Carleton’s Board of Governors (BoG) is holding their first meeting of the year at the National Arts Centre (NAC). This is just one more blow to the board’s level of accessibility to students, for whom the board is making decisions.
Previously offering only live broadcasts as a means to view the meetings since the tuition rally last winter, students have been muted from the talks that decide what our tuition money is used for on campus. The livestreams were only a token offering: they’re unreliable, sometimes shut off, and only show one angle of the room, so it is often impossible to tell who is talking.
The upcoming meeting is advertised as open, but nobody is allowed entrance without making prior arrangement with Carleton president, Roseann Runte’s secretary, and even that option isn’t publicized.
Moving the meetings to the NAC adds insult to injury. Not even a livestream of the meeting will be available, and even if a student underwent the process of being permitted into the meeting, it is far off campus and being held on a Tuesday, making it unlikely that students could budget the time to be there.
The BoG is starting the year in a way that makes their decision-making process inaccessible, and shutting out the students who are affected by the decisions made in the meetings.
The inaccessibility of these meetings shows a shift away from openness and democracy—a troubling change for the highest decision-making body on campus.
