New Trustee Vows to Bring Student Voice to the Table

By Leigh DuPuy

Jamal Brathwaite is UMass Boston's newest student trustee, ready to volunteer bold ideas on behalf of his peers. "UMass Boston students have gone without a voice at the Board of Trustees for too long," says Brathwaite, who was appointed to the post after a previous student trustee did not attend meetings. "I will be that voice."

So, what will he be bringing to the table at the next board meeting? "I really want to work with the board to improve UMass Boston's's ability to provide students with high-quality higher education, as well as to create more of a student culture," says Brathwaite. "I'd like to see UMass Boston offer more of a social outlet, which would help create more of a student culture and work with administration to implement systems that more efficiently cater to the needs of our unique student body. The Campus Center is a great start to fostering this change."

His goals include working with the university to secure a bigger portion of public expenditures devoted to UMass Boston, increasing library hours, and lobbying for dorms. He talks of creating a student-nominated teaching award as a way to reward excellent faculty members and suggests implementing a five-year plan for UMass Boston to ascend to first-tier rankings, a must, Brathwaite says, "for the only public university in the intellectual capital of the world, Boston."

In addition to attending Board of Trustee meetings, Brathwaite will serve on four standing committees for academic and student affairs; administration, finance, and audit; athletics; and development.

Brathwaite's energy and activism are constants in a schedule that includes full-time commitments to school and work. Working 40 hours a week as a legal assistant to Putnam Investments, he is also a graduating senior pursuing a major in economics and political science.

This kind of juggling is nothing new to Brathwaite. He has served in teaching, research, and resident advising capacities for the W.E.B. Du Bois Institutes at Harvard and Princeton Universities, the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

He has also devoted time as the founder of Boston Community Initiatives, tutoring economics at UMass Boston, and helping to implement the Dorchester High School Dental Clinic Program in collaboration with the Codman Square Health Center, to name just a few of his activities.

Brathwaite's personal aspirations include becoming an economic policymaker in the public and private sectors, a career he is sure to pursue upon graduation in August 2004.

Image: Jamal Brathwaite, an economics and political science major, takes on his newest role as a UMass Boston student trustee. (Photo by Harry Brett)

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