Ellie Lakatos ’28
Staff Writer
The new 13-member Transparency and Accountability Committee is hard at work. The committee started last semester but released a formal application through the weekly SAS newsletter emails in September calling for students to join.
“[The Committee] will be run through SAS and work to increase Scripps’ responsiveness to student needs and concerns as well as including students in important conversations,” the statement said.
The founder of the committee, Marin Plut ’25, further explained the vision for the committee.
“I would like the committee to serve as an in-between for admin and the student body,” Plut said.
After attending the office hours of various Scripps College administrators, Plut found that many students asked questions that did not pertain to the administrator’s specific roles.
“Then it just kind of clicked,” she said. “People literally have no idea who to go to.”
Plut elaborated that even if students did find the right person to ask, they were often redirected to talk to their student representatives on different Scripps committees without knowing who those student representatives were.
In collaboration with the SAS Senate, the Transparency and Accountability Committee is responding to this issue by working to create a resource chart with the different Scripps offices, departments, and committees so students know their roles and who to contact. The committee also passed bylaws, including one regarding publishing SAS office hours for all of the positions.
Before starting the committee, Plut wrote and shared a report with the administration in fall 2023 calling for more transparency and communication with the student body. Plut listed additional reasons as to why the committee was created following the report, such as a need for Scripps College to explain why decisions are made instead of denying students information, and consulting students before making new rules concerning the student body.
Plut highlighted a quote from JustLeadershipUSA, “the people closest to the problem are the people closest to the solution, but furthest from resources and power,” as a motto explaining the club’s founding.
“I think that’s something that Scripps needs to figure out, because there’s so many times where admin thinks that they know what’s best, not thinking about the fact that actually, the students live here, and this is our life, and this is our experience, that we actually might have some answers too,” Plut said.
At their weekly Friday meetings, the Transparency and Accountability Committee’s members take on individual tasks and projects such as emailing specific people for information on their roles at Scripps.
“So the meetings are kind of a check-in and then if we complete a project or a task, it’s like, what’s the next thing we want to work on?” Simran Sethi ’26, a member of the committee and SAS Vice President of Student Affairs, said. “What’s another student concern that we see that we want to address?”
Along with highlighting two situations where student voice generated action — Scripps Communities of Resources and Empowerment (SCORE) and the Student Union having 24-hour student access — Sethi described her own experiences with lack of communication with administration, such as when SAS hosted the “Boiler Room” party. She explained the struggle to find a venue due to this lack of transparency.
“Something I want to work on with the committee is getting a list of yes and nos, of places that students can host events, because this is our campus too,” Sethi said. “We should be able to hang out with our friends, or host an event for the student body on our space. There shouldn’t be so many regulations. And if there are regulations, what are they?”
Sethi continued by introducing the end objective that the committee is working toward.
“The main goal is all groups feeling comfortable communicating with one another and showing face at problems or meetings or events that get hosted,” Sethi said.
One of the committee’s other main focuses is to improve New Student Programs & Orientation (NSPO). According to Sethi, they hope to have students more involved by getting two students to sit on the NSPO committee.
“[NSPO] sets the tone for your whole Scripps experience,” Plut said. “If NSPO week is really cliquey, then like that class will be really cliquey.”
Plut highlighted what the committee hopes they will be able to transform NSPO into.
“What one of the administrators said is that NSPO should be a time to learn about Scripps culture and traditions, and not just a whole bunch of information being read off at you,” Plut said.
Using the restorative justice mediators brought in after The Motley was closed as an example, Plut is pushing for the concept of fair process, as described by the Texas Association of School Psychologists (TASP), where “individuals are most likely to trust and cooperate freely with systems — whether they themselves win or lose by those systems — when fair process is observed.”
TASP’s three principles of fair process are engagement, explanation, and expectation clarity.
“If there were more opportunities before a decision is made to give input then the decision will probably be better for students and for admin.” Plut said. “Also it just builds trust in relationships so then when things come up we can actually talk to each other about stuff.”
However, Plut pointed out an issue of non-engagement with college students and, specifically, Scripps College students.
“Everybody loves to complain about stuff, but what did you do to try to solve that problem?” Plut said, “Did you try to change that situation?”
Plut emphasized how the Transparency and Accountability Committee was leading the initiative for students to step up and do something.
“Students need to practice transparency and participation and stuff within ourselves, probably before we would have trust doing that with admin like if there are surveys, [students] need to respond, or if there’s town halls, students need to go,” Plut said.
