If there were any concerns about whether the ACCIS membership would use the new elist, the recent kerfuffle about the launch of the new and Common Application certainly assuaged any such concerns.

Regardless of one’s views of the upcoming changes, it is clear that our elist serves as a valuable sounding board and vehicle for expression for our ever-growing membership.  Postings were coming in with the speed of “out of office” messages in July. A truly wide representation of our membership participated in an informative and respectful exchange of ideas – a great and healthy sign, not just for our choice of new technology, but also of our membership’s continued willingness to engage in important discussions.

A number of elist postings called for a response from the ACCIS leadership to the issue.  After much thought and a number of conversations, it was decided that we would let the diversity of elist postings speak for themselves and trust that our colleagues who serve on both the Common Application Board and the Outreach Advisory Group have, and will continue to effectively represent the views of the ACCIS membership on this important issue.  As David Burke’s recent posting indicated, individual members of the ACCIS leadership team have been and will continue to be in touch with various members of the Common Application team, offering our thoughts and suggestions as well as reminders about the collective wisdom expressed on the ACCIS elist.  We felt it was important to encourage individual ACCIS members to share their views as requested by the Common Application, particularly in reference to the topic of essay length enforcement via essay@commonapp.org.

As a fellow membership organization, we understand the delicate, and likely impossible, task of trying to please all constituents when making a decision. Additionally, while we do want to express our continued faith in Rob Killion and the entire Common Application leadership team, we also want to remind them of the most important constituents in this entire conversation or dialogue – the students we serve.  It is our hope that as the interests of all concerned are “balanced,” the needs of students will continue to serve as the fulcrum or core of all discussion and decision-making.

Thank you to one and all for your interest in this important matter and for your willingness to share your opinions with the ACCIS elist and/or directly with the folks at The Common Application.

Best,

Eric R. Monheim
ACCIS, Executive Director

Marie Bigham
ACCIS, Communications Committee Chair