When a College Park City Council member met with University of Maryland students last month, she intended to discuss the idea of creating a Students’ Concerns Committee and the possibility of giving them a vote on the council.
But Council Member Mary Cook said the topics never came up during the meeting with about 20 freshmen and sophomores from the College Park campus.
“They don’t even go off-campus,” Cook said. “I was so taken aback about this that I didn’t even think to ask them.”
Cook said the idea for the meeting was to find out what students like and don’t like about the city.
“We thought we’d get some great feedback that we could work with,” Cook said. “But we got nothing other than to find out that students are not aware about anything with the city of College Park.”
Cook included the creation of a Students’ Concerns Committee on her council wish list for the 2007-08 school year. It would include six to 10 students, rather than the current single liaison. In March, she said she wanted to explore the idea of giving students a vote and that she would discuss both ideas with students and her council colleagues.
But Cook said whether she has a discussion with colleagues likely depends “on what we learn from the students next fall,” when she plans to meet with upperclassman.
