The Board of Trustees will meet this weekend and discuss a theme that has been on the minds of most at Bowdoin: the economy and its impact on the College.
The Board, which assembled Thursday on campus, will spend today and Saturday discussing the budget for next year, reviewing the recommendations of the financial "blue tarp" committee, and attending to other College business.
The recommendations of the committee, as outlined in President Barry Mills' January 22 memo to the College, include increasing the student body by 50 over the next five years, freezing faculty and most staff salaries for two years, and holding operating costs flat.
The Board will analyze these suggestions and consider them as they write the budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, according to Senior Vice President for Planning and Development and Secretary of the College Bill Torrey.
"I think that's about as transparent a piece as you're going to get," said Torrey. "It describes in great clarity where we are now."
Thursday night, the Board met informally with members of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) and the Young Alumni Leadership Program (YALP) after dinner, which Torrey described as a "free-flowing discussion."
The Board will spend today and Saturday reviewing the recommendations for tenure, the recommendations for commencement honors, and the status of this year's admissions, though Torrey said that "we don't know about financial aid yet because we haven't admitted a class."
First, the Board will address these topics and others in committee meetings today and then in plenary sessions. Torrey plans to attend three or four of the committee meetings, which tend to overlap throughout the day. But he said that Mills "tries to go to all of them. He flits from one meeting to the next."
"This year's business as usual," said Torrey. "There's nothing huge on the agenda at this point...there isn't anything enormously controversial."