1963 letter from Robert Highsmith to Earle T. Hawkins

April 29, 1963 Dear President Hawkins: For months, I have given extenside consideration to the structure, mumber, and arrangement of standing committees at teh college, and have grown increasingly concerned over the lack of student representation on the Administrative Council. In response to your suggestion that a formal request be made, I hereby request that at least one, and hopefully more students will be permitted membership on the Administrative Council. Recognizing the magnitude of this request, there are several major reasons why I feel that student membership to the Administrative COuncil is vital to the ultimate welfare of the college community. The Administrative Council is the highest non-curricular policy making body at the college, making decisions of far reaching consequences in which the students very often have a major interest; (witness the snack-machine removal). Deprived of the right to have a say in these decisions is legally permissible at the college, but democratically improper, I feel. Moreover, the student body represents a significant third of the triad which composes a college community, and it commands a numerical majority.It is unfair to impose upon or pass rules and regulations which affect such a group without its having even had the right to participate in the making of those rules. Membership of at least one student member would provide for this participation to a degree considerably greater than is now possible. In addition, students very often contribute suggestions and idea which more than justify their membership; and if a vocal representative is to a committee's best advantage, then student representation would at the least provide that, if my past experiences with students on other committees is any indication of what can be expected from their membership. It should be added that since the Administrative Council is composed, for the most part, of faculty and administrative executives, the conspicuous omission of at least one student administrator has little justification on an "Administrative Council". And, if the previous logic is somewhat stretched, there should be students on the Administrative Council under the same rationale as there is faculty representation, whatever that is, in answer to anyone who should feel that students have no business serving on such a Council. The most conspicuous disadvantage to permitting student membership on the Administrative Council, it has been suggested, is the threat which this representation poses to the confidential nature of discussions, so necessary in the Administrative Council. This thread is made most hazardous because student-representation must involve turnover which exceeds that of administrative of faculy members. On the first point, however, no one can say that students as a group treat confidence any less discreetly than faculty or administrators, if warned of the importance thereof. Moreover, the considerable turnover ads in fresh new thinking what is taken away in continuity. Therefore, students need not be regared as any more a thread to the prerequisite security of the