By By Anne Baker, News Staff

‘ The ad-hoc committee charged to examine the possibility of restructuring the colleges of Arts and Sciences and Criminal Justice held its first public forum Friday afternoon. The forum had been called to talk with arts and sciences students about their thoughts on the possibility of the restructure, and the room in Curry Student Center had chairs, committee members and cookies.
There was just one thing missing:’ the undergraduates.
Two graduate students were the only people in attendance at the committee’s first open forum, which Vice Provost Mary Loeffelholz said she attributed to a mix-up with the College of Arts and Sciences; an e-mail notifying students about the meeting was never sent.
‘I really regret that this scheduling mishap occurred,’ College of Arts and Sciences interim Dean Bruce Ronkin said. ‘It is the college’s fault the e-mail announcement did not go out and we’re very sorry about it. We’re working hard to schedule another student forum so that the students have the opportunity to voice their opinions.’
Ronkin said the college would send out another e-mail today as soon as it nailed down a place and time for the rescheduled meeting.
College of Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Council chairman George Gottschalk IV said he was not aware of the meeting. Gottschalk said he did not think the e-mail would have made a difference in the forum’s attendance, and the lack of attendance was part of a ‘larger problem.’
‘They’ve been doing this for a while,’ he said. ‘They set up these so-called forums ‘hellip; and then they’re poorly marketed. It shows a complete lack of dedication to getting serious feedback from the students and then demonstrably using it in their decision-making.’
Friday’s forum was the first of two meetings for students of the colleges of Arts and Sciences and Criminal Justice. They were first announced by Loffelholz at the Council for University Program’s Eye to Eye event with Provost Stephen Director Feb. 10. The forum for College of Criminal Justice students will be held Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m in the Alumni Center at Columbus Place. Though the meetings are each targeted at the individual colleges, Loeffelholz said at the Eye to Eye event that they were open to the community.
The forums were listed on the restructuring committee’s website but have not been listed in a myNEU portal announcement, put on the university’s events calendar or posted on Director’s website. The five committee members at Friday’s meeting continued the forum despite the low turnout. Loeffelholz, David Rochefort, Peter Wiederspahn, Dagmar Sternad and Hiba Tannoury asked and answered questions for the two graduate students in attendance.
Lauren Nicoll, a Ph.D. student in sociology who said she found out about the meeting through the Graduate and Professional Student Association, asked committee members about the future of research in a split College of Arts and Sciences. She said the college already struggles for research funding and that diminishing its size might hurt it further.
‘If we’re broken up, how are we even going to compete with the other schools?’ Nicoll asked. ‘Will we be further marginalized?’
Loeffelholz pointed to the irony in Nicoll’s question, noting that while Loeffelholz worried about the future of making the College of Arts and Sciences smaller, students in College of Criminal Justice wonder about becoming part of a bigger college community.
‘My guess is that if the criminal justice students were here, they might be telling us about what feels good about having a smaller, more focused college,’ Loeffelholz said.
Loeffelholz later said it is the committee’s intention to host forums for students of both colleges together.
The forum continued for its scheduled hour and 15 minutes, with committee members posing as many questions to the two students as they did to the committee, including about the extent to which students actually want interdisciplinary research.
After the meeting, Loeffelholz declined to comment on behalf of the committee members, refusing to answer questions about what the committee had hoped to get out of the open forum and what members thought of the attendance.
Vice President of Marketing and Communications Mike Armini also declined to comment, but said the rescheduled meeting would be held Thursday.