Written By: Maya Schubert and Ryan Schwach
Students in the Undergraduate Student Government voted unanimously on Tuesday in a call for student representation on the college’s Reentry Review Board (RRB).
The RRB, formed last year by President Michelle Anderson, is in place to plan and facilitate Brooklyn College’s eventual return to in-person learning and activities. The RRB has already released a full plan for students’ re-entry to campus, which many hope will be in the fall semester.
Recently, the RRB, which was mostly composed of school administrators, added additional faculty representatives from the Professional Staff Congress and the faculty council. Members of the USG say that students should be included in future decisions.
“It seems like students will be the body most impacted by the decisions by the board,” said USG Chief of Staff and President-Elect Aharon Grama, who introduced the legislation to USG Tuesday with Senator Yisroel Shulman. “I would like a student representative on it, I think it’s important,” Grama told the Vanguard. “I think we should have a student voice.”
USG reps at the General Senate meeting discussed how many student representatives they thought they should ask for on the RRB, but agreed that it was something students should be included in.
“I think it’s something that USG really needs to be highly involved in. It’s a matter that really concerns the students,” said USG Senator Dapo Ibrahim.
A student rep on the RRB would allow students to have a more direct line to the college’s policies on reopening.
Grama commends the job done so far by the RRB, and applauds their reentry plan, but thinks a student voice will benefit decisions, and that the plan should be updated to include what we know now of the virus and the rollout of vaccinations.
USG will now bring the idea to the administration, who are open to the idea. “While no one from the USG has reached out at this time to the administration,the college is exploring possibilities for how to create student representation on the Reentry Review Board,” BC’s Media Relations Manager Rich Pietras told the Vanguard. Just last week in her fourth letter to students on reentry where she also asked students to reach out with concerns about reentry, and announced the other new members of the RRB, said she was hoping to add a student on top of that.
“We look forward to adding a student representative as well,” she wrote.