The Brandeis administration hosts monthly faculty meetings in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall, where faculty discuss and vote on various changes to the University. Recently, these changes have included the addition of undergraduate majors and minors as well as changes to the Core curriculum. Additionally, they are a forum for understanding and discussing aspects of running a university that are not as apparent to many students such as marketing, university legislation and available resources for faculty members to revise their curricula. In short, they are one of the integral elements of how major changes are made to the University. 

You may have read about some of the discussions and decisions made at these meetings in a Justice article before, including recent discussions about proposed changes to the language requirement or new slogan ideas. Even though these discussions and votes can be the catalyst for major changes to student life at Brandeis, students are not welcome to share their thoughts or even listen in on these meetings. In fact, students are strictly prohibited from attending faculty meetings save for one member from each student newspaper, a representative of the Student Union and a member of the student radio, according to the most recent version of the  Faculty Handbook.. This specification gives the student body extremely limited means of hearing about upcoming changes to the University, especially considering that several of the aforementioned student representatives do not attend meetings because they are unaware that they are permitted to do so. The content of these meetings hold matters of the utmost importance to students — the administration should not be hiding these discussions behind closed doors. 

This editorial board acknowledges that it would not be feasible or wise to have students directly vote in these meetings. However, we strongly believe that students should have the right to sit in on these meetings in order to hear about changes to Brandeis policies that will impact their lives. While we greatly value the opportunity to share this information with the community, The Justice should not be one of the only sources of this information. Since allowing students to be physically present at these meetings is deemed inappropriate, there should be a recording of each meeting made publicly available — the meetings are recorded on Zoom but never released to students — or at the very least a summary of each meeting published by the University.

During their Feb. 13 meeting, the Brandeis faculty debated changes to the Core curriculum and discussed possibly reducing the three-semester language requirement to two semesters. The language requirement is a highly controversial issue among students, and student voices would have given the voting faculty a deeper understanding of the issue. It is important to appreciate that many faculty members spoke on behalf of the interests of their students, but this editorial board believes that the most effective way to incorporate these perspectives would be to hear from students themselves. 

Furthermore, for conversations related to marketing, such as those discussed in last week’s faculty meeting, it would benefit the University to take advantage of the student perspective. Brandeis’ undergraduate population is much closer to the age demographic the administration aims to target, and shares more cultural connection with prospective students than faculty members. Given that almost every single undergraduate has a fresh perspective of the modern-day college admissions process, it seems counterintuitive not to take advantage of their insights when making marketing decisions. Most certainly, the student perspective would help avoid questionable marketing choices like one of the selling lines proposed in last week’s faculty meeting: “One foot in the classroom, one foot in the street” which is far too vague and has several negative implications. 

This board is calling on the Brandeis administration to allow students to listen in on faculty meetings and actively seek out student voices to speak on proposed changes to academic matters. If The Justice did not  publish overviews of each faculty meeting, it would be impossible for students to know what changes are being discussed. This reads as a lack of transparency and exclusion of student perspectives. If “Truth, even unto its innermost parts” is a true value of the University, its administration should search for this truth from their students when making important institutional changes.