Collegiate administrators of housing, discipline, and academic advising from schools such as Duke, Harvard, and Swarthmore met at Pomona this week for a two-day conference for member schools of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE).

According to Dean of Campus Life Matt Taylor, the group, which has 16 different subgroups, was formed out of schools that have similar student bodies and academic missions. The 30 member schools, said Taylor, are composed mostly of "the Ivies and other elite" colleges in the country.

At several conferences throughout the year the member colleges come together to share information on administrative techniques and research endeavors. As Taylor explains, these meetings are "closed door," and the information is not shared with other academic institutions. Consequently, no students were allowed to sit in on any part of the conference on Monday and Tuesday.

"The value in these conferences, aside from the shared data, is that we sit down and we talk with other professionals," explained Taylor. "To me, it’s like a scholarly enterprise." Taylor said the conference helps administrators to better understand their work because of the opportunity to consult with others dealing with similar problems.

Taylor said he could not comment in detail about the nature of the discussions, but said the topics highlighted in the conference included academic computing, building a campus center, race, sexual harassment, and alcohol policies.

"[Administrators] want to increase workload, keep up with technology, be more efficient, but they are also student deans, so they don’t want to cut down on [time with students]," said Taylor about consolidating more and more tasks onto a campus network.

Pomona, he said, is holding its own in technological developments among the COFHE schools. "We probably get fewer complaints, but ours is a simpler task," said Taylor, explaining how being a small school limits the number of responsibilities for each administrator.

Taylor prepared a report on campus alcohol policy for the conference, a topic receiving much attention in national media due to recent cases of death due to alcohol poisoning.

"This is a very, very fertile time when it comes to alcohol in education," he said "There are many COFHE schools taking quite drastic steps concerning alcohol."

Taylor said many of the new policy changes stem from 1998 Congressional legislation that allows schools to phone the parents of students under 21 who violate the alcohol policy. Taylor said this is a change in the trend of the past 30 years, during which college administrators have been avoiding an in loco parentis role.

Pomona, for its part, changed its policy one and a half years ago so that now, in cases of alcohol or drug violations, parents are contacted. Previously, decisions to call or write parents had been done on a case to case basis.

Representatives also traded information on the topic of "How to Build a Campus Center," and Assistant Director of the Campus Center Dave Swenson led a tour of all present through the Smith Center.

According to Taylor, the delegates were very impressed with the campus center, but concerns about the structure were not hidden from those present.

"Throughout this conference we get together and talk about all of these things very frankly," said Taylor.

The schools represented at this week’s conference were Stanford, Duke, Washington University, Wellesley, Smith, Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Princeton, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Oberlin.