Last Tuesday night, the Committee on Postering, Building Use and Demonstrations met for the first time to plan for the rest of the academic year. The committee members also discussed potential campus outreach before students leave campus for the summer.

“The first meeting was very informative and congenial,” Professor of Natural Science Madeleine Msall wrote in an email to the Orient. “It was great to see, from the outset, that everyone was ready to contribute and interested in collaboration.”

The committee is just one of a number of initiatives introduced by President Safa Zaki in a March 7 email to the Bowdoin community. The goal of the committee is to review current College policy, compare the policies in place at peer institutions and gather campus perspectives to compile a list of recommendations for the College’s senior administration.

“What needs to be produced is kind of modest in a way—it’s a draft of recommended policies or principles governing use of campus common spaces (including for demonstration and protest) and campus communications channels (including posters, college channels and social media such as listserves, Campus Groups, events calendars), for senior officers to consider and decide on,” Executive Director of Career Exploration and Development Kristin Brennan wrote in an email to the Orient.

The committee consists of 15 members, drawing from faculty, staff and students. There are three faculty members: Msall, Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies Christopher Huerlin and Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth Pritchard.

Additionally, there are six staff members: Brennan, Website Content Manager Sophaktra Heng, Assistant Athletic Director for Facilities and Event Management Kevin Loney, Associate Director of Events and Summer Programs Mackenzie O’Connor, Associate Dean for Academic Administration Mike Ranen and Academic Department Coordinator for Biology and Neuroscience Rachel Reuling.

Finally, there are six student members: Raphael Grand’Pierre ’27, Erin Hambidge ’27, Rebeca Manzo ’27, Harper Stevenson ’27, Luke Purinton ’28 and Ephraim Tutu ’28.

Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Jim Hoppe and Senior Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon co-sponsored the committee and selected its members. Scanlon, who focused on finding the faculty and staff members, balanced the interest of potential candidates with their availability and what they would bring to the committee.

“We asked the faculty governance committee…. We also had people volunteer to do it, and we also paid attention to what other responsibilities people have. We always try to ask faculty in such a way that we’re not overburdening particular faculty,” Scanlon said. “And on the staff side, we got recommendations from the staff council. It was an array of approaches and conversations.”

According to Tutu, students being selected for the committee shows the administration’s desire to incorporate student perspectives.

“I think having students like myself on the committee allows students to know that the administration isn’t making decisions without our input, and that the administration wants to hear our input and wants us to be a part of the process 50/50,” Tutu said. “I think a lot of the time students can feel like [administration] makes decisions, and then students are really angry about it. But this time around, the school really wants there to be full transparency, and they want to partner with students in changing these policies and updating these policies.”

Following the first meeting, the co-sponsors will now take a step back. According to Scanlon, she and Hoppe will no longer attend meetings unless requested in order to increase the committee’s autonomy.

“We wanted to be there for the first meeting, just to talk with everybody, meet everybody and then we’re sort of pulling away and leaving the group to do its work,” Scanlon said. “I thought it was a productive meeting where we got a sense of each other and people’s commitments and a sense of the task ahead.”

Although the committee will consider recent incidents of free speech and demonstrations, like the Students for Justice in Palestine encampment in February, according to Tutu, the idea for the committee, and the need to review policy, was clear long before these events.

“My understanding [is], the committee was already going to be created and the school intended on reviewing the policies. The encampment situation made it more apparent that it needed to be done quickly,” Tutu said.

The committee’s next meeting is tentatively set for May 7, and the members plan to meet only a couple more times in-person before continuing their work virtually throughout the summer. While students are still on-campus, the committee hopes to start gathering perspectives from the campus community.

“We’re going to have to work hard in a very busy time to get that done,” Brennan wrote. “We’ll be reaching out to communities all over campus—we generated a big list—and having open forum time for anyone to come.”

According to Scanlon, campus outreach is one of the committee’s most important and most challenging tasks.

“There’s always going to be a tension between wanting to hear from many people and many voices and then trying to figure out how to translate all of what you hear into something that you think is workable for an entire community,” Scanlon said. “So, that’s going to be a challenge for the group, but I really feel confident that this group of people will get there.”

Rebeca Manzo ’27 and Harper Stevenson ’27 are members of the Bowdoin Orient.