Dear Deans J. Murray Gibson, Georges Van Den Abbeele, and Xavier Costa,
On behalf of the Northeastern community, The News welcomes you to the home of the Huskies and to Boston. You have been selected by a diverse committee of graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members and confirmed by Provost Stephen Director to become the founding deans of our three new colleges. We hope that you appreciate the unique and rare opportunity that you have been offered to pioneer three new colleges at an established university.
Only about 32 professors (six courses a year for five years) determine whether or not a Northeastern student will graduate. They are free to decide the best way to determine a student’s level of mastery of the material in their courses, but should future students be able to see what exams professors have administered in previous years?
How often have you arrived at the Northeastern office or building of your destination only to find it locked and dark? Cursing at your watch, you look closer and see a sign for summer hours: Closed. Looks like you'll have to make other plans.
What may seem like minor, personal inconveniences for summer students becomes a frustrating mess when the annoyances hinder students' studying, living, working, and learning. The nagging feeling of not getting what was paid for fuels the frustration.
The administrators who faced the community members were brave. Armed with just a PowerPoint full of pie charts, figures and fuzzy math which was quickly picked apart by the audience, they endured heckling, taunts and interruptions. It wasn't pretty. The comments from the community were angry and urgent, but sounded well-rehearsed. That is probably because at this point many of the same people have been saying the same things for three or more years. They want fewer students in their neighborhoods.
I moved to Mission Hill 35 years ago. My family has owned our home for 55 years. It has always been a pleasure living in Mission Hill because of its strong sense of community. I've known some of the people who were at last Thursday's Community Conversation meeting since I was a little girl. Now, this bond is gone. Our neighbors are temporary and they treat the homes in our community that were once owned by families with no respect.
At an academic institution where many of the course syllabi provided to students strictly forbid or penalize late submission of assignments, the university has procrastinated their duty to provide an important document to the communities in which we reside.
It was a simple moment. And I’m not sure it might have stood out the way that it had, if it hadn’t happened at the end of my last class, on the final day of the semester. It wasn’t just my last day of classes for the term, or for the year, even— but for my college career.
