Amanda Crouse
News Editor
At 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 3 in the Alley, the Scot Council Executive Board hosted its Missions and Outcomes Event, a semi-biannual open meeting with members of the board of trustees in which Wooster students can share administrative ideas for the future and raise concerns about issues related to the College. This semester, the meeting was a hybrid event, with most trustees calling in via Zoom to view the presentations.
Ann Wilson, vice chair of the Missions and Outcomes sub-committee of the board of trustees, welcomed her fellow board members and reminded attendees of the board’s role in creating administrative change.
“We all have this joint concern, this joint love of this campus and to make sure that we can support everything that’s going on to the best of our abilities … we are here to listen to your concerns and then to communicate with the administration,” Wilson said, before handing the microphone to the first pair of student presenters.
Sohail Zulfiqar ’29 and Elliot Mainwaring ’29 presented on the topic of transparency in administration. To give an example of uncommunicated changes to campus life, Mainwaring cited an experience from a student who told him that they had called Campus Security during an emergency, and received a response from an AI chatbot. The student was surprised because there had been no campus-wide announcement about the change in Campus Security’s dispatch practices. Mainwaring and Zulfiqar said that in the future there should be more of a commitment among the College’s offices to keeping students informed about changes that affect them.
“We should not be knowing what’s going on because some student had that experience, but rather a direct communication from Campus Security saying, ‘Hey, we’re changing our system. We’d like you to know,’” said Mainwaring.
The pair proposed a Student Governance Transparency Committee as a way of establishing a more reliable line of communication between administration and students. The committee would have five to ten seats occupied by Scot Council members and general students, who would serve as observers during decision-making meetings, receive updates from the College’s offices and relay information to the student body.
“When the process is visible and participation is real,” Zulfiqar said, “Rumors are replaced with facts, trustations with engagement and suspicions with trust.”
The two students emphasized that members of the committee would ideally be trained in ethical practices including confidentiality, and would hold weekly office hours for one-on-one meetings with students who want to learn more about specific campus decisions.
Next, Brayden Shildmeyer ’28 and Bat Enerelt ’26 addressed the board about carbon neutrality. While nearby Ohio colleges like Oberlin and Kenyon have declared a commitment to reaching carbon neutrality, Wooster has yet to follow that trend.
“We’ve been looking at this for a year. And it is a thing that colleges are considering to attract more prospective students,” Shildmeyer said, adding that the support of the board of trustees could help the initiative become more viable in the eyes of President McCall and the rest of the administration.
“But right now,” Shildmeyer said in closing, “it’s the time, it’s the present time, that we have to think about our future, our intergenerational admission, our future college graduates, and then that gives us more opportunity to explore more risk management.”
The final speaker of the event was Salem Amato ’27, who presented a critique of student accessibility and the current state of the College’s mental health, physical wellness and academic accommodation infrastructures.
While Amato spoke, a slideshow behind them displayed anonymous quotes from students sharing their negative experiences with the College’s resources. Several of the testimonies expressed frustration with the process of receiving accommodations, which often requires students to get re-tested for certain conditions. Others said that campus resources were difficult to access or navigate, and that they felt discouraged from seeking help.
“When colleges talk about belonging, accessibility has to be a part of that conversation,” Amato said. “Because without access, belonging is just another empty room. You can’t belong in a space you can’t use. You can’t belong in systems that exhaust you just to participate.”
Amato argued that efforts to increase accessibility for students –– such as simplifying the accommodation application process or approving more requests for medical single rooms in dorms –– is not as expensive as administrators might fear.
“Retention isn’t just an academic issue. It’s a financial one. And it’s one that boils back to accessibility,” Amato said, explaining that student performance and involvement would be more likely to improve if more students felt comfortable and seen as members of the campus community. They added that the expectation is not a perfect system, but one that prioritizes clear communication, provides faculty and staff with disability and ADA training and reduces the bureaucratic steps required of students to get the help they need.
“A mission only matters if students can feel it in their daily lives,” Amato said in closing. “Belonging can’t just be inspirational language. It has to be operational reality.”
Past Missions and Outcomes meetings have ended with a period for guided discussion between students and board members. Since most of the trustees attended virtually this semester, that time was used to let students in the audience answer a series of questions intended to reflect on the themes of the presentations and share their thoughts with the board.
