Recent changes to the FAC program have called into question how much authority members of the FAC Board really have.
The co-chairs of the First-Year Student Advisory Counselor Board, engineering senior Dan Weinstein and Trinity senior Julie Ritter, announced at an April 23 meeting of board members and new FACs that next fall's FAC groups would shift from the traditional single-sex makeup to include both men and women.
The change would be put into effect in order to facilitate the new "adopt-a-quad" program, which pairs freshman dorms with upperclass quads, Ritter said. Weinstein could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The FAC program pairs a group of five to 10 freshmen with an upperclass adviser who helps the new students make the adjustment to life at the University. For the past several years, FACs have been paired with freshmen of the opposite sex. There are about 300 FACs and 35 FAC Board members in the program.
The April meeting was the first time that most members of the FAC Board had ever heard of the idea.
"There was never any discussion or opportunity for discussion of this idea with board members before the meeting," said Trinity junior Bill Bermont, a board member. "I was very much insulted."
Trinity senior Josh Lutzker, another board member, said, "We were frustrated because of what our expectations were of our power as FAC Board members."
Discussion about making the shift to coed groups began during the first week in April, Ritter said. "There had been a number of similar discussions in the past, but nothing was seriously considered until this spring," she said.
Among those involved in the decision-making process were Ritter, Weinstein, Linda Studer-Ellis, assistant dean of university life and adviser to the FAC program, and Marta Perez, assistant dean of student development and immediate-past adviser to the program.
After the group developed a pilot plan for the new FAC system, Ritter sent an electronic mail message detailing the plan to Weinstein and the rest of the board the week of the meeting. Other board members never received the message, she said.
"We believed that everyone had received [the message] and that everyone was in accord since we got no feedback," Ritter said. "It was a surprise to us at the meeting that they didn't know about [the plan]. We weren't prepared for that kind of negative reaction," she said.
Studer-Ellis said that the conflict stemmed from the fact that the board has not been involved in making such decisions in the past. "There needs to be an agreement on what the role of the board actually is," she said. "In the end, this was a healthy thing for the board to deal with because it brought up that issue."
Studer-Ellis said that the board used to be an advisory committee to the Office of Student Development, and that students need to understand the history of the board.
"Anytime there has been a major change in the program there has been an uproar," she said. "Students know only what they experience and don't have a sense of history."
In addition to feeling uninformed, many board members said they were not in favor of the shift to coed. "The board members are in support of the adopt-a-quad program," Lutzker said. "However, after having ample time to think about it, we were still against having coed FAC groups. If the program goes coed, the cohesiveness of the FAC groups would be eroded and that is the vitality of our program," he said.
Trinity junior and FAC Takcus Nesbit also said he disapproved of the change. "This is simply a bad idea," Nesbit said. "The FAC program has worked well in the past. If the goal is to get males and females to interact, they should pair male and female FACs together as they have done in the past."
Bermont said that the change may have also been made in an attempt to prevent the temptation for FACs to become romantically involved with their FAClets, but he said that it would certainly not eliminate that problem.
Perez said she did not understand the negative reaction of the new counselors. "I would question their motives for becoming FACs if they are so concerned with the gender of their FAClets," she said.
Ritter said that a compromise plan for the program is now being worked out. The program's organizers may test the coed policy with one or two freshman dorms rather than with the entire program.
She said that discussion of the compromise will include input from other members of the FAC board, but centers around herself, Weinstein, Studer-Ellis and Perez.
Along with a compromise in the changes to the coed portion of the program, Ritter said that new possibilities for the decision-making structure of the board were being discussed. "We may develop a system where delegates from each class would sit on some sort of executive board," she said. No plans for the changes have been finalized.
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