“I want to say that our goal for the town hall is to have a dialogue,” said President Sharon Hahs as she greeted students, faculty and staff on April 12. “It’s supposed to be informal. You’re supposed to be able to ask any question you want, as long as it’s polite, respectful and so forth.”
The first person to address Hahs was Brian Dix, a political science major at NEIU. He questioned her on the change in activity hour, whether there has been any empirical research done to see if the change will affect student involvement in co-curricular activities.
Hahs brought up national data that says that student retention is tied to student involvement, as students who are invested are more likely to continue their education at that school.
Regarding any research done specifically at NEIU, Hahs said there is none that she knows of. The change in activity hour is currently being done as a two-year pilot that will be reexamined by conducting a survey once it ends to see if it was a good change.
Dix then wanted to know if there was any research done prior to the pilot to see if it would affect students. Hahs said that there was not, other than the SGA survey that asked students if they would like the change. She acknowledged that the majority of people said no, but that there were not enough votes to conclude that it was in the entire school’s favor.
“The question was do you want the activity hour to change and lots of folks said no,” said Hahs. “But of those that answered, and I don’t recall exactly, but there were roughly 500 to 1,000 answers in the survey…that is only 1,000 out of 11,000 plus students, so we [would] have majored an opinion on a single question on behalf of a small fraction of our students.”
Hahs then said that changing activity hour allows for more classes which will help NEIU’s graduation rate. While co-curricular activities are important to her, she said that the academic base is more important. Following Dix, James McHale Jr. of SGA also questioned Hahs regarding the change in activity hour. He felt that the administration went behind SGA by changing activity hour, as the SGA voted against the change.
“I’ve been kind of appalled at the reaction of the administration to the student government at a lot of the things that we send through,” said a noticeably upset McHale. “And it seems like a lot of time, and I know this is a discussion we have quite often, is that it seems like a lot of the time…we’re not being taken seriously.”
Hahs apologized to McHale and then explained the process by which the change came to be, and her belief that it was a simple lack of miscommunication that occurred when Provost Lawrence Frank asked them about their feelings toward the change.
McHale then talked about the SGA’s survey. He said that of the 11,000 students at NEIU, the 1,000 that took the survey are the ones being affected, and that the 10,000 who chose not to participate do not care.
“We can’t make somebody fill out a survey,” said McHale. “If it doesn’t affect them then they don’t care. It’s the ones that actually want to do well and want to be part of other clubs and don’t want that to be messed up.”
Hahs responded by saying that those 10,000 students may not have responded with the SGA’s survey, but that they have in various other ways, including other surveys which said that more classes were more important for graduation
McHale then wanted to know why online classes were not offered if graduating faster is an important goal. Hahs addressed his response by saying that online classes are difficult as it is hard to decide what classes could adequately be done online, but that there are hybrid classes offered that bridge the gap.
Another student, Santino Carbonaro, asked Hahs about parking permits and the possibility of buying them for two semesters, instead of one.
Vice President Mark Wilcockson answered, saying that parking permits are based on credit hours, not terms. Since students do not necessarily take the same amount of credit hours each semester, it’s necessary that they be bought per semester, rather than per year.
The meeting ended about twenty minutes early after eight people addressed their concerns and questions with President Hahs. The next town hall meeting will be held next semester.