Director of the Union

Several questions revolved around the current Director of the Union search and hiring process. Jackson claimed the Union is just the same as it was five years ago. This is blatantly untrue, as student governance has been eroding for some time now. The current issue aside, this erosion includes the Student Senate no longer having the right to approve the Student Handbook, loss of control in many areas of the judicial system, student leaders no longer participating in the review of the Student Life Performance Plan, and loss of student representation on the Trustees' Finance and Student Life committees, among other things. The only way her statement could have be true is if she never considered the Union to be student-run in the first place, in which case the decades her administration referring to the Rensselaer Union as “student-run” and one of the last-remaining Unions of its kind in the nation would amount to nothing more than bold-faced lies and misrepresentations. Based on the Jackson Administration’s history of disdain for open and honest discourse, this very well may be the case.

Student Activity Fee

Before a student could finish asking a question about the Director of the Union, which he described as a position funded by students through a self-imposed tax otherwise known as the Student Activity Fee, Jackson interjected, “It’s funded by the university. Any money that is charged to matriculating students is money the university is charging them. That’s the legal thing.” She ended her interruption with “so I think it’s very important that you understand that.” What we would like Jackson and her administration to be reminded of and understand is that students first opted to charge themselves the Activity Fee in 1912 to fund the bookstore, and it was the foresight of later students in 1958 to choose raise the Activity Fee for many years, resulting in funds to cover construction costs for the Union’s current home. Regardless of the “legal thing,” the Activity Fee has historically been approved by student representatives and the funds have been allocated toward student activities based upon students’ wishes.

Hiring Process

When the same student inquired as to why students have no say over the director’s job description and no formal input in annual performance reviews, Jackson responded claiming these statements were “patently false” before quickly deflecting to Vice President for Human Resources Curtis Powell. Powell, who—after mocking the controversy with the Union and belittling informed students who had done their research into RPI's finances and arrived at the Town Hall prepared with written questions—said, “lemme answer your question directly,” and claimed that ten viable candidates were presented to students for selection, yet members of the student hiring committee present in the audience refuted this claim, stating that they only interviewed two. Furthermore, HR representatives—including Powell—have previously advertised that Dean of Students Travis Apgar and Interim Vice President for Student Life LeNorman Strong narrowed the pool of fifty candidates down to five for video interviews. Based upon these statements and the contents of the leaked student Human Resources Interview Committee memo, a more accurate portrayal would have been that forty-eight of the fifty candidates dropped out due to the administration rejecting them.

Performance Management Tool (PMT)

The PMT, an HR document used to measure the performance objectives of the director position, was also addressed as a result of this question. Powell alleged “we made the corrections” to the PMT and that the President of the Union (PU) would confirm this version of events. When asked, however, the PU replied he had met with HR regarding the PMT, but “not all of the edits that we suggested were accepted.” While Powell is correct in that some job description edits were accepted, he failed to point out that many were not, particularly changes increasing administrative control of and within the Union. Finally, Jackson and Powell completely ignored the question regarding annual performance reviews despite the fact that the Grand Marshal (GM) and PU have been integral to this process in the past. Therefore, Jackson’s reply that “those things are patently false statements” when a student inquired as to why students do not have a say in the job description and the PMT of the Director of the Union position during the Town Hall makes her a liar, as the student was completely correct. Moreover, if the phrase “approve the hiring and continuance” in the Rensselaer Union Constitution is to be anything more than ceremonious, student representatives must be active participants in the performance review process to ensure administrative staff continue to act on behalf of students and in the best interest of students’ rights.

On a side note, this is where paying careful attention to Powell’s choice of words paid off. He announced, “we have the PU in here somewhere,” knowing there was one student leader present whom he could call upon to corroborate his story despite having several members of the student Human Resources Hiring Committee present—most of whom would have gladly speak to the student perspective on this issue. Powell went on to repeat “we have the PU right there,” gesturing to the PU while giving him a look that it was time for the student to step up and confirm Powell’s account of events. At no time during the Town Hall did Powell or any member of the administration mention wondering if the GM, who is the student body president, was in the room so they could have asked him to speak to his experiences with the Director of the Union hiring process and changes (or lack thereof) to the PMT. This is worth noting as the GM has been vocal in representing the student voice, which seems to be widely in favor of a student-run Union and therefore is fundamentally at odds with Jackson and her administration, and last month he spoke out about receiving thinly-veiled threats of expulsion from several administrators in addition to recently being the victim of a series of administrative “oversights” or outright exclusions from events and meetings, at times without any explanation. To our knowledge, the PU has not experienced the same level of bullying from the administration as he has remained out of the spotlight, choosing instead to voice his support for the GM and the Student Senate and expressing that they are the governing body of the Rensselaer Union.

Executive Board Approval Vote

The only explanation that Jackson offered with regards to her stance on the Executive Board’s approval vote—which is basically that she will allow it to occur, but it’s only a pretense for student input as opposed to a meaningful action—before hiring Union staff was essentially to prevent discrimination from occurring in the hiring process. “You can have a situation where there’s a discriminatory act, where there’s something that happens, and so we can’t anticipate all the possible, uh, circumstances,” Jackson espoused in response to a question about the approval vote during the Town Hall. The presumption that students—responsible adults and citizens—would not know whether or how to comply with the law is egregious in a collegiate setting. Although Jackson has encouraged the Executive Board to hold a vote when the time comes, she is well aware that it would only be for show. This detrimental change in the importance of the approval vote alarmingly calls into question Jackson’s statement during the Town Hall and elsewhere that “nothing has changed” with regards to the Union. If nothing has truly changed, why is the Executive Board’s vote more one of endorsement of a candidate rather than approval of a candidate?

Rensselaer Union’s Status and Petition

As expected, many other questions involved the controversial issue of the Rensselaer Union, and the recent loss of its student-run status. Jackson was uncharacteristically outspoken and repetitive in her support of the Union at the end of the Town Meeting, but her inconsistent statements and opinions left us wondering, again, if she ever really considered it student-run in the first place; this coupled with her assertions that nothing has changed (the PMT and job description alterations as well as the lack of significance with the approval vote are important, tangible aspects that have visibly changed). When asked about the circulating petition in staunch support of a student-run Rensselaer Union that 5,363 students, alumni, and members of the RPI community and counting had signed to date, Jackson again dodged answering the question directly. Instead, she quipped, “Well, that reaffirms our support for the Union and the fact that the Union is very strongly part of Rensselaer,” rather than face and respond to the concerns that thousands of members of the RPI community have about the current status and future of the Union.

When responding to the petition, Jackson also added, “I think if you look today and ask how the Union runs versus how the Union ran two years ago, or five years ago, nothing has changed.” This is fallacious on its front. In just the past few years, the Union has lost a large portion of its budget and input into varsity athletic matters, approval of crucial policies in the Student Handbook, and student representation in many aspects of Institute, to name just a few. Campus administrators took these away with little or no input and often under false pretenses. The Union as an institution will have great difficulty recovering from these blows, designed to weaken students as a constituency on campus, in much the same way the faculty has been. The most disturbing change, however, can easily be viewed within the last five years, as the Director of the Union job description has morphed from a position of advisement in 2011 to one of ultimate authority and direction over the Union and its clubs, organizations, events, and activities in 2017.