Six hundred people will fill Thorne Dining Hall next weekend as a part of a yearly lunch celebrating scholarship donors, kicking off a weekend-long schedule of events to welcome the Board of Trustees.
Secretary of the College Richard Mersereau has been working to organize the trustees' final meeting of the academic year, scheduled to take place from May 11 to 14.
"The schedule has a mixture of events that are designed to have them be involved in the life of the campus, outside of meetings," he said.
The board, made up of 45 members, meets three times a year to discuss the needs and direction of the College. Among the issues scheduled to be discussed during the May meeting are honorary degrees, recommendations for tenure, approval of the budget, clean energy, the capital campaign, and the College's response to the crisis in Darfur.
"The main role of the trustees is policy making, instead of actually doing things," said Mersereau.
The decisions that the trustees will make this weekend will have far-reaching effects into the future of the College.
On Friday, the trustees will meet with a number of committees, which range from a trustee-only audit committee to a special committee on multicultural affairs. During these committee meetings, the trustees will get briefed on the major news and direction of various aspects of the College.
"It's where [the Trustees] are getting their information?what is going on in admissions, what is going on with the academic programs, student affairs," said Mersereau of the committee meetings.
One of the more pressing issues scheduled to be discussed is the crisis in Darfur. The Advisory Committee on Darfur, which consists of trustees, students, faculty, and staff, plans to recommend to the board a course of action in response to the situation.
"They'll be talking about what is the right public position for Bowdoin to take," said Mersereau.
While not on the schedule, Mersereau also expects that the trustees will also discuss clean energy issues at Bowdoin. Recently, Bowdoin students have raised concerns about the College's use of "dirty energy" and have protested by hanging signs and circulating a petition.
"There's a lot of interest, fiscally and environmentally, in determining what the right thing to do is in the short term and the long term," said Mersereau.
Also planned for the weekend is the final vote on the public notification of Bowdoin's capital fundraising campaign. The campaign is planned to go on over a five year period, from 2004-2009. Over the past year and a half, the Board has been keeping the campaign quiet, notifying only certain donors.
"We've raised somewhere in the order of $110 million," said Mersereau. This weekend the board will hold a final vote, confirming their plans to go public in the fall. The announcement is planned to be on November 10 in Boston.
Despite all the important issues to be discussed, for some trustees, the most important part of the weekend is getting a chance to see the College.
"For a lot of trustees, an important part of the weekend for is getting in touch with the campus, and really getting a feel for what's going on...I think that's important," Mersereau said.