Interviews with President David Wilson about the upcoming dormitory conversations start on Monday, April 6. Wilson announced in an email that he would be holding community conversations in every residential hall starting in Blount Towers from 5 to 6 p.m.
These conversations are meant to create a better family dynamic on the campus.
“I want to make sure that Morgan is a family and as a family we embrace a set of values,” said Wilson.
According to the email, the theme of all the conversations will be living our Morgan values.
Wilson said the most critical values that Morgan students should embrace are respect, excellence, diversity and leadership. “At the end of the day we want everybody in our university community to be committed to doing the right thing,” he said.
Wilson said that he’s been grappling with the idea of conducting these types of meetings for a while and he does attribute the last incident on campus with implementing the dormitory conversations.
On March 14, at the first university sponsored campus party in over a year, a fistfight broke out as students exited the party. Also, on March 17, three students were stabbed outside of Rawlings Dining Hall in a continuation of the previous day’s fistfight.
“I felt that after the recent incident on campus that we needed to get out there and have intimate conversations with students about expectations,” said Wilson.
Wilson said he will start each meeting by giving a brief perspective on his expectations for Morgan students, but he does want to hear as much as possible from the students. The hope for these meetings is to broaden each student’s mind and also give them a different perspective on how to handle issues that may come up while they attend Morgan or even after they leave.
Wilson said that these conversations will help to begin “shifting the culture of the institution away from a concentration on just the individual, to one that is on the collective good of the entire community.”
In Wilson’s opinion a good outcome will be for the students to take pride in the university and think twice about their actions.
“I hope that students will emerge with a clear understanding of what it means to be a Morgan man and what it means to be a Morgan women,” he said.
For the president and his administration these meetings mean taking everything into account
and working on improving the campus from student’s suggestions.
“I am hopeful that at the end of these conversations we will have a list of things that over the next several months we will invest in to make sure we are building a strong campus community.”
After meeting with students in Blount for an hour, Wilson will hold another meeting in Rawlings Hall at 6 p.m.
On Tuesday, April 7, Wilson will meet with students in Baldwin Hall and Cummings Hall at Cumming’s fireside lounge from 5 p.m. until 5:45 p.m. He will then address students living in Harper-Tubman House. He will then meet with the Harper side from 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., and then with the Tubman side from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Both will take place in Harper’s Bando Lounge.
On Wednesday, April 8, Wilson will meet with students in O’Connell Hall and Morgan View. He will meet with students in O’Connell’s lounge from 5 p.m. until 5:45 p.m. and will head to Morgan View for a meeting in the conference room from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The last two conversations will take place on Monday, April 14, in the University Student Center. A meeting is scheduled for Thurgood Marshall Apartments from 5 p.m. until 5:45 p.m. and next for Marble Hall Gardens at 6 p.m. until 6:45 p.m.
All of the meetings will follow that same routine and each is open to all students and staff.
