Town hall meetings have a specific purpose to allow those in power to hear those who wish to speak, and the idea of such meetings has not changed much today. Tuesday’s student-administrater town hall meeting at Saint Louis University failed to live up to what the forum can be and was not a successful display of a genuine and traditional open question-and-answer session.
Some of the questions presented at Tuesday’s meeting were scripted rather than the impromptu questions typically associated with a true “town hall”-style meeting. Having scripted discussion questions at a forum which was supposed to be fostering closer relationships, or at least mutual understanding between students and upper-level administrators-including the president of SLU himself-is counterproductive and not valuable to improving student to administrator relations. Students should be able to ask the questions they wish to have answered, and at this meeting, they were not all given that opportunity.
The meeting was not a complete hypocrisy, however, and if given a different name, could pass reasonably well as a “meet and greet” with administration. Generally speaking, one of the largest setbacks of the meeting as a town hall meeting was the physical set up. Having different administrators at separate tables and then allowing students to play an adult version of musical chairs-without the music, sadly-is not a set-up that fosters an accurate informative meeting.
In the setup, each administrator must give the same answer to each student, or risk sounding impeachable as an upper-level staff member. The traditional town hall meeting would not have such stress placed upon each administrator having identical answers, for all the audience would hear one answer, one time.
If the change to Tuesday’s small group discussion format is due to a lack of support for a traditional town hall meeting, then perhaps SGA should consider renaming the meeting before having another. The round table, small group discussion format does not achieve the same ends as an actual town hall meeting. Students should be able to ask any questions they desire so long as it is put forth in a respectful and applicable manner.
Hillary Clinton recently had a snafu in her own campaign, as it became public knowledge that her staffers had prompted a questioner to ask a prepackaged question of the Senator. Tuesday’s meeting was much the same in that students did not get the chance to ask all of the questions that truly matter to them. Administrators having time to prepare answers for questions ahead of the meeting time simply defeats the purpose of the town hall meeting and turns the event into a mere public relations seminar.
In the future, it would be advisable for administration to revert back to the tried and true tradition of the true public town hall meeting. If this means that administrators will be exposed to their students and held liable for any mistakes or misstatements, then so be it, for that is truly one of the benefits of a genuine town hall meeting: to see those in power fall flat.
