On Monday evening, the team from our accrediting agency and the British Governor both came to the college. The team arrived while my class was still in session and one member sat in on the last twenty minutes of my review for my midterm then stuck around and interviewed some of my students. I met with the other members of the team and so far at least, they seem to be friendly and impressed. They mentioned their student interviews were going very well, of course, they wouldn't tell us if they had gone badly and its virtually certain they were told some bad things by the students but are relaying to us the positive comments.
Katie spent the evening getting them data and after we got home we were both up past midnight completing the Annual Institutional Report (Katie doing most of the work, me reading off to her numbers to be inputted). Katie has been working on this report for a couple of months and when it was done she kept saying what a relief it was. Monday they got to see our college and the best analogy I can come up with is they saw the exterior of our car and we had cleaned it up well. On Tuesday they pop the hood on our little car and lets hope things go as well then as they seemed to go Monday evening. They were only on campus about an hour but for that hour the college was humming. Part of that was the anticipation of the governors visit. You forget sometimes that this is a very British island and the representative of the monarch coming to our college is a huge deal.
When the Governor arrived Dr. Cummings and I gave him a brief tour while Katie took photographs. When he entered the classroom, everyone stood and he was announced "His Excellency, the Governor, Stuart Jack". After his forty minute or so presentation, he took questions for well over an hour. The students were very respectful but asked pointed questions about education, the budget, environment, immigration policy, and foreign policy. I was very happy about the level of discourse and the Governor seemed genuinely pleased at the level of questions coming from our students.
It was amazing to see every student preface their question with "your excellency", a reminder that we are a British dependent and that American style egalitarianism isn't in dominant style here. The contrast between how the students addressed the Leader of Government Business back in August and the Governor yesterday was startling. The Leader of Government Business is the highest elected position but he is political while the Governor is appointed by the Queen and is head of the Civil Service, the Police and must approve all legislation for it to become law. As he pointed out in his presentation he has approved every piece of legislation that has come to him and hopes to never reject legislation drafted by the Cayman Legislature but he has that right and the right to remove elected officials (only for corruption).
Our team visit continues Tuesday and I have a presentation to the Rotary on our library needs. Let's hope day two goes as well as day one. Monday was the easy part and we seemed to pass with flying colors. Tuesday will be the nitty gritty and that's where we will struggle but not for lack of trying. Katie in particular has done an incredible job on the records and while we expect to be cited if she hadn't done all she did our accreditation would be in serious jeopardy. As it is we are very hopeful.
