Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Garikai Campbell ’90, currently the Acting Dean of Students, has been appointed to a new role as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Vice President for Planning, President Chopp announced in an email to faculty and staff on Wednesday.
In his new position, Campbell will “serve as a liaison from the president’s office to the community to help facilitate our direction setting process and preparations for our next capital campaign,” Chopp wrote in the email. He will also “undertake special projects for the Board of Managers and the College such as researching best practices in liberal arts colleges and investigating emerging trends in higher education.”
The position will last up to two years, and is funded by “a special gift to the college.” The nature of the gift, and its donor, remained unspecified in the email.
A member of Student Council, who had received this email from a faculty member on Wednesday, forwarded the email to the Gazette on Wednesday night. The Council member requested to remain anonymous, but commented that “once again, students have been kept on the margins of an important decision — in some ways, left entirely outside of it. We need a place at the table, and we don’t have it.”
The member referenced Wednesday night’s forum on transparency in the Dean’s Search process as indicating that “the administration ostensibly wants student input on hiring, but this is still not the first time that students have found themselves in a position where decisions” are completely out of their hands.
Urooj Khan ’10, a member of the Dean’s Search Committee that recently recommended Liz Braun to fill the permanent Dean of Students position, said that the Committee was not involved in the decision. (Khan is also the Gazette’s Features Editor.)
The Gazette will have more information on this story as it becomes available.