March 28, 2024

Final Veishea meeting will be in closed session

AMES (MCT) — The Veishea task force will assemble for the final time tonight at a meeting that will be held behind closed doors following a brief progress report and comment period that is open to the public.

By June 30, the task force plans to present a final report to Iowa State University President Steven Leath on its recommendations for the future of Veishea.

Already, it has voted to recommend discontinuing the celebration in its current form but still holding a university-wide event under a different name.

After going into closed session, the task force will review recommendations including those from a recently convened subcommittee about student behavior.

It will then incorporate those recommendations into its final deliberations as it discusses draft language for the report to Leath.

“Task force meetings are not required to be open under the law, and draft documents are exempt from public records law,” said ISU spokeswoman Annette Hacker, a non-voting member of the task force.

The task force’s chairman, ISU Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Hill, said the decision to meet in closed session was made so its members could feel more comfortable presenting any final ideas that might not be fully formulated and could be misconstrued by the public.

“I really would like to have an opportunity for members of the task force to really get in there and put everything out on the line, and not have to walk away thinking that there’s something they should have or could have said but didn’t for a variety of reasons,” Hill said.

Hacker said she guessed the initial part of the meeting that is open to the public would last roughly 20 minutes.

The meeting will be at 6 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Pioneer Room.

The task force was convened by Leath after a late night Campustown disturbance April 8 that left an ISU student seriously injured when he was hit by a felled light post.

At a press conference he convened the following afternoon, Leath said he was assembling the task force to make a recommendation on whether future events would “either be a total reconstitution and refocus on what Veishea used to be, or (if) it won’t be” at all.

Despite missing a tentative deadline to have a draft of the final report completed last week, the task force remains on track to submit a final report to Leath by the end of the month, according to Hill.

Hill said tonight’s plan is for task force members to walk away from the meeting with the understanding that a final draft is “substantially complete with only minor adjustments needed to be made,” such as editing.

“I think we’re in a good position right now, and I have every reason to believe that (tonight’s) meeting will be fruitful,” he said.

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