Good morning, Board of Trustees

Emory’s Board of Trustees held its annual meeting this morning in the Azalea Room at the University Conference Center. Four well dressed SRC delegates managed to intercept the board members before their first session. Each Board member received a folder containing our letter to the Chairman of the Board, a fact sheet about the cuts, and less than glowing press clippings. The SRC also handed the package to President Wagner and VP Gary Hauk before departing with utmost civility.

Pat adds, “Our presence was utterly unexpected and definitely not appreciated by our glorious leaders, and will no doubt lead to some interesting moments in the Trustee meetings occurring today and tomorrow.”

Notes from Negotiations with Wagner, Forman, and Hauk 12/7

Here is the full text of the notes taken by the SRC Team during their negotiations with President James Wagner, Dean Robin Forman, and VP Gary Hauk on December 7, 2012.

You can find a PDF of the document here.

Please share widely!

Acrimony and lockdown

Emory’s official news organ and some of the news media are calling last night’s meeting a failure, or accusing students of avoiding “real dialogue.” Here’s what I saw: 7 students and 3 professors entered the dean’s building to negotiate in good faith, after a week of exhaustive planning. The SRC delegates were Pat Blanchfield, Katherine Bryant, Luke Donahue, Navyug Gill, David Mullins, Mael Vizcarra, and Andrew Zonderman. They were accompanied by Professors Jason Francisco (Visual Arts), Anna Grimshaw (ILA), and Noelle McAfee (Philosophy). As many have pointed out, the university forbade any recording, so no one will have an “authoritative” account of the conversation or even its agenda.

Outside, we put up signs, played Motown and Beatles songs, shared coffee, danced, and waved to passersby.

Inside, the delegates were greeted by police at every corner and by an administration that accused us of intimidating opponents into silence.

Negotiating over the cuts. In a show of good faith, we locked down the Admin Building and put cops at the entrances. pic.twitter.com/o90qLzZO

— FakeEmoryUniversity (@FakeEmoryU) December 7, 2012

VP Gary Hauk, Security Guard, and armed Emory PD at security checkpoint before “good faith” meeting #emorycuts twitter.com/EmoryCuts/stat…

— Emory Cuts (@EmoryCuts) December 8, 2012

The students and professors emerged from an hour of hard, fruitless negotiation to speak to the press articulately and hopefully. The president and dean would not even come out and address the public.

Photo by Evan Mah for the Wheel

I have a good idea of who should feel humiliated, and it’s not the people who “lost” in the ersatz negotiations.

Press release: Emory Protests Yield Negotiations

Written by the SRC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On Tuesday, a coalition of students, faculty, and staff staged a massive walkout on the Emory University campus and successfully occupied the University’s administrative headquarters. That group successfully compelled President James Wagner to begin negotiations to reverse the devastating cuts Dean Robin Forman announced on September 14.

Today, Friday, December 7, formal negotiations begin in earnest. At 5PM, Student Re-Visioning Committee (SRC) representatives, faculty observers, and community stakeholders will sit down with President Wagner, Dean Robin Forman, and Vice President Gary Hauk in the Candler Library building on the main campus. The SRC’s demands remain:

1. A reversal of the cuts.

2. Formal and meaningful student, faculty and staff participation on all key decision making bodies.

3. Full disclosure and investigation of all College Financial Advisory Committee proceedings.

The close attention and supportive presence of the Emory community is vital to ensuring that the administration remains candid and that negotiations proceed in good faith. Emory community members will gather outside the Candler Library on the Quad at 4:45PM to demonstrate their investment in the negotiations, which will last one hour. Any and all attendees will be transparently kept up-to-date of negotiation developments as they happen. Remember: the administration is now willing to discuss a reversal of the cuts, and has pledged to explicitly address our specific questions about governance, cut demographics, and institutional transparency. We are moving forward in good faith – but we need your attention to keep them honest.

A full statement from the SRC regarding its expectations from these meetings is reproduced below and will soon appear in the Wheel.

Follow @EmoryCuts on Twitter for breaking news and updates on the situation. For more information and background on the cuts at Emory, including an archive of links to ongoing media coverage, visit the #EmoryCuts Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/EmoryCuts) and the Stop the Cuts at Emory Blog (https://stopthecutsemory.wordpress.com/).

STATEMENT FROM THE SRC NEGOTIATING TEAM / WHEEL OP-ED