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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | February 21, 2008

Last Wednesday, Student Council and student committee representatives held an open information session to provide students with the opportunity to learn more about the 2020 campaign planning process and to advocate and submit their ideas concerning the college’s budgetary and structural direction 10 years from now.

According to Vice President Maurice Eldridge ‘61, the current planning process of the 2020 campaign is one that "helps to identify that which you believe you must have [in order] to sustain the new directions that you want to go in and how much it’s going to cost, to dream about the future, to guess at the pressures and so on that will be out there. [We want] to make sure that we can keep doing well the things that we already do well and find the money that allows us to go there."

The 2020 planning information session event was structured around two objectives — one being to inform students about the current process of the 2020 campaign and the importance of students becoming involved, and the other being the compilation of student feedback for inclusion in a report that will eventually be given to the various committee chairs and the Board of Managers, according to Student Council President Peter Gardner ’08.

“I think it’s crucial for people to realize [that] it’s very open. The advantage of it being very open is that no idea is too outlandish,” Gardner said. “People should be thinking about their vision for what the [college] community in the next 15 to 20 years should be.”

During the event, Gardner introduced the 2020 campaign and described the roles that the steering committee, on which he and Student Council Vice President Sven Udekwu ’09 currently serve, and the subcommittees will play in the planning process.

“The steering committee is basically a cross section of every constituency of the college — alumni, members of the board, staff, senior staff, faculty and students,” Gardner said.

The steering committee will evaluate a report compiled by the sub-committees that will include the student input obtained from the information session, e-mails and other channels of communication, including the Student Council comment box used during their Sharples tabling.

Additionally, they will head the planning process of the 2020 campaign, evaluating and prioritizing the student, faculty and staff input that has been collected, and begin the process of budgeting and fundraising.

Gardner also introduced the student representatives from the subcommittees assigned to handle specific planning aspects of the campaign. The subcommittees include Academic Program, Broader Educational Experience, Broader Swarthmore Community and Philanthropy, Faculty and Instructional Staff, Leadership in Scholarship, Higher Education and Society, Recruitment, Composition of Class and Financial Aid, Resources and Staff Planning Groups.

“The facilities and resources ideas will have to really categorize the needs in terms of dollars and or physical spaces that these priorities suggest or imply so that you can get a sense of what the dollars are and figure out how much of those dollars you can really raise,” Eldridge said.

After having gathered the student input that was collected, each individual planning group will draft a report detailing the progress and prioritization of ideas for the campaign. These reports will be compiled into the one report being presented to the steering committee.

The report that will be presented to the steering committee is expected to take shape by next fall. Student Council and others involved in the 2020 planning process stressed that some short-term proposals could potentially be implemented before 2020.

“There are certain ideas that were put out there that are common sense things that can be done over the next three to four years … that Student Council could be working on,” Udekwu said. “[Other ideas are] things that can be talked about over the next 10 years.”

Additionally, the planning committees have the role of preparing materials for an evaluative process the college must go through every few years as a member of the Middle States College Consortium.

“Basically every few years the college has to go through an accreditation … compiling a whole bunch of documents about the state of the college, admitting that to external examiners that come in and evaluate the state of the college,” Gardner said. “The planning groups would play a double role — preparing the materials for the evaluation and … now that that process is done, to prepare for the future of the college — and that’s where we stand now.”

A major component of the information session was when students were allowed to write down their ideas that pertained to each of the subcommittees, hand them in, and in addition talk to the student representatives to discuss their ideas in detail or to learn more about the way the committees work.

“When I was there, I felt very inspired and very energized to be able to put my ideas on paper without having to censor myself … even if I don’t necessarily know the intricacies of administrative details … I appreciated that,” Brianne Gallagher ’08 said.

Gallagher said she attended the session with a friend and, despite being unsure of what was to become of the ideas she contributed, appreciated being able to speak from her own perspective about what she felt the college needed to work on. “I was influenced by my personal bias in the groups I am involved in and sort of my own individual needs,” she said.

“We want students to know that the process [is] open enough that their voices will still have an impact,” Udekwu said. “There will definitely be outcomes from anything they put in. We’re always tabling. We do read the messages in the box. The important thing is for us to show that we’ve gotten the ideas, that we’ve compiled them and that we’re discussing them. It will show people that we’re serious about hearing from them,” he said.

Although students were free to contribute ideas to any of the subcommittees, Gallagher talked about financial aid policy as one of her biggest issues.

“There should be a more specific taking into account of the specific family situation of the students,” she said. “For instance, if parents are divorced, and a student lives with one parent and not the other parent, I don’t think it’s realistic for the non-custodial parent to pay a part of the tuition.”

As an institution, the college is constantly contemplating about future constraints or necessities. Consequently, campaign ideas, whether small or big, are continuously being proposed by different members of the college, according to Eldridge.

“There will always be campaigns … No higher education institution will ever be able to do the good work they do without philanthropy,” Eldridge said.

Just recently, the college completed a capital campaign called “The Meaning of Swarthmore” that took into account several pressing issues, including the need for more financial aid, increasing the number of summer internships and financial aid for them, expanding departments like Film and Media Studies and Islamic Studies, supporting new faculty positions and building construction and renovation.

This campaign raised more than 200 million dollars, exceeding its initial goal of funding. According to Gardner, the next campaign does not yet have a target goal, but is expected to equal or even exceed the last campaign.

“I think people are optimistic that we can raise a similar or larger amount of money,” Gardner said. “The take away lesson for everybody is that we’re dealing with lots of money, huge amounts of money, that will be spent towards creating the college that we want to see in the next 15 to 20 years. What I do know is it’s going to be a significant amount of funding.”

Planning group committees are expected to finish reports by the end of the semester, and the final report will be presented to the steering committee by next fall. All those in involved, particularly the student representatives, strongly encourage student input, even from those who were unable to make it to the information session last week.

To learn more about the goals of the 2020 planning process and the committees that are involved, please visit www.swarthmore.edu/x9679.xml.

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