The post-Spar era has already showed its true colors with the passing of Maggie.

Some student council meetings are tense and exciting, grapple with real issues faced by students on campus, and get a lot of attention. Not so this week at Barnard’s SGA meeting, where the Rep Council spent most of their time hearing about Barnard’s communication strategy.
That’s not to say that the meeting wasn’t interesting. SGA was joined by Barnard’s Vice President for Communications, Justin Harmon. Harmon joined Barnard this past January, after accepting the position in November mere days after President Debora Spar announced her plans to leave the college to take a new position at Lincoln Center. He said that his department is looking towards the future of Barnard representing itself in the “post-Spar era.” He came to the college through a string of positions in higher education, but also reminisced about his experiences as a teacher and reporter in the New Jersey statehouse. “Covering legislation can be interesting, and sometimes it can be very not interesting,” he said wryly. We heartily agree.

Harmon showed himself to be well-spoken and clear-thinking, displaying a deep appreciation for Barnard’s mission, praising what he characterized as the “unusual college” for its “strong sense of identity.” Harmon also fielded questions from SGA members. Rep for Inclusion and Equity asked about student complaints that donors and funds are being directed to large projects, like the new library, and not in ways that benefit students more tangibly, like the Office of Disability Services or housing. Harmon agreed that this was a branding and publicity issue. While he thinks that the new building is important and beneficial to students, “inclusion should be cast as an aspirational value.” He also commented on Barnard’s status as a women’s college at a time when other schools are branding themselves instead as “historically women’s colleges” to be more inclusive. He agreed that this is a fraught question, that Barnard will continue to grapple with, but from a publicity side, “there is line there” that Barnard does not have plans for crossing.
SGA also heard from Tara Anand, BC’20, and Tahsina Saosun, BC’19, who have applied to take over the recently-vacated Representative for Information and Technology position. Both candidates described their involvement in CU’s computer science community and described their goals for helping Barnard into the 21st century (we’re almost twenty years in, we shouldn’t have to be saying that anymore). The Rep Council will deliberate and choose one of the candidates in the coming weeks.

Edit, as of 4/5/2017, 8:19 pm: A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that President Spar announced her departure in January, not in November. We apologize for the error.

Image via Flickr