Letters

There was a Student lead meeting to discuss problems within the school.
This letter is as a response to student concerns bought to the executives by Colin.

"Hey Everyone,

I met Seona Reid, Allan Walker and Sarah Clark yesterday evening to talk about their response to the letter I sent. I have tried my best to outline the main issues we talked about, sorry if this seems a bit like a list...

They observed that the issues raised in my letter relate mostly to students in the School of Fine Art, while this is not exclusively the case, it is true that the concerns mentioned in the letter have for the most part been raised by students of the SoFA. It is certainly true that the resources available to Fine Art have been compromised to a far greater extent than resources available to the other schools.

This being the case, Seona and Allan asked why these issues had not been raised at the SoFA student/staff consultative committees and Board of Studies. I told them that they had been, but that these meetings are used predominantly to discuss academic issues, and I guess don't seem like the most natural forum for discussing the central financing of the departments, or the school as a whole. I also pointed out that these meetings took place much earlier in the term, when there were still a number of options being explored relating to (for example) staffing of the technical workshops in the Haldane Building. It seems to me that the concerns we have raised have been exacerbated by the amount of time that has elapsed since they were first raised, combined with a growing feeling that the directorate has not made suffiecient effort to address these concerns.

I also talked about the commonly held perception within the student body that the school's executive group and directorate are faceless and insufficiently accountable to students, that it consists of members of staff who have little or no contact with students or departmental staff, and that this lack of familiarity with the individual members of the executive leads students to question whether these members of staff can possibly act with their best interests at heart.

Seona and Allan seemed to concede that it is problematic for the heads of school to have so little contact with the student body, and that it is hardly surprising that students question the actions of the executive group when the are so unfamiliar with its members.

I proposed a kind of compromised proposal, where I suggested that a meeting is arranged between student representatives and Klaus Jung (both as Head of SoFa and a representative of the executive group) so that students have an opportunity to ask him about the financing of the SoFA, but also so he can answer questions about the central financing of the school as a whole.

I have not had the chance to ask Klaus about this, but I see no reason why my suggestion would be declined, as he met with students of Fine Art Photography earlier this term to discuss some issus that they were concerned about, and he has agreed in principle to meet with students of SEA. I will talk to him about it at the start of next week, and try to arrange a meeting as early in term 2 as possible.

I hope this seems reasonable,

let me know what you think.

kind regards,

Colin"

Students arranged to meet the head of fine art Klaus Jung to discuss more specific problems within there courses.