Although the economic downturn has forced Tufts to postpone major capital projects, the university's trustees this weekend approved expenditures for a number of renovations. Specifically, the trustees' Administration and Finance Committee gave the go-ahead to ongoing or planned construction in Cousens Gym, the Pearson Chemical Laboratory and Packard Hall and to other projects on the Grafton campus.
The trustees also used their weekend meeting to elect a second vice chair, welcome five new members and okay a committee to look into a campus center facelift.
But before delving into official business, board members attended a lunch Friday with administrators and Tufts Community Union (TCU) senators. The theme for the lunch, which was held in the Coolidge Room of Ballou Hall, was how Tufts will look in 2020.
"This is a historical time for the country, but in 10 years, a lot of that will be gone," TCU President Duncan Pickard, a junior, said during his opening remarks to attendees, noting that President Barack Obama's election and the recession may be distant memories in 2020.
Freshman and TCU Senator Manuel Guzman echoed this sentiment when he addressed the crowd that gathered for lunch. "Hopefully the financial crisis will be an unpleasant memory by then and ... all the projects that we've put off for better times will be able to be achieved," he said.
During smaller group discussions at the various tables, lunch attendees looked ahead to the future of campus social life, green building, academics, athletics and the makeup of the student body.
According to Trustee Chairman James Stern (A '72), future campus projects, especially the construction of new buildings, will focus on sustainability. "Some of it is really no-brainer stuff because it pays for itself very quickly," Stern, an engineer by education, told the Daily after the lunch. "It's not just to be a good citizen; you're doing it because it makes good sense."
Currently, Sophia Gordon Hall is the model for green building at Tufts. "We didn't build Sophia ... blindly," Stern said.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman discussed substance abuse with members of his table. He said that students need to work to stamp out ongoing alcohol-abuse trends well before 2020.
"We can't survive that," he told the Daily, referring to current student behavior. "We are lucky as a community that we haven't lost anybody."
Reitman specifically highlighted the behavior of Tufts students at last month's Winter Bash, which was held in the Gantcher Center. "[The gym] was destroyed, and it took an awful lot to bring it back," he said.
After the lunch, trustees convened for a series of meetings where they discussed the economy, the endowment and the university's $20-million loss in Bernard Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme. They also elected local attorney Bill O'Reilly (A '77) as the board's second vice chairman.
O'Reilly, a senior partner at the Boston office of the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, was president of Tufts' Alumni Association from 2000 to 2002. While many of the board members live in other states, O'Reilly will serve as a local liaison to the trustees' leadership.
At the Administration and Finance Committee meeting, the trustees approved funding for a long-awaited revamping of the basketball court in Cousens Gym. As part of the project, workers will rotate the court 90 degrees and expand it to make it regulation size for NCAA games.
Trustees also allocated additional money to continue construction in Packard Hall, the future home of the political science department, and gave a nod to the renovation in the Pearson Chemical Laboratory. For the Grafton campus, the trustees granted funding requests for the completion of an art lecture hall and a distance learning center.
During a presentation, Laura Herman, the liaison between students and the Administration and Finance Committee, asked committee members to look into minor physical alterations to the campus center.
"They were incredibly receptive, and I was very excited [and] very grateful for their enthusiasm," Herman, a senior, told the Daily. In response to her request, the trustees approved the creation of a small committee, to be led by Vice President for Operations John Roberto, that will explore possible renovations.
Heading into this weekend's meeting, members of Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility (STIR) were hoping to make inroads with the board, specifically with STIR's request to expand the size of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR).
The committee, designed to advise the trustees on proxy votes, currently consists of three undergraduate students, but endowment transparency advocates would like to see faculty members, graduate students and alumni included.
To date, the ACSR's proxy recommendations have been disregarded by the trustees and the administration because the group's reports have not met appropriate standards. TCU senators, as well as members of STIR and the ACSR, feel that expansion and professional input would help the committee make more informed suggestions.
Vice Chairman Peter Dolan has met a number of times with ACSR members on behalf of the board. In response to a question from the Daily following Friday's lunch, he opposed the inclusion of alumni on the ACSR, noting that graduates already play an important role in investment decisions. "The trustees by and large are alumni," he said. "We already have quite significant representation from alumni as we think about some of these issues."
Also as part of the weekend's business, the trustees welcomed the five new members who were elected to the board last year.
Jeannie Diefenderfer (E '84) is the vice president for global network operations at Verizon Business; Steven Goldstein (A '76) is a professor at the University of Michigan; Varney Hintlian (A '72) is a principal at Prospectus LLC, a real estate development, investment and consulting firm; Deborah Jospin (LA '80) co-founded the consulting group sagawa/jospin, which is based in Washington, D.C.; and Neal Shapiro (LA '80), the former president of NBC News, currently works as the CEO of WNET.ORG, a public media provider in New York.
The trustees also focused extensively on the economic situation and on the university's investment in Ascot Partners, but mostly behind closed doors.
Still, TCU Senator Mary Langan, a senior, snuck a joking reference to Madoff into her opening remarks at the lunch. She expressed her desire to be able to accurately predict the state of Tufts in 2020, noting, "But in that case, we'd be invested in me and not Mr. Madoff."
