After a weekend of meetings with top administrators and student government representatives, Board of Trustees chairman Nathan Gantcher said that the University approves of tentative plans to construct a dormitory on Tufts' Medford campus.
"It's not a controversial project," he said, following a luncheon on Saturday.
At a meeting on Friday, Trustee Representative junior Jesse Levey lobbied for a 300-person housing unit. The trustees would not commit to that figure during the meetings this weekend but did designate 150 beds as the minimum size for the new dorm.
"The administration clearly believes there is a need for beds," Gantcher said. "They're just not sure how many we need."
A definitive plan will not be approved until May, when the trustees reconvene before Tufts' commencement ceremonies. It would then take at least a year to begin construction, according to Gantcher.
Levey would not comment on the negotiations, but other student government representatives reported that the trustees seemed to be aware of the need for a new dorm.
"I know Jesse's presentation went really well, and I think the trustees are really open to ideas and suggestions," Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate Treasurer Michelle Shelton said.
At Saturday's luncheon, with members of the TCU Senate, representatives from the student government organizations of Tufts' graduate schools, and the University's administration on hand, Gantcher said that the trustees would heed student advice. "The dorm problem on the hill has not fallen on deaf ears," he said.
The students at the lunch mixed praise for Tufts with concerns during their addresses, and most solicited donations for the disparate interests of their academic programs. A first-year Fletcher student, complaining of inadequate instructional facilities, said that his fellow students are in favor of an architect's plan for renovating the Cabot Intercultural Center and the contiguous Mugar and Goddard halls. "All that it lacks is the funding," he said.
Graduate School Council President Adrianne Ralph said that missing from her superb academic experience is a sense of community on the largely undergraduate campus. A student of urban and environmental policy, Ralph said she felt a "complete disconnect" with the rest of the University.
"I was not a part of an academic community," she said, blaming a "lack of attention paid to graduate students in both formal and informal ways."
Although TCU President David Moon said senators were nervous to address the
trustees, successive speakers were direct in their requests to the influential body.
Freshman Senator Pritesh Gandhi complimented Tufts for its response to last semester's hate crimes while pressing the administration and trustees to address a lack of diversity among the University faculty. He called for more money to be put toward an investigation of Tufts' faculty retention rate.
"We lost eight black faculty members last year," he said.
On a weekend when everyone seemed focused on fundraising, Gandhi was perhaps the most successful, raising $20,000 in trustee contributions for disaster relief efforts in India. He had asked trustees to match what students had donated to the cause; the total amount collected exceeded his initial request.
Among the concerns of Treasurer Shelton and TCU Senate Vice President Eric Greenberg was the condition of Tufts' undergraduate classrooms - facilities the senators said were obsolete. "Many classes lack even the basic technology of the early 1990s," Shelton said.
She also called for Tufts to improve the infrastructure of its music department, citing a lack of classrooms for music department education. "The performance groups face hardships as well," she said. "Perhaps one day Tufts can be known for its state-of-the-art music facility."
"The quality of the classrooms has been neglected," Greenberg said, reciting a list of unresolved student concerns. But he lauded the Senate's success in improving Tufts' "social life policy," and the vice president's tone was generally sanguine.
"We should congratulate the cooperative effort of students and the administration," he said.
On Saturday, Gantcher seemed to be listening; "It's interesting to hear the needs de jour," he said in closing remarks. The chairman of the board spoke highly of the quality of Tufts' campus center, athletic facilities, and library. Then, in recognition of the student speeches, he pledged to continue improving the University.
"[The library] is state-of-the-art as compared to our classrooms - as I've heard," he said. "What I heard is that we're pretty good and we have to work to do to be perfect."
