In response to recent events on campus, President Steen released a statement on the Red Sox celebrations through an All-Student email. This was followed by a speech before Student Senate on Nov. 4.
The much-anticipated statement was released on Saturday, Nov. 3, five days after the Red Sox celebration and the Student Senate meeting that resulted in a passed resolution that put the financial responsibility of damages on the student body and not just the individual perpetrators. The resolution has been the spark of controversy and a catalyst for discussion on campus and throughout N.H., causing many to question the ethics behind the resolution and the Senate’s ability to put a responsibility of this magnitude on all the University’s students, as well as questioning where the school’s administration stands on the subject at hand.
“Behavior of the kind exhibited after the Red Sox win is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated,” Steen said in her All-Student email, “I would like to say that the actual perpetrators will be brought to justice, but that is hard to achieve. We will continue to seek them out.”
Steen also discussed that the University now faces consequences which stretch beyond the celebration and physical aftermath of the events.
“Your parents and future employers have read the reports,” stated Steen, “And the reputation of this institution has been damaged, thereby diminishing the value of your degree. I will do everything I can to repair that damage and to ensure that it will not recur.”
Steen also decided to put the blame on those that were there in the crowd as a whole and not just those that knocked over light posts or threw bricks at windows.
“If you were there,” she said, “and whether you intended it - you should know that you participated by your presence, by your chants, and by your tacit approval. If you were there, you were part of the problem.”
“In spite of significant preparation for this event,” Steen added, “we did not prevent what happened; but in the final analysis the only people who can prevent such occurrences are the students themselves by not joining the crowd.”
The day after the letter was sent out to the student body, President Steen went before the Student Senate and spoke to the Senators about the response she received regarding the letter.
“The response to the email I sent out to students has been genuinely wonderful,” Steen said, “Within hours I’d received dozens of emails from students and people had really thought about responses very seriously and are coming up with all sorts of ideas, alternatives, things that all of us will want to think about.” She added, “I had held off, wanting the discussion of Senate’s resolution to take place, and I think what that meant was that people had been thinking about things – had some time to process things.”
President Steen also spoke on what protocol the administration followed before making a official comment about the celebrations and on Senates resolution,
“I would have had a comment out probably Monday or Tuesday if Senate had not moved forward so quickly,” said Steen, “And what we did was decide that because Senate had initiated its own resolution, we wanted to honor that process and not have my voice or anyone else’s short-circuit a discussion that was occurring. That, frankly, I thought was a very good one.”
“This was not something that struck me as a campus that needed to hear right away, most of you knew already where I was going to go and what I was likely to say,” Steen said, “but this discussion needed to happen among students.”