A recent proposal to dissolve Bates College Student Government (BCSG) subcommittees and reassign student representatives to existing college committees was shot down at a meeting on Jan. 28.
Currently, BCSG has four subcommittees concerning student experience, facilities, academics and athletics as well as a Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC), all of which, save for the PAC, are made up of the BCSG assembly members. The subcommittees meet outside of the general assembly meetings to work on special projects in their area of interest. Depending on what their project is, the committee members will reach out to senior administrators, staff and faculty members.
Bates also has fourteen of its own institutional committees with an additional five strategic planning committees. Each of these institutional committees has student representatives that are appointed by the Committee Selection Board (CSB). CSB is a branch of BCSG composed of students who interview and select qualified students to fill seats on faculty and student committees at the request of committee chairs. CSB operates independently of the BCSG assembly.
BCSG Co-Presidents Zach Richards ‘26 and Mohammad Zayd ‘27 first proposed a restructuring of their committee system at their Jan. 21 meeting, using the Jan. 28 meeting to further discuss implications of a restructuring.
In their proposal, which was shared with The Student, Richards and Zayd noted that overlapping interests between BCSG subcommittees and college committees has led to “confusion, redundancies, and inefficiencies.”
To address these issues, Richards and Zayd proposed dissolving the current BCSG subcommittees and reassigning those class representatives to serve on existing faculty-led college committees, remaining on their assigned committee until their graduation. The responsibilities of the PAC would be transferred to the BCSG Executive Board.
Under this new system, CSB would continue to appoint other students, outside of BCSG, through the existing system of selection. Committees requiring other criteria that BCSG members cannot fill, such as the Honors, Writing, Honorary Degree, MLK and Off-Campus Study committees, would be selected exclusively by the CSB process.
In the Jan. 28 meeting, CSB Co-Chair Kate Schulze ‘26 addressed the concern that class representatives would be inextricably tied to their non-BCSG assembly work and placed on committees that they were not invested in. She said that CSB would use a lottery system that prioritized assembly members’ first choices of committees. However, she said, “You don’t always get to pick everything in life.” She added that if there’s a committee that members are particularly interested in but don’t get appointed to in their BCSG capacity, they could still apply through the regular CSB process.
Abdalrahman Mohamed ’29 raised concerns about how the general assembly meetings will proceed with the change. Schulze suggested that students could bring their committee updates to the general assembly meeting, depending on when their respective committees meet.
“As a BCSG member, we would hope that you guys would just take initiative to do what’s involved in being responsive,” she said. She added that the importance of representatives’ voices on the committee would be greater. “If you are one or two of the BCSG members on one of these committees, there will be people looking to you to see: What are you doing?”
Robbie Washburne ‘26 asked what benefit CSB would get out of this restructuring, to which Schulze answered “more of a connection with the assembly” and the opportunity to “build bridges between the branches of student government.”
She added that at certain times of year, committee seats are harder to fill for lack of qualified candidates. “We’re hoping that with the automatic seats from BCSG, we’re knowing that you guys are a select group of students qualified and invested in making Bates better.”
Trinity Montswillo ‘26 proposed maintaining the current BCSG subcommittees, while also having representatives sit in on the faculty-led committees once or twice a semester, sharing updates with the BCSG general assembly afterward.
Schulze said that CSB has received concerns from senior administration over the redundancies in the committees and with scheduling time to meet with subcommittees. “When they’re serving on the committees that we seek for,” she said, “they’ve expressed that they’re finding it hard to make time for your guys’ committees because they’re already invested in the work being done.”
Ava Steinberger ‘27 said that she felt the restructuring was an “extreme solution,” to problems of redundancy and scheduling. She noted that the appeal of BCSG is its public-facing structure for students. “I think that dissolving that by putting us on these committees with people that don’t have that and then we aren’t working together as an assembly as much …would hurt BCSG as a whole,” she said.
Steinberger added that BCSG has more of an obligation to meet with their subcommittees, as they are hoping to get re-elected. She said that the efficacy of these faculty-led committees could be negatively impacted if there’s no similar incentive to be an active part of the committee.
Glaser noted that the best work BCSG does is physically bringing together faculty and students to “actually bridge the gap.” He suggested having more public-facing BCSG events on campus to improve faculty-student engagement.
Richards suggested that they return to the next meeting with another, edited proposal. Washburne called a vote on the current proposal, which was seconded by Montswillo. The proposal failed, with 6 No’s and 4 abstensions.
“People still really value the committees that we have within the BCSG assembly, but also people do value the opportunity to meet with different faculty members, other students, senior admin,” Richards said. “There’s a solution where I think we can get the best of both worlds.”
Editor’s Note: The following errors have been corrected accordingly. The title of the student affairs committee is now student experience committee. CSB is not a BCSG committee (it is a branch of BCSG). The quote attributed to Alzamilli should have been attributed to Abdalrahman Mohamed ’29. The PAC is not made up of BCSG members only and includes other students seated on it outside of BCSG.
