Board Chair Meeting

Present: Mark Epstein, Francois de Menil, Lawrence Cacciatore, Casey Gollan (Art Student Council), Rachel Appel (Art Student Council), Che Perez (Architecture Student Council), Teddy (Architecture student), Kristof Toth (Engineering Student Council), Nick Breeser (Engineering Student Council), ??? (Student in School of Engineering)

• Lawrence mentions that a few of the students here gave tours to our three new trustees, and that went well. This is a new initiative, we used to just schedule a lunch.
• Rachel asks if there is a structure for bringing on new trustees?
• Francois says there is no formula.
• Mark says about half of the board are alumni (which is apparently a low percentage in relation to other schools?) and most have a connection to Cooper. They are brought on by word of mouth or friends of friends.
• Casey says it would be good have more opportunities like this to get to know the trustees and show them what’s going on around the school.
• Mark says trustees are very busy and can only devote so much time to a volunteer position, but they’d probably be happy to have more opportunities to interact.
• Rachel asks if we can invite them to student art openings held every Tuesday.
• Kristof mentions engineers have senior project presentations.
• Mark says he likes to walk around labs and studios and see work in progress.
• Lawrence suggests students draft a short letter to trustees inviting them to come around, and he will forward it.
• Che introduces revenue generating proposals by architecture students which will be included with their faculty has voted to include at the bottom of their plans to the board.
• Teddy discusses his proposal: a framework for students to do internships and donate their stipends to the school, with the hope that it brings in student generated revenue, creates connections with local companies, and brings in matching donations from those companies.
• Mark likes the idea and points out the similarity to Berea which requires students to work a certain amount of hours a week on campus.
• Casey says that internships, especially within the arts and culture fields, systematically exploit students and recent grads by offering them what is essential a sub-entry-level job without pay. Poor students can’t afford to do unpaid internships, Cooper’s current program makes it possible to get this professional experience by subsidizing a number of unpaid internships.
• Teddy shows how the plan addresses some of these points.
• Che presents his proposal: grant oriented credit giving classes. Students propose a project and learn from faculty how to write a grant that covers its costs and also contributes to Cooper’s overhead and resources provided.
• Mark says there is a lot of grant money out there but getting it is competitive. He thinks it would be useful in showing students how hard it is to get money for this place, that it doesn’t just pour in.
• Casey says the proposals are interesting and could provide useful skills, but also veer towards professionalization which is a very different thing from the classroom teaching Cooper creates a space for as an end unto itself.
• Che also voices that we need to be careful about the balance and interaction between programs that are rooted in beaux-arts or liberal arts versus those which are more polytechnic or vocational.
• Che presents Karim’s plan for a two-year furlough in which the college shuts down and reopens, ostensibly having saved or made money.
• Mark says this is the weakest plan and has lots of logistical problems. A pause would definitely be longer than two years and maybe indefinite. Nobody’s looking to shut down a school or schools but they’ve looked at it and it’s on the table.
• Che says the point is that students would support such a thing.
• Casey disagrees.
• Casey gives everyone fliers for Monday’s Summit on Debt and Education and invites them to come check out the day’s events.
• Nick asks about how timelines have shifted in relation to Hurricane Sandy, specifically with faculty voting on plans.
• Mark clarifies dates and says they are waiting for faculty to vote on their own plans.
• Rachel clarifies that art faculty has not voted on plans yet and asks if faculty will be required to present plans they haven’t had a chance to vote on?
• Lawrence says he can’t comment on union issues but contracts stipulate that motions to vote on have to circulate for two weeks, and we haven’t been given the luxury of time. Eventually we want to have a community event to share what’s in these plans, there is very exciting stuff going on at the graduate level.
• Kristof asks, how important to the board it is that the faculty votes?
• Mark says it is not important to the board, it is important to the school.
• Kristof asks for more clarification about if voting in relation to union issues.
• Mark says this is not about deunionizing.
• Rachel says that attempts to undo unions are part of the administration’s history.
• Mark asks, again, where does this distrust come from? Like when you become a trustee you cross over to the dark side.
• Rachel says it’s not emotional it’s business.
• Mark says if they just decided to charge tuition there would’ve been uproar and nobody would come here.
• Lawrence says this is why they made a process. (The “Reinvention”.)
• Casey says that something a process within a private institution controlled by a Board of Trustees isn’t really democratic. The board and administration seem to set up votes where it is convenient to support their existing strategy. If professors are being asked to vote on revenue generating programs, why can’t we vote on everything? For example, putting a student onto the board? Some faculty have voiced that they feel threatened by the administration that they will lose their jobs if they do not participate in Hybrid model planning. The process actually burdens and silences these people.
• Mark says closing the schools is on the table but it is not a “threat”.
• Francois agrees that it’s just because we’d have no money.
• Lawrence says that he appreciates concern for faculty but this is not a discussion to be having with this group.
• Mark says he was surprised to hear a faculty member tell him that the schools are being pitted against each other by this process, and that unintended consequences like this are frustrating because the board’s goals are altruistic. Legitimate disagreement with the plan is fair but he says it’s not productive when faculty say things like “I’m never teaching here again”.
• Casey suggests that the the board and administration acknowledge and address that the process has in practice silenced certain groups due to complicated politics.
• Lawrence says that Casey shouldn’t frame this like a battle. This administration is very open and anyone can make an appointment to talk to the president.
• Casey says it’s not that easy. Just because a channel of communication exists doesn’t mean it’s safe or effective for an untenured faculty member to walk into the president’s office and tell them they disagree.
• Mark says he will listen to anyone’s ideas, and that good ideas can come from anywhere.
• Che reads from the charter about a yet to be realized structure called the “Associates of Cooper Union”.
• Mark says he is unfamiliar with this and it sounds interesting, and maybe the Alumni Association is something like it, or the President’s Council, which is currently not very active.
• Casey says that it’s frustrating to have to scour old documents for angles in which we can have representation. Why do all decisions lie with the Board of Trustees?
• Casey says that we need better accountability, transparency, and decision-making structures because the board has said they’ve been aware of financial problems since the 1970’s but people here didn’t realize this was a problem or have a way to contribute to the strategy, let alone disagree with the strategies that have landed us here.
• Mark says he actually came to Cooper as a student in 1971. If he was on the board 20 years ago he would’ve disagreed with the selling of assets over the past decades. The only way to prevent this situation would’ve been to start charging tuition 10 years ago.
• Teddy asks about a program of recurring or structured alumni donations.
• Mark says he’s mentioned it to Derek Wittner, VP of Development. Acknowledges concerns about how it might feel like repaying one’s debt or loan, and how small donations might make big donations less frequent.
• Casey asks Mark to return to his comment on charging tuition 10 years ago as a solution. How could that be a possibility if it goes against the school’s mission?
• Mark says you have the amend your mission when you can’t afford it. He disagrees with people who want to say the college shouldn’t be a business, at the end of the day there are bills to pay.
• Lawrence says we are beyond having this discussion and that the conversation is going in circles.
• Nick says that, acknowledging the differences between artists, architects, and engineers, the engineering students ran a survey that shows a majority of them support charging tuition over closure. He wants to be able to answer people who ask him if the school will close, is it possible that as a freshman he will not be able to graduate from Cooper Union?
• Mark says the timeline for closure if we don’t do anything is very hypothetically three years, so freshmen would probably have to transfer, but that’s not going to happen. He mentions accessing the endowment’s restricted funds.
• Rachel asks about the progress of negotiations to access restricted funds.
• Mark says there is nothing to announce yet.
• Lawrence goes through some of the details and says he can talk more about it later.
• Kristof says that the engineering student body trusts and supports their faculty’s work on the Hybrid plans and had a study-in to show support.
• Lawrence says this was a very beautiful gesture.
• As the meeting goes on a little past it’s scheduled ending, Casey says he’d pose a question to hear Nick about why we should keep the school open if we discontinue its scholarships, citing Cooper’s founding mission of “Free Education To All” and school press materials from the capital campaign to build the New Academic Building calling tuition-free education the school’s “bedrock mission”.
• Francois says it is not the school’s history, as Jamshed’s research has shown, and it isn’t the bedrock mission.
• Mark says Cooper’s scholarships are overly generous. We cannot afford to be paying for people who can otherwise pay.
• Casey cites Sangu’s counter-narrative and says that you can use history to justify anything, but we should be looking at Cooper Union in the context of higher education in America today, which is an industry that has dumped a trillion dollars of debt onto students heads. Instead of asking questions about revenue generation, we should be asking if it makes sense to run an institution that burdens students in such a way.
• Mark says these are good questions, and the kind of thing that is discussed at the Council of Board Chairs meetings at which he represents Cooper. He was in Washington for this a few weeks ago for.
• Meeting is adjourned.