Student leaders arrived back on campus a day early in order to participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Leadership Conference. Around 150 students attended the conference hosted by former U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell.
Meredith Bonham, senior associate dean of students for strategic initiatives, described the students as “change agents,” or students whose roles in the Hamilton community provide a means to create the changes the college needs. Her goal in creating the Leadership Conference is to bring students together to talk about issues relevant to the Hamilton campus and students.
The conference focused on transformational leadership, or groups of people coming together around a moral or ethical change and working in sync to move toward that change. Prior to the conference, students were surveyed and asked what aspects of Hamilton they loved and what they wished they could change. The close-knit Hamilton community and the kindness of the students on the Hill ranked highly among the things that students liked about Hamilton.
The student leaders were then asked to split up into four groups and decide on a plan of action to improve the things students thought Hamilton could do better: inclusion of all students, apathy and involvement on campus, diversity and the alcohol culture. Their solutions were then proposed to the other student leaders, Prudence Bushnell, Meredith Bonham and other Hamilton administrators with hope that the solutions brought about could be implemented in the future.
