Last Thursday through Saturday, the Board of Trustees met on campus for their first scheduled meetings of the academic year. The trustees discussed the opening of Sills Hall, campus planning updates and other issues, according to an email from President Safa Zaki to the campus community yesterday.

Zaki began by highlighting efforts to increase interaction between trustees and other members of the College community. She shared that one of the Board’s standing committees, the Student Experience committee, met with students and staff in the McKeen Center for the Common Good, Bowdoin Outing Club, Community Host Program and Bowdoin Teacher Scholars.

“As many of you know, we have organized efforts over the past year to expand opportunities for trustees to interact with members of the campus community,” Zaki wrote. “They learned from students about how their experiences in the community give them the opportunity to engage with the people and places of Maine.”

The Board also continued discussing the ongoing campus planning process. Members received walkthroughs of Hubbard Hall and Hawthorne-Longfellow Library and heard about the infrastructure challenges in Moulton Union.

“The [B]oard also considered the financial implications of any such projects and the implications for the experiences of students, faculty and staff. As planned, these discussions will continue during the next board meeting in February,” Zaki wrote.

In addition, trustees on the Academic Affairs Committee met with faculty in Sills Hall.

“This meeting was part of a series of conversations the board has been having about how important campus spaces are for what we do,” Zaki wrote.

At the plenary session, attended by all trustees and several other members of the College community, the Board welcomed three new trustees: Adam Gibbons ’91, Becca Rowe ’97 and Amy Starck. Zaki also shared updates on clarifications to the College’s shared governance practices and the pilot of a new campus budget committee.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Vice President Harper Stevenson ’27 and Special Advisor Elliott Ewell ’27 attended the plenary session as BSG representatives. While Ewell had expressed during last week’s BSG meeting that they planned to raise concerns about rising tuition costs, he said they were not allotted time to speak at the plenary session and were told they could raise the issue in a committee meeting instead.

As a result, BSG Chair of the Treasury Chase Lenk ’26 spoke at the meeting of the Resources Committee. Lenk told the Orient that he expressed to the trustees that BSG hopes for increased student involvement in conversations about tuition.

“The BSG wanted to, before that conversation started, let the trustees know that we were thinking about it, and we wanted to be a part of that conversation more than we had been in the past,” Lenk said. “Because we saw that the tuition increased in the past year, percentage wise, more than inflation did.”

Lenk noted that even though Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Matt Orlando addressed several BSG members regarding the tuition increase, students were still concerned about the burden of high tuition costs.

“Even now, understanding why the tuition increased so much, our concerns are still the same about how the total cost of living has been increasing, and the burden of tuition costs are still falling on us and still increasing, even if there’s an explanation for it,” Lenk said.

In an effort to continue tuition conversations with students, Orlando also spoke at BSG’s General Assembly meeting this week.

In addition, Chair of Student Affairs Aidan Aybar ’28 spoke at the meeting of the Student Experience Committee. Aybar told the Orient that he discussed the dynamics between athletes and non-athletes on campus, as well as the hesitancy among many students to take risks. Aybar pointed to the social scene specifically, noting that while the College has essential policies to protect students, some, such as requiring event registration several days in advance, may limit spontaneity—something BSG has begun discussing with the Office of Residential Life as well.

“Most of that wasn’t really brought up with a ‘Hey, Board of Trustees here, please fix this.’ It was more of a, ‘Hey, this is an interesting topic of discussion to us,’” Aybar said. “What are the ways we can bring people together on campus? Are there ways in which we can foster students feeling comfortable making mistakes?”

Ewell expressed that, while BSG members have attended Board meetings for several years, they have recently begun working to build a stronger relationship between students and trustees.

“We’ve attended them for a while now. I just think that in the last three years, no one’s talked about our ability to use it to benefit students that tangibly,” Ewell said. “I think we built a better relationship last year, at the end of last year, that enables us to be real with them.”