Trustee candidates talk diversity, safety, nonpartisanship
Diversity, student safety, school finances and political nonpartisanship were a few points made Wednesday evening during the virtual North Idaho College Trustee Forum for students and employees.
NIC Student Body President Kaya Sedlmayer moderated the forum between two of the five candidates running for the NIC Board of Trustees. Board Chair Joe Dunlap and candidate Paul Sturm participated.
"Diversity is one of NIC's core values. What does this mean to you?" Sedlmayer asked Sturm and Dunlap.
Sturm responded that one of the beauties of community college is that it's open to everyone.
"That, to me, is a core value of mine, that we provide and create and maintain an environment that students can come and they can learn and they can pursue their educational goals and aspirations in an environment of safety, and explore ideas," he said. "The same would be with the faculty. The faculty needs to feel free and protected to explore ideas and have interchange with each other and have not only a diversity of people, but a diversity of ideas that work through the community."
Dunlap said diversity means everyone is accepted and not discriminated against based on race, creed, color, age, sex, gender or anything else.
"It means that we accept everybody for who they are, and what they are, and work with them so that they can reach their full potential," he said.
He pointed out that global awareness and cultural sensitivity are written into NIC's accreditation standards.
"You can't have those discussions without talking about diversity," he said. "NIC formed a diversity council, which is to be commended. And if you look at who participates in that, it's faculty, staff and students, and there's a lot to celebrate there."
Dunlap brought up recent criticism NIC has received from some community members "that we 'indoctrinate' students," he said, "in other words we teach an ideology. And what I prefer to say is, we teach students how to think, not what to think.
"This notion that individuals are indoctrinated, as far as I'm concerned, is nonsense," Dunlap continued. "Students come to the college, they take a wide variety of courses, they broaden their horizon and they change their views about life, the world, diversity and other individuals. That's through their own volition, it's not through an indoctrination process."
Both candidates answered that they support the Cardinal Pledge: "I pledge to do my part to keep the North Idaho College campus open, healthy and moving forward. I understand we all must work together, at times taking extraordinary steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19." And they support keeping NIC affordable for students.
Sedlmayer asked their thoughts on NIC remaining an affordable option and where they stand on making community college cost free.
Dunlap answered that the trustees are committed to affordable college and chose not to raise tuition this year, in light of everything that has happened.
As for cost-free college, he said he thinks it's an excellent idea, "provided we can generate the resources to create that opportunity."
"If you look at what's been done with the NIC Foundation, last year they disbursed over $1.2 million," with much of it going to scholarships, he said. "There's already an effort underway to reduce the cost to students and to provide more cost-effective options.
"If there are resources that we can put together to make community college cost free, I'm all in on that," Dunlap concluded.
Sturm responded that keeping college affordable is one of his core values.
"As a society, we need to invest in education," he said. "We've been saying for decades that post-secondary education is critical for life-long learning and for career opportunities, but we haven't put our money necessarily where our mouth is. I don't believe that we have supported our educational institutions, we've turned them more into businesses, and I think, for me, it's a societal imperative to make sure students can get a college education without having to leverage their earnings for the rest of their life in some cases."
The candidates were sent invites Oct. 7. NIC officials said Greg McKenzie and Michael Barnes, who each RSVP’d, said they had other engagements. Trustee Todd Banducci declined because he is recovering from a flare-up to an injury he sustained while on active duty.
In closing, Dunlap emphasized the lack of attendance of the other candidates. He said by looking at who participated, "you'll notice — it's conspicuous by their absence — the people that Paul and I are running against."
"Those individuals are precinct captains in the Republican Central Committee," Dunlap said. "I want you to ask yourself, in this nonpartisan election, who do you want running your college? Do you want individuals with a political agenda and ideology that come to the college, or do you want two unaffiliated trustees, like Dr. Sturm and myself, representing the community in a nonpartisan fashion, representing you and providing policy decisions for the college?"
Sedlmayer said overall, she thought the forum went really well. She said the Associated Students of NIC developed the questions to cover as many of the major areas of college life on which students are focused.
"It's our top priority to boost the voice of those we represent," she said. "I'm glad we were given the opportunity to come together and get to the heart of what's been on our minds. The board of trustees determines a lot of what happens to our college, and it's great to know that candidates can come together to talk with us about what that means to them and us as students."
