Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) President Dustin Brooks '08 announced the first staff appointment to the Community Response Committee (CRC) Wednesday.
BSG formed the CRC last February.
Associate Professor of Sociology Joe Bandy was chosen as the first appointment to the committee, which will recommend ways in which Bowdoin might respond to humanitarian crises abroad if and when they arise. The CRC, which is supposed to be comprised of four students and three staff members, is scheduled to hold its first meeting next week.
"One is a potential member, and one professor has committed," Brooks said. "We have optimistic projections for the other two staff members."
CRC member Will Hales '08 said the BSG had difficulty recruiting professors to sit on the committee.
"Professors are assigned to a certain number of committees and are obliged to sit on them. It's hard to find professors who have the time to commit to a committee that is newly formed," he said.
Though BSG formed the committee late last year, members waited until the new school year to select faculty members.
"The CRC hasn't met yet largely because of membership issues. We have four student members, and we had approached staff members who went on leave, but waited until we got back on campus to make a final decision," Brooks said.
Hales says he looks forward to helping determine the role of the CRC in the College's response to humanitarian crises.
"I think the committee will serve the Bowdoin community best in situations where there is a lot of student interest in a world issue, and it will be another resource for the college administration when it tries to formulate its own response," Hales said.
Althought he said that there are limits, "we're going to try to figure out what the limits are."
In February 2006, President Barry Mills appointed the Advisory Committee on Darfur in response to the genocide in that region. The committee, comprised of trustees, faculty, staff, and students, voted to divest itself of any direct investments in companies commercially affiliated with Sudan. As the College has no direct investments tied to Sudan, the committee chose to divest any profits the College could indirectly receive from any company doing business with Sudan.
Brooks said he hopes having a standing committee prepared to deal with a humanitarian crisis, as opposed to forming a committee in response to a specific crisis, will allow the College to respond immediately to any situation.
"The model was the Darfur Committee," he said. "We have a group of students and faculty who are prepared to deal with various issues as they come up, instead of forming a committee in the event of a crisis."
Hales said the CRC should be a tool the Bowdoin student body can utilize when coping with and responding to a humanitarian crisis.
He added, "You look at the Virginia Teach shootings. I certainly don't think this committee would be used to form the College's emergency protocol," Hales said. "However, after the shootings, there was a considerable amount of outpouring of sympathy of the student body. Students were talking about how they really wished the College had done more to express that. I think people were upset that the sympathy wasn't being shown outside of the community. That might be a situation where the CRC could play a role," Hales added.
In a 2006 letter to the Bowdoin COmmunity, Mills said that he did not see a need for the formation of additional committees whose task it was to respond to global crises.
"There is in my view no compelling need at this time to create another college committee for analysis of world issues," he said in the letter. "This work is not work for a committee but is the responsibility of all of us in the Bowdoin community as educators and as stewards of the common good."
But CRC member Sam Minot '08 said in an e-mail to the Orient that he hopes the committee will help direct students in ways to better serve the Common Good.
"When asked about the usefulness of this committee, I tell people my personal opinion: that Bowdoin has an effect on the world whether we like it or not, and it is our responsibility to critically examine what that effect is, and make a change if it doesn't satisfy our moral objectives," he said. "Not speaking for anyone besides myself, I don't see this as being about 'a select group of students,' but rather the entire Bowdoin community's commitment to the common good," he added.