Since we are such a new cohort that is still under development, my partner and I felt that there were not many norms associated with the cohort. So as far as a request to have any change to the norms, I feel as if our new structure that was just established was made too recently to analyze the norms that come along with the structure.

However, we do have the structure of positions present in the cohort, and I have concerns that I think should be addressed properly. My first concern is that the four chairs: service, finance, activities, and communication; should not have any more authority than any of the respective committee members. For example, the communication chair should not have power to decide what the committee wants. Instead, the chairs simply should serve as a representative voice for the committee. From what I have heard, it feels like some chairs seem to think that they have power to decide what is best for the committee, and I don’t think that is a good structure to have. Also, these positions of leadership do not have any rules, regulations, or guidelines on what to do, so stepping into the position can be ambiguous. Especially with the service and communication committees, they do not have much of an active role or presence as do the finance and activities committees. If we want to equally represent, we have to be equal. However, since activities and finance for those activities play such a big role in this cohort, we could possibly see the merging of two committees into one. For example, service could be merged with activities since we only have three members in service currently and activities have nearly six or seven members. This could ensure efficiency and a clear consensus on the direction of the cohort, and I feel that it would be a big step in the right direction on what we want to establish ourselves as.

In my opinion, the communication committee is a conundrum in and of itself. Why do we have a committee specified for communication? I feel that communication is such a universal term that it should just be of habit that we have communication among each other. I know the communication committee is responsible for creating methods of communication among the members, but communication among one another is a self-governing topic. Instead I believe that the communication committee should be transformed into a promotion or marketing committee that is focused on advertising the cohort to outside sponsors and other potential companies. I believe that this will be beneficial to us as a cohort as well. Communication is something that we all participate in, and having a committee who governs how we communicate is pretty absurd (in my opinion). If we have a problem in the way we communicate, we should just be outright and state what problem we are having, instead of having pluralistic ignorance. This will lead to the most effective method of operating as a cohesive cohort.