Student Council President Tantum Collins ’08 and Student Council Vice President Jonathan Adler ’08 met recently with cluster presidents and library faculty to discuss ways to increase communication between students, proctors and librarians. The meeting was called in part because of tension between the student body and the library during Fall term. “Our main goal was to achieve amiable relationships between the students and faculty in the library,” Collins said. The library will soon implement a few policy changes discussed at the meeting. The library will be employing fewer proctors than before. Each proctor will work longer hours, allowing each proctor to become more familiar to the students and the study atmosphere of the library. In addition, there will be an announcement board at the library’s entrance, displaying the names and pictures of the proctors and librarians on duty that particular night. “This way, students can associate a name with a face, which will hopefully further improve relations,” said Library Director Elisabeth Tully. The library will also design a proctor manual to give proctors tips on how to better interact with the students. The meeting’s attendees also suggested potential ways to alleviate any proctor-student tension. Collins and Adler recommended a Librarian’s Table in Uncommons, similar to Head’s Table, where librarians and proctors can meet with students over dinner. “[The librarians] would be accessible [to the students]. Students could talk to them, raise concerns they may have, and mainly just to get to know each other on a personal level,” Adler said. However, Tully did not think that the Librarian’s Table would be implemented. “We honestly don’t think students would come eat a meal with librarians,” Tully said. Tully also said that proctors’ schedules would make it difficult for them to attend dinner meetings, given that Adler also suggested that students could meet the librarians and proctors during new student orientation to get personally acquainted. Another alternative brought up was Exeter’s student proctor system, which Student Council will soon investigate. Maxwell Meyer ’08, West Quad North Cluster President, believes mutual respect between students and librarians is extremely important. Meyer said that the meeting’s attendees discussed how it was difficult to foster respect between adults without disciplinary authority and students “who do whatever they want.” In the fall, the library announced new policies to help make the library a quiet place of study. But Collins believed that it was not the policies that angered the students but how they were presented. The library posted on its doors a list of ten alternative places for students to be during conference period. “The ‘top ten’ handouts were supposed to be humorous, but students usually don’t associate humor with the library… Students also misinterpreted the library’s new policy on contacting cluster deans when students became unruly,” said Collins. “Students thought that if they simply talked in the Garver room they would get DC’ed. It was miscommunication [between the library and the students],” added Collins. According to Collins, this miscommunication caused other issues. “Proctors were angry when students were being impolite and indignant towards them. Students were angry because they believed the proctors were intentionally abusing their power by being unnecessarily forceful,” Collins said. Tully said that the meeting would reconvene in the future to discuss more ideas.
