Author: Jessica Stevens
Occidental’s General Assembly capped its second meeting of the year with a visit from Interim President Robert Skotheim and two funding proposals for cultural student groups Monday, Mar. 17. In his first direct address to students, President Skotheim explained the impact of recent changes in college leadership and outlined priorities for his remaining 15 months in office.
“Basically the President is here to shore up concerns about the revolving door in Oxy’s Administration and share his goals,” GA Co-Chair Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz (junior) said. “I don’t think that too many students know what [Skotheim] is about and why he is visiting.”
Skotheim described his visit as an important opportunity to respond to questions about the “unusual” position that he occupies. “Since the abrupt resignation of Susan Prager, I have been locked in my office seeing people and trying to identify the players,” Skotheim said. “I have seen almost nothing of students.”
Citing a record number of applications for the incoming class, Skotheim said that the “college is healthy, evidenced by a very well selected student body.” However, the Interim President said Occidental had been “handicapped” since Ted Mitchell’s resignation in 2005 and “hoped that those [current students] who had seen four Presidents since were never inconvenienced or hurt.”
Sophomore Senator Andrew DeBlock questioned how Skotheim viewed his role as an interim administrator at Occidental. “I would like to be more of a caretaker,” Skotheim said. “It is not realistic for me to make drastic changes to policy because I won’t be here to live with the consequences of them,” he said.
Skotheim said his most important responsibility in the next year would be leading the search for a long-term, permanent President “who can help build Occidental . . . The same things the College needs in attracting students will also play in attracting a new president,” Skotheim said.
“Occidental is a feisty, lovely place, and is the envy of other colleges for being in this location with such a heterogeneous student body [and] faculty,” he said. “The challenge is for [Oxy] to be all of those things and be a harmonious place that poses some future success for incoming presidents.”
The presidential search was prominent among topics discussed by Skotheim in his first ever meeting with Los Angeles area alumni at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Mar. 5. “Privately, I know there is concern about the transition and the alumni want to be reassured that the College is not in some sort of crisis,” Skotheim said.
Alumni also directed concerns about the status of Occidental’s faculty to the Interim President. “Alums always want to know the relationship [between administration] and the faculty from now compared to when they were here,” Skotheim said.
“The answer is that the faculty is very concerned about its role in governance and worried that the adversarial nature of the campus, in which the faculty plays a very large role, is not manifested in a way that is discouraging to a presidential search when it happens,” he said.
Junior Class Senator Patrick McCredie questioned how President Skotheim planned to stem the high turnover and attrition rates of middle administrators at the college.
Deferring to Vice President and Dean of Students Barbara Avery, Skotheim said he was not in a position to speak directly, but that “usually such turnover is either from people at the Vice President level intentionally trying to restructure a department or issues with competitive compensation of personnel conflicts.”
“In many times, our salaries are not very competitive, and there is not a whole lot we can do with that,” Avery said. “I have been pushing to raise the salaries, and I have been able to in a few cases, but the goal is trying to recruit while trying to be competitive.”
Former ASOC Senator Ali Raymond (senior) asked President Skotheim the last question of the session, focusing on his tangible steps towards addressing current student concerns. “It is important that [all] these groups voice their concerns and are heard,” Skotheim said.
The remainder of the General Assembly session was dedicated to proposals for funding cultural graduation ceremonies and culturally based student support groups.
Introduced by Senator McCredie, the first proposal would institutionalize funding for cultural graduations from pertinent academic departments. McCredie stated that the combined $7,500 appropriated by ASOC for Latino Grad, Black Grad and Asian-Pacific Islander Grad amount to 12.5 percent of Senate’s annual discretionary funds.
If passed, the proposal would bar cultural grad groups from requesting financial support from ASOC if they were sponsored by a department. Thus, the proposal requests a guarantee from the Dean of Student’s Office for annual funding, although without a clear relationship between the Dean’s office and the respective departments involved.
“It’s a work in progress,” McCredie said. “Working from our mission’s equity and community clauses, it would be nice if this money just came from the administration.”
The second proposal, introduced by ASOC President Ryan Bowen (senior), called for a conference of cultural support groups, namely Compadres, Harambee and Sister Talk, with administrators to identify sources of institutional funding. “I am a member of Harambee and I know that the Associate Dean of Students office has discretionary funds that have been used to support the group,” Bowen said. However, the departure of Harambee advisor and Associate Dean of Students Earic Peters last summer has forced the group to seek funding through regular avenues, along with Compadres and Sister Talk. Harambee currently receives financial support from the Office of Student Life, where all male student staff members are reportedly also club members.
Compadres advisor Jesus Maldonado later stated that he was unaware of the proposal and asked Bowen if he had communicated with the other groups named before advancing the motion. Bowen said he has attempted to reach members of the other groups, but had not had any success.
“Please talk to these groups before you introduce this motion again,” Maldonado said. “The other groups should be here to report about the services they receive.”
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