To:	Governance Committee
From:	Kirk Gardner
Date:	August 9, 1993

The origins of the current governance system at Goddard do not lie in a prescribed abstraction about how a College "should" be run or in a borrowed model taken from another campus. The current system has evolved at Goddard largely out of a commitment by the whole College to a Democratic process. It also has grown out of the commitment to education and to the inclusion in that education of a direct experience by students of a working democratic community. That commitment to democracy has been a hallmark of Goddard since its creation. While this has found expression in a number of different ways over the years, central to them all has been the broadly based involvement of students, faculty and staff in decision making and the idea that decision making at the grass-roots level, by people responsible for the consequences of the decision, is a desirable thing. The evolution over the past several years of the current governance system is no exception to that commitment.

From the broadly-based and democratically-elected committees responsible for student life, facilities and the day to day operation of the college to the smaller working groups within the faculty governance program and students groups, the goal of a democratic community is, in large part, operating at Goddard. But all systems, especially evolving systems have problems. The current one seems to have broken down primarily where the interactions of the various committees come together.

In other papers submitted to the Governance Committee, the existing College committees and their interrelationships have been outlined or at least suggested. Much of the current system has evolved from a model outlined by Dean Elias and other campus leaders working with Jackson Kytle in 1990. A copy of their final memo is attached [editor's note: this information is missing].

At the center of the existing governance model was supposed to be the Campus Coordinating Committee or COCOCOM. This group, made up of the Directors, the Coordinators, and eight elected members (including 4 students, 2 staff and 2 faculty members) was set up to provide a single point of communication for the campus where activities could be coordinated, problems surfaced and where a sense of the communities direction might be obtained. While this group was to have replaced the "Deans and Directors" group, it was given no decision making authority, but rather was to report its "recommendations" to the President. As a result, the

President was left operating alone, without any direct advice and support, and with very wide ranging authority.

To help fill this decision making need at the administrative level, the President moved to reestablish a senior level policy group. The "Deans and Directors" in effect was recreated as the College Executive Committee (CEC). This committee, which is appointed in part by the President and in part by itself, is currently responsible for working with the President to take responsibility for the larger issues on campus.

One of the central problems is that while the CEC is theoretically the executive committee of the College Coordinating Committee, it has not generally referred its recommendations to the larger COCOCOM but rather has made decisions itself. CEC can, and occasionally does, refer issues to (or back to) a working committee of the College, such as Campus Life. For pressing or far-reaching issues such as the College budget, the Executive Committee has sometimes expanded itself to be more representative. For instance, in the case of the budget, it moved to include staff, faculty and student representation.

This system, in the short run, has worked. And where it has worked best is in the functional area of decision making involving the day to day operations of the campus and services to students. This system has been less successful in encouraging ownership and involvement. Paradoxically, while trying to encourage participation by members of the College communities it may have failed to fully allow people to feel involved, or to have provided a broad forum for discussion and participation.

The successes (in the improvement of the facilities of the campus, in fund raising, in admissions, in the curriculum etc.) could in the future be jeopardized by some of liabilities in the current system including the fact that COCOCOM has been left without a clearly defined role. This has encouraged an old Goddard pattern of issues moving directly to the President and bypassing review and discussion by the appropriate campus committees. It has left vacant the role of campus based "traffic cop committee" who could have helped ensure that issues were fully heard, dealt with in a timely fashion and resolved at an appropriate level. It has left unfilled a broadly representative forum for appealing decisions. And finally it has left undefined the relationship between the broadly based decision making committees, the Executive Committee, COCOCOM and any possible "Town Meeting. Over time these could all overwhelm the positive results of the recent past.

To assure the continuation of the recent successes on campus and the continuity of the present model of governance, the control management and coordination of the system must be made more workable. To accomplish that, three essential activities might appropriately be assigned to the COCOCOM:

The first activity is the need to have a central arena in which working committees can discuss the issues and decisions before them with others affected by the issue. This arena is particularly needed as a focus of activity for those who anticipate problems with a proposed policy or program or who wish to seek changes in, express opposition to, or support of, pending issues.

The second important function appropriate to COCOCOM is the need to ensure that decisions are being made efficiently and at the appropriate level. In a democratic environment the most effective level for decision making is usually the one that in practical terms, closest to the grass-roots. The tendency however is for responsibility for decision or action on issues to drift up through the administrative levels towards the President. The responsibility for ensuring that issues and decisions are dealt with in a timely fashion and resolved within appropriate committees should be assigned to COCOCOM. This could include assignments to the Executive Committee.

A third important role for COCOCOM would be the assumption of the responsibility for calling and managing "Town Meetings" for the whole or for parts of the College. One of the major changes in the College that has effected the "Town" or "Community" meeting is the development within Goddard of several different, sometimes unrelated, communities. A committee representing all parts of the college would be in the best position to determine if and when such meetings were appropriate, whether or not they should be held on a regular basis, as well as when, where and how they should be called, and how they should be run.

These changes, if combined with other proposals before the committee, could improve a working system. With the focused invigoration of COCOCOM, and its recreation as a strong committee overseeing the distribution of important decisions on the campus, we can continue to strengthen and improve the existing governance system and the successes the College has seen over the past two or three years. Combined with other proposals before the Governance Committee (such as the Community Manager and the establishment of a student

or community controlled operating fund), these changes could have a very powerful impact both on the community and on those who operate in it and around it.

It has often been noted that Goddard is a living system, constantly in a state of flux and change. The balance we seek as we respond to evolving new conditions is somewhere between the revolutionary call from Tom Peters for radical leadership and constant change, and the cautionary observation by Carl Sagan that the strongest and most durable organisms are those that can change fast but which change incrementally rather than radically. Let us again avow and reinvigorate our long commitment to change and let us also remember what our purpose here is and who we serve. The job before us is not so much to reinvent a wheel as to ensure that we have one.

Even in the best of circumstances, our machinery of government may be inconvenient and unpleasant. Governance and politics are inseparable. They are the mechanisms by which we decide how to allocate the scarce resources of our communities and manage the changes and conflicts that inevitably grow up as we go about our chores and work toward some common purpose. A good "governance system" with good leadership helps us understand our common goals and facilitates our work.