For those of you who believe the president of our university is a figurehead, one who endlessly delegates without getting her hands dirty and whose job consists of smiling and schmoozing alumni, let me be the first to correct you.

Amy Winehouse’s publicist has an easier job than Pat Long.

Recently, the Board of Trustees assigned our president the daunting task of balancing the Baker budget – one loaded with short and long-term debt and a suffering endowment – during the pinnacle of a nationwide economic recession.

If you’re struggling to conceptualize the time and emotional commitment a chore of this magnitude requires, picture it this way: You’ve got an LA401 paper due in six hours. You’ve been nocturnal for the past three days researching in the library and your business policy presentation is next Monday. To top it off, that girl dressed up as a sexy flight attendant on Halloween may or may not have given you H1N1.

Yet despite her meeting-filled schedule and the Chevrolet-sized burdens placed on her shoulders, Long has made herself available to the Baker community, fielding difficult questions on more than one occasion. The past two weeks she’s shown an administrative transparency and presidential visibility that should be applauded, regardless of whether you agree with the decisions being made. 

So I suppose that’s why I was so disappointed with the student turnout Tuesday when Long offered to answer any questions in the Harter Union and fewer than 10 people showed up.

“I was completely under-whelmed,” Dean of Students Cassy Bailey said of the event.

What’s even more dismal is that most of those 10 students were recruited by Bailey to ask the president questions.

Do you know how pathetic it is that our dean had to do that?

Here’s Long, standing with Chief Operating Officer Susan Lindahl, in a union full of students, and nobody has anything to ask her?

At times, our student body has shown an extreme lack of involvement. But this was embarrassing.

In the coming weeks, decisions will be made about which programs will be cut, which professors will be fired and what the university can no longer afford. And none of you have any worthy queries?

Long took time out of her day that she doesn't have (believe me, I harass her for interviews worse than Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet) to engage the students. <br/>It was your chance to go to bat for your program. Stand up for the faculty member who has shaped you. Beg her not to cut something the university offers that means a lot to you.It was your chance to go to bat for your program. Stand up for the faculty member who has shaped you. Beg her not to cut something the university offers that means a lot to you.
It was your chance to go to bat for your program. Stand up for the faculty member who has shaped you. Beg her not to cut something the university offers that means a lot to you.

But you didn’t. Instead, you’ll just complain anonymously on our Web site, or bitch in the dorms about how the cutbacks ruined your Baker experience and made you change majors. This was your chance to connect yourself with the inner-workings of our institution.

And you blew it. <br/>