campus cohesion, with multiple commenters saying that the university hasn’t seemed to have a definitive direction over the last number of years, as well as a lack of school spirit, pride and communication among campus groups.
One attendee, a resident director on campus, harped on the idea that minority groups on campus have had “awful” communication with the school’s administration.
She went on to mention that during Fredonia’s Big Blue Week, events seemed to exist on islands, where one group was having one event on one day and another group had an event on the next, with little to no crossover or communication between organizations.
A faculty member from academic advising felt that that lack of communication was a fundamental problem facing Fredonia.
“I find that in my work, that there’s lots of amazing things happening at Fredonia in silos, and there’s not a good communication plan on our campus to know who’s doing what, even around the same areas,” she said. “Our main form of communication is email. When we need to get in touch with a student, we email them … I’m sure [the students in the room] can talk about how many emails [they] get a day and how overwhelming that can be, so when it is important information, we don’t have good communication. If it’s just ‘hey, there’s a chicken barbeque going on,’ or the same email that says ‘hey, you need to do this action. Something has happened,’ and if it’s a day where they get 600 emails or a day when they get 50, could depend on that sort of action. ”