After a series of meetings incorporating private students and representatives from several student groups, a proposal to renovate Templeton in the short-term was submitted to Campus Planner Michael Sestric and Dean of Students Jon Eldridge yesterday.

Templeton has long been a source of frustration for both faculty and students. At times, the student center seems to be devoid of students, except those studying in the Dubach labs. The administration and the Board of Trustees have recently expressed a desire to renovate Templeton in the short term. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the consensus view expressed the need for short-term change providing more student space.

The specifics of how Templeton should change, however, were the subject of several hours of debate at the meetings. Eventually, several goals were identified as essential. Templeton should include a quiet, safe space for student groups, as well as space in which to be loud, give performances, and generally hang out.

“It’s a space I want to have ownership of,” Erika Spangler (’07) said. “Without central space, you don’t have a cohesive community. It’s broken down into several different factions. The community is dispersed on campus; it is not really a community if it’s dispersed.”

“The space should be more oriented to students: there should be couches, pooltables, and walls with funky colors,” Jenny Sterling (’08) said.

“I want Thayer to be open and I want the Co-op to move into the space created by the destruction of Thayer’s walls,” Josh Thorngren (’07) said. “There also needs to be communal space for student groups that don’t have space already,” he added.

The meetings were created to give student groups a voice in the upcoming remodeling. The first meeting, held on Tuesday, was given over to brainstorming and resulted in several proposed renovations, which were then refined into one proposal, submitted to a slightly smaller group of students Wednesday night.

The Wednesday night proposal created several open spaces for students to hang out that were to be managed by the Co-op and by other student organizations. It rearranged some student group offices, requested more windows and better lighting, and proposed that part of the current Trail Room space be turned into a stage area for musical performances. In addition, it created student group resource centers for groups that do not currently have space in Templeton.
“Compromise was clearly a goal by the end,” said Student Activities Intern Maura Ross (‘06). “The student groups did a really good job under the rushed conditions set forth by the budgeting process. I think that the framework of goals we’ve set out make it clear that regardless of cost, Templeton needs to change.”

A much-debated issue at the meetings was the role of the Student Co-op in any renovations of Templeton. The Co-op has not yet officially decided whether it wants to move to Templeton, but Spangler said that changes in Templeton’s appearance would feature largely in their decision.

“Originally, I’m most closely affiliated with the Co-op,” she said. “The administration came to us with the plan to move into Templeton. If the Co-op would move, we don’t want to move into a space that’s wrong for us. The administration needs a foundation for students from which to make better judged decisions.”

“I feel this is a very democratic process and I’m pleased with that,” Sterling said.

Chief Justice Charlie Blackmar (’06) said he was especially pleased by the diversity of students who participated in the process.

“I was very pleased to see such a large outpouring of student support,” he said. “I was also particularly pleased to see so many seniors that, despite being on their way out, are still willing to devote so much of their time to the future success of Lewis & Clark.”

Once the floor plan of the proposal was agreed upon, the planning group prioritized their requests, so that even if funding were insufficient to make all the changes, the most important could still be implemented. Ross said she felt that the proposal was viable.

“I think the proposal is big, but I think the way that we’ve prioritized the proposal makes it easy to see what’s economically feasible,” she said. “If the administration can’t find a way to finance it, then I don’t know what else students can do. We use the space, we care about the school; I’ve never seen so many groups so dedicated.”

Ross added that she hopes the proposed changes will give off-campus students somewhere to go outside of classes that is not the library.

One concern raised at the meetings was the distinction between what students want their student center to look like in the long run, and changes that could be implemented by next year.

“I don’t like the fact that there’s no clear leadership in this process. That said, the people who have stepped up have been good at getting student groups together so that it’s not just one student group deciding what all other student groups need,” Rhett Tatum (‘06) said. “We definitely need to distinguish between the long-term and the short-term.

“In the long-term, Templeton needs to be demolished completely and rebuilt from the ground up. In the short-term, we need to utilize the fact that this year the administration and the Board of Trustees seem to be interested in allocating a sizable piece of money to redesigning the space. Unfortunately, the process is rushed. We had literally one month to go from ‘Here’s the opportunity to do this’ to presenting to the Board of Trustees.”

Despite the short timeline, participants expressed overall approval with the proposal they had crafted.

“I love the fact that all student groups are involved or invited to be involved,” Thorngren said. “The unfortunate aspect is that it slows meetings down. It’s worth it to have a multitude of voices, although some voices are more focused than others. There were a lot of ideas that were not about renovations, such as biodeisel engines in the basement, getting rid of the Bon, and the green roof. While these are great ideas, they are not really expressed at the right forum.”

ASLC President James Atkin (’06) said he was pleased with the work done by students, but emphasized that this was only the beginning of a long process.

“The big issue is, how much can we do this summer to improve student life?” he said. “I think this is great, but we can’t stop here. Instead of a $300,000 budget, we need to start thinking about a $30 million budget. What do students really want out of a student center?”

Atkin said that he personally hoped any future incarnations of a student center would promote community on campus and be a place where students would want to hang out, rather than use as a silent study space.

“People shouldn’t be studying in a student center,” he said. “That’s what the library is for. The student center should be a place where students congregate.”

The proposal will be reviewed by Eldridge and Sestric and, if approved, will become part of the College’s general operating budget request reviewed by the Board of Trustees later this school year.
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Taskforce to decide "focus" of college

by Ben Waterhouse

Lewis & Clark undergraduates Mike Strout (‘07) and Alina Dumitrasc (‘06) have been selected to sit on the Strategic Planning Task Force called for by President Hochstettler in his “White Paper on Strategic Thinking.”

The white paper, which was made public at the end of September, lays out a framework for a task force to “undertake an inquiry into the strategic direction of the College” and create a cohesive plan for the “preferred future” of Lewis & Clark College.

“If I had to narrow [the purpose of the task force] down to one word, I think that word would be ‘focus,’” Hochstettler said.

The Task Force will consist of four members of the Board of Trustees, ten faculty members, students from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Law School and the graduate school, and alumni from all three institutions.

ASLC President James Atkin (’06) appointed the two students on the task force. He made his decision based on written applications and interviews with candidates.

“I received eight applications and about 20 emails from people saying that they were very interested in the task force but would not have had time to participate,” Atkin said.

“I’ve talked to many people who wanted to apply but were over-committed. All of the applications I received were excellent, and I’m sure Mike and Alina will do a great job.”

The members of the Task force will meet several times over the course of the next 13-14 months, and will probably divide themselves into subgroups to deal with specific issues such as sustainability and internationalism, the President said.

“I would expect that there would be six or seven of these subgroups, which would have members of the task force as the core of the subgroups, but that would then add interested individuals without regard for their numbers.” Hochstettler also said that he would like to see students take an active role in the planning for the future of the College.

“Students are at the core of this institution,” he said, “They are at the forefront of everything that is right and wrong with this institution….I would like students to be very vocal, to be demonstrative, to stand up and give voice to their aspirations and to their concerns for this institutions.”

In the White Paper on Strategic Thinking, Hochstettler wrote that he would prefer to “err on the side of inclusivity” rather than exclude anyone who might be able to contribute to the project.

In response to accusations by some students that he is just re-hashing former LC President Michael Mooney’s controversial Commission on Academic Priorities report, (CAP) Hochstettler said that the two projects are entirely different in focus and scope.

“The CAP report did not look at this institution as a whole. It looked at academic priorities. It is a much more comprehensive document that I am looking for from this task force. I am not looking for individual initiatives,” said Hochstettler.

“What’s wrong with occasionally stopping and asking what your priorities are?” he said, “Any organization that doesn’t do that runs the risk of becoming stagnant.”

Hochstettler also said that student athletics, while by no means a primary focus of the Task Force, will certainly be addressed.

“We are a very athletic institution. Fifty-four to fifty-five per cent of students are engaged in athletics. LC is a place of people who enjoy being outside, who enjoy physical activity and who enjoy competing. I’m not sure that we are doing everything we can for students in terms of giving them enough resources to fulfill their needs in that regard, and if we are not we need to make sure that we do.”

The Task Force will have its first meeting within the next two weeks.
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