The Campus Climate Subcommittee of the Campus Culture Task force, in its initial recommendations to Chancellor James Oblinger, proposed that Oblinger “establish and appoint an administrative advisory committee on University Values and Ethics,” according to a release from the task force.
The task force has designed the proposed committee to improve the campus atmosphere by doing several things, according to Jose Picart, the vice provost for Diversity and Inclusion.
“One of the things this means is that there [will be] a University values and ethics committee. that committee would be charged with looking at [improving campus culture,]” Picart said.
One of the most important points of these recommendations is having some sort of creed or code of values which the committee will determine, Picart said.
“I would like to identify a set of University goals and values to work toward. Having this University committee established is very important,” Picart said.
Student Body President Jay Dawkins said this would not be the first university with this kind of code of values.
“There’s a lot of schools that have something like that,” Dawkins, a junior in civil engineering, said. “It’s [designed to] look closely what we believe as a Wolfpack community.”
While this is an important step, all of the recommendations the task force put together is what will make a difference, Dawkins said.
“There’s not really one thing that is a silver bullet,” he said. “The general goal is to creat positive, meaningful and collective change … look at all the factors and do what is right.”
Even though the task force has made its suggestions, Picart wanted to emphasize that the recommendations are preliminary.
“We want campus comments and feedback,” Picart said.
The University will accept comments in several ways. Dawkins said this topic would be brought up at the next monthly Student Government town hall forum. Picart said he would accept comments from any student personally. But perhaps most effective will be an online feedback system, according to Picart.
“The chancellor is going to announce that the report is on the Web. People can submit recommendations to the committee chair. People can type in their comments and hit submit [on that Web site,]” Picart said.
Some students said they feel that although the University is asking for student input, the comments won’t hold very much weight.
“There’s definitely a PR aspect to it. People at my hometown in Winston Salem were asking me about [the Free Expression Tunnel], saying it had been on the news,” Tyler Carter, a freshman in First Year College, said. “Student feedback will affect [the decisions] but not completely.”
However, Picart assured that feedback will be important to the task force as it formulates its final recommendations.
“We’re going to brief these recommendations to a number of forums to get feedback. Based on the feedback, the groups will modify and add or delete things,” Picart said.
