With the fate of their future funding now fully in the hands of The Board of Trustees (BOT), The Observer, PULSE and other student groups have begun to sign up for speaking access at the upcoming May 15 BOT meeting to advocate for the reinstatement of their defunded programs.
The BOT is the voting board which has final say over proposed S&A budgets, and could potentially reverse the proposed budgets – which defund myriad student groups, among them the campus newspaper and magazine – for reconsideration.
However, following the outpouring of support and public comments at the April 15 S&A meeting, where around 100 people showed up to speak (see The Observer coverage in last week’s paper), administrators have made conflicting statements about how public comment will be formatted at the upcoming BOT meeting, resulting in a lack of transparency in how the meeting will be handled.
Notably, the website containing rules for public comment at the BOT meeting was edited following the S&A meeting. Dania Cochran, CWU’s Interim Chief of Staff, commented on the changes to the wording of the rules for public comment at BOT meetings. “The wording on Rule two was amended to reflect the word ‘strongly’ – the wording always has said “Individuals with a shared position or common agenda are *strongly* encouraged to select a spokesperson for their group.” The BOT has the authority to end Public Comment sessions at any time; the idea behind having one spokesperson allows groups who want to speak around other issues to have their voices heard as well.”
It is still unclear whether or not groups will be penalized with shortened speaking times if they present multiple public commenters, or if the three minutes of allotted time will be upheld. The official rules state, “Individuals with a shared position or common agenda are strongly encouraged to select a spokesperson for their group …. Individuals who sign up by the deadline will have a maximum of three minutes to speak. The board chair may change the three-minute speaking time depending on the number of speakers. A speaker may not cede time to another speaker.”
Kimberly Dawson, executive assistant to the president/BOT, on April 11, told the chair of the Communication Department that, “anyone can speak at the board meeting as long as they sign up with me ahead of time (by the May 13, 5:00 pm deadline). Each person gets 3 minutes to address the board.”
On April 17, two days after the S&A meeting, Dawson clarified, “I needed to give you a heads up regarding public comment at the BOT meeting. I realized after I replied to you that our public comment rules state that “individuals with a shared position or common agenda are encouraged to select a spokesperson for their group.” Just wanted to share that with you since I forgot about this rule. I had mentioned that anyone could sign up for public comment, but if they are speaking on the same topic, then just one person can speak.”
On April 18, Dawson added, “ … Just a heads up – we already have someone signed up to speak about The Observer (Brandon Mattesich), so nobody else will be able to speak about this topic, unless the group decides on a different spokesperson for the group.”
The Observer reached out to Kimberly Dawson to comment on these conflicting statements, but was redirected to CWU President Jim Wohlpart, who as of the time of this story’s publication has yet to comment.
