Big policy changes are coming to Carleton, with university president Benoit-Antoine Bacon and his team opening up public consultations on four big issues: sexual violence, accessibility, campus Indigenization, and free speech.
It’s important for members of the Carleton community to give their input on how campus administration navigates their way around these issues.
But, while it’s a good step to ask the public for feedback on such crucial issues that affect the Carleton community, administration should have better planned the timing of bringing these consultation requests to the public eye.
Before even being able to give feedback to administration, Carleton community members need to have a thorough understanding of the issues these policies would tackle.
It takes time to get better informed of the context of complex issues like sexual violence, accessibility, Indigenous reconciliation, and free speech.
Opening these consultations to the public all at the same time makes the task of providing feedback more difficult.
With the time it takes to get informed, the public just might be overwhelmed with the depth of these issues and not take the time to properly get informed and give their take on them.
While some policy consultations needed to happen now, such as the Jan. 1 deadline on the free speech policy, some of them could have been spaced out better so students can take the time to give informed feedback.
It’s good that this year’s administration is ambitious about revitalizing campus policy on significant issues—but, moving forward, timing these consultations more effectively would guarantee the best possible input from the community.
