The architect of the Lester H. Swanlund Administration Building- Unteed, Scaggs, Fritch, Nelson, Ltd- did an excellent job in creating a space that fits its occupants. Its Brutalist architecture and black tinted windows complement the behaviors of our institution’s elusive administrators.

An average UI undergraduate student sees the Chancellor twice in his college career: convocation and commencement. There is no meaningful interaction, only massmails that are used to maintain the University’s public relations image. As students with rising tuition and fees, however, we did pay his $350,000 base salary.

When I was college shopping during my junior year in high school, I remembered a tour guide at a pretentious east coast school exclaiming that her university’s president hosted a weekly coffee hour open to any student. Another tour guide told us that the president of her school invites graduating seniors in small groups to a dinner at his home. I do contend that these are very different schools, with populations of around 9000 students compared to our 42,000.

The average student here probably doesn’t know who the Chancellor is/was, let alone that a Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement even exists. Sure, we need to keep our surrounding community engaged and interested in order to prevent a civil war between the UI and the greater Champaign-Urbana area. But what about student engagement? Our needs and concerns need to be considered equally important as those of the donors who keep this institution afloat. As students, we should at least be treated like constituents or consumers. Why is it a prerequisite that a student who wants to voice a question or concern to a member of the administration must be savvy at navigating through a bureaucracy? Perhaps this is why the rate of student giving at the university is so low.

Students and members of student government shouldn’t have to come to the administration, the administration should come to students. What kind of place do we attend where administrators handpick student senators to serve on “campus committees”? When tough questions need to be asked both on these committees and around campus, it may be difficult after that administrator gave you the resume booster of serving on the Campus Lighting Committee or the Public Safety Advisory Committee and even a letter of recommendation for your law school application.

There is a simple fix to this solution- holding office hours or even a quarterly forum open to all students and publicized accordingly. Hey, I can see a purposeful use of the massmail system! While we’re at it, let’s actually make good use of the term that President White so often recycled during the admissions scandal. A “firewall” needs to be set up to protect ISS and the Office of the Student Trustee from administrative influence so these two units remain untainted voices for the student body.

Remember in elementary school when we once believed that our teachers lived at school? It’s funny that you never run into the Chancellor or any of the Vice Chancellors around campus- not once have I bumped into any of them while waiting in a Campustown food line. I’m starting to look back at this grade school superstition and think that our administrators must live in the Swanlund Building.

We don’t yet know who our next Chancellor is going to be and what kind of a leader they are. Let’s hope that he or she steps out of the Swanlund Building and decides to take a serious look at these issues and practices.

Max Ellithorpe, freshman in LAS