Good morning! It’s time for your next episode of Extremely Biased Reporting™. This time, we have a listening session.

Present were: Pham, Penn, Wyre, Slota, Lawson, and Ezeonu that I saw, and about 46 participants, but more might have come in later when I wasn’t keeping track.

The first half of the meeting was rah rah Seahawks and a re-hash of the listening sessions last quarter and the subsequent emails.

• Overview of the subcommittees addressing the various concerns listed in the email. There is currently no timeline for any of said subcommittees. As to the time each committee will allot to working on their tasks, the best answer is “variable” and will depend on the subject matter and who is in charge/on the committee and their availability (we can guess which committees won’t see much progress, in other words–S)
• VPAA search being put off until new president is found. HC will be working with a recruiter to identify outside candidates, though internal candidates will also be considered. Estimated timeline is about 10 months. Entire campus will have opportunity to interact with potential candidates.
• This pushes the VPAA search back to about 13 months.
• Concerns over facilities requests: long wait times due to lack of budget/manpower. No solutions/suggestions/timelines given.
• Expansion of services for evening students. Response: requires a great deal of money to increase facilities, security, and office staff on campus during that time. (my question: if the students are already on campus, why do we need more security and facilities? It should just be building 6 staff and potentially some other advisors that are impacted).
• Melanie did not want to answer questions and threatened to leave the meeting when it became more of a “town hall.” Penn asked her to stay and answer questions regarding turnover and morale. Questions about re-classing and pay were asked but not addressed. Melanie talked for a couple of minutes, but didn’t actually provide any answers.
• Dropbox and anonymous feedback forms will come later in the quarter

One exempt staff member stated that they didn’t think anonymous feedback would be helpful, then followed it up with stating the feeling on campus was antagonistic and “retaliatory.” (how are we supposed to provide honest feedback with our names on a retaliatory campus?–S)

• Plans for student/employee transit: Currently pilot program to reimburse students up to $50. No current plans for employees, but they are looking into it. Other campuses that have “free” transit actually charge $75 for this, regardless of whether or not you use transit (Puget pass is $126 if you buy it yourself, so it’s about 50% covered)
• Concerns about student immigration arrests especially after hours, in parking lots and with ICE staged at Lowes. Short answer: we can’t do much. Documents from the recent ICE training we had on campus were posted in the chat.
• Concerns about people working in silos: no real answers, just “work together” and “communicate” and “it will take time.”

I did have to step out at this point and missed the last 5-10 minutes. However, there will be a Legislative District 33 meeting right here on campus in building 8 on 2/22 from 2-3:15pm with our 3 local representatives.

This would be a great time to bring up things like contract funding and other issues regarding jobs and affordability in the region–like the 5% King County add on not keeping up with the cost of groceries and rent, or the fact that a single income household would use 74% of their income on the average 2 bedroom apartment in King County–and an individual would be using 40% to get a studio.

Here concludes your Extremely Biased Reporting™ .

Sheena Pennell – Highline WPEA Member