RPI aims at studentunion— again
Administration claims Jackson has sole authority to hire director
TROY, N. Y. » After what opponents characterized as two surreptitious attempts to wrest away student control of the Rensselaer Student Union, the administration at Rensselaer Poyltechnic Institute appears to now be taking amore direct route in that two- year- old effort. In a Sept. 12 memo obtained by The Record, Curtis Powell, the college’s vice president for human resources, informed Grand Marshal Justin Etzine, RPI’s top student official, and Matthew Rand, president of the union, that RPI’s bylaws give college President Shirley Anne Jackson
sole authority to appoint the director of the union, a decision made by students for the entire 125- year history of the union.
Powell cites terms in the bylaws that charges the college president to “approve annually the terms and conditions of em-
ployment and salary policies for all staff, faculty, administrators and other employees of the Institute,” he wrote, quoting fromthe bylaws. Powell further goes on to cite a section of the bylaws that sxpecifically states the union falls under those bylaws. “Rensselaer recognizes and will continue to support a student- run union with the intention to provide pedagogical and entrepreneurial experience,” Powell concluded. “As such, it is the decision of the Division of Human Resources that the director of the Rensselaer Student Union is appointed by the president, in accordance with the bylaws of the Institute, and that the director of the Rensselaer Student Union is responsible for the administration of the activities and monies of the union.” Student response was sxwift and equally as forceful, coming later the same day in a responding memo from Etzine and Rand that was also acquired by The Record. In that memo, Etzine and Rand point out the
terms cited by Powell are superceded by the union’s own constitution, in which, they argue, authority to fill the director’s position was specifically delegated to the union’s executive board by college trustees. Since trustees approved the union constitution after the cited portions of the college bylaws were adopted, the pair argue the constitution negates those terms in the bylaws.
“The Board of Trustees may use its authority to rescind or revise the Union Constitution, but, until that time, the final authority [ to elect the union’s director] rests with those to whom it was delegated,” Etzine and Rand wrote.
College officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
The battle over the position began in December 2015, when Joe Cassidy, the paid, non- student director of the union was abruptly dismissed by the college, followed by the public posting by the college of a job opening for an executive director of student activities whose duties, students claimed, were to include
running the student union on behalf of the administration.
Opponents claimed the move was an attempt by Jackson to take over the lucrative facility, which houses student services such as a bookstore, meeting rooms and other spaces for clubs and other organizations to meet, as well as entertainment, performing arts and fitness facilities. The college’s finances have come into question, with Standard & Poor’s, a leading credit rating agency, lowering the college’s long- term bond rating at the beginning of the year from A- to BBB+, citing as reasons for the drop the college’s high debt burden and low available resources. BBB is the lowest score for which a bond would be considered investment grade, according to S& P.
Jackson abandoned that job search after hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni surrounded the walkway leading to the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in late March 2016 to protest before Jackson’s annual Spring Town
Meeting. Students were initially denied permission to organize the protest but found a way around that, thanks to Bill Puka, a tenured facultymember in the college’s Cognitive Science Department whose areas of teaching and research include moral- political philosophy and democracy and anarchism and who agreed to hold a “teach- in” at the same time and location as the planned protest.
In abandoning her plan to create the executive director of student activities position, Jackson pledged to work to improve communication between the administration and students, but also said she would consult with trustees to weigh in on control of the student union. Opponents claim, however, that at the beginning of the next school year, the college added authority over the union to a newly created position that would also include oversight over student government, student rights and judicial affairs. The assistant vice president and dean of students position was posted on the website of William Spelman Executive Search, and its description included all of the job responsibilities included in
the spring when the college proposed creating the executive director of student activities.
College officials called the concerns “misinformation,” though they offered in rebuttal only that the position held a different title. The union director’s position, meanwhile, remains open.
Students have received strong support from college alumni, as well, who also claim Jackson’s autonomous administration has led to many of them no longer donating to the college. A group of concerned alumni, calling themselves Renew Rensselaer, say the effort to take away student control of the union flies in the face of the college’s history.
In An Open Letter to the Rensselaer Community, former president of the union Bill Criss, a 1968
and 1969 RPI graduate, said the college was one he remembered as embracing student dissent during the turbulent late 1960s.
“There is no reason why any member of RPI’s administration should manifest such an egotistical imperative to control the Student Union,” Criss wrote. “{ RPI’s Student Union has, for many years, continued its overwhelmingly successful tradition of positive leadership and accomplishments by students, truly unique to institutions of higher learning. Trying to diminish the Union’s historical and rightful role by offering legal wrangling about bylaws and constitutions is counterproductive, foolish and damaging to one of the most valuable pillars of Rensselaer’s tradition. The Student Union is not what needs reining in on RPI’s campus.”