Following the passage of a Student Senate resolution calling for shared governance between students, faculty, staff and administration, members of Student Government will meet Friday to discuss how that might best be implemented.
At the heart of the issue is the lack of student involvement in decisions made at the highest levels of the university, chiefly by the Board of Visitors, the Executive Council and the President’s Council.
The BOV has two student members, though they cannot vote, while the latter two groups have no student input.
“When you don’t have any decision-making power, you get completely ignored, and that’s what this is all about,” said Jason Von Kundra, one of the student senators who submitted the resolution at the March 1 Student Senate meeting. “Ultimately, where all of us see this going is greater student power and students having decision-making power on the issues that affect us most. What those decisions are and how much decision-making power we would get is to be determined.”
The meeting, which begins 1 p.m. Friday in the Student Senate office on the second floor of Student Union Building II (The HUB), is open to anyone who wishes to attend.
The meeting is the first of many a task force that will research the issue and offer suggestions on how to best implement shared governance.
Faculty Senate and Staff Senate will be invited to collaborate with the task force, according to the March 1 resolution.
“I think [shared governance] comes down to the decisions that impact us most,” Von Kundra said. “For students, that’s housing, dining and tuition, but it can go further.”
According to the resolution, 19 out of 20 peer institutions officially recognized by George Mason University, have “significantly more student power than George Mason.”
Many of these schools have students with votes on their governing bodies. For example, Arizona State University at Tempe has one voting student on the Board of Regents and SUNY at Albany has one voting student among 10 councilors who govern the university.
“The three main structures of student involvement in decision making are 1) voting students on governing board 2) voting students on influential administrative committees 3) University Councils/Senates made up of student, faculty and staff governing bodies are given influential power over governing the university,” according to a document released by Student Government outlining research on shared governance at other institutions.
According to the resolution, there are opportunities to change the current power structure at Mason: “Whereas, additional opportunities exist to create new entities of governance such as a University Council comprised of members from the Student Senate, Faculty Senate, and Staff Senate but these opportunities have remained undeveloped.”
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