Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Editor’s word: Dec. 2, 2009

Many around campus these days have seemed cynical and down, which is no way to start off the holidays. Why are the students of Suffolk so depressed and snarky? Well, mostly it’s because of the combination of a boring, wordy, and silly defense of President Sargent’s salary by Provost Barry Brown last month and the critical and slightly mean articles about Suffolk that have recently run in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald.

SGA is seeking to rectify these situations and clarify what exactly is going on. Next week, an open SGA forum will be held in the C. Walsh Theatre. Vice Presidents Nucci and Flannery have already agreed to come, as well as Provost Brown. However, the SGA is still unsure about whether Vice President Nancy Stoll and President David Sargent will show.

While having Nucci, Flannery and Brown come to answer students’ questions and hear their complaints is a step in the right direction, President Sargent and VP Stoll, who are the two people students on this campus are most familiar with, need to be present.

Without Sargent and Stoll, this whole exercise by the SGA will likely make little difference. Sargent needs to address the student population in person to ease the collective pain of knowing that his 2007 salary amounts to the tuitions of 103 undergraduates at this university and speak to us directly about how he feels, how the money is being spent, and why it’s justified in the first place.

After a number of invitations and phone calls to President Sargent’s office, both SGA President Brian LeFort and Vice President Nick DiZoglio have said that they’re “hopeful” that President Sargent will agree to appear at the forum.

If he doesn’t, sadly, it will show a lack of respect for the voices of the students at this university, which will undoubtedly make this PR nightmare that Suffolk’s in the middle of even worse.

What it comes down to now, as this issue of the Journal is going to print, is that President Sargent hasn’t said that he won’t attend the forum, but he hasn’t agreed to either. And he needs to.

President Sargent needs to face the students and let us know that even though Provost Brown apparently speaks for him now, he still cares about us.

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Editor’s word: Dec. 2, 2009