Tuesday was this year’s final meeting of the Honors College Town Hall, scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. and feature Mayor Walt Maddox and University of Alabama President Judy Bonner. At 6:25 p.m., Bonner was not present. At 6:32 p.m., someone discretely turned her name card face-down, and the meeting began.

Maddox began his presentation with a slideshow illustrating the growth of the University and surrounding areas throughout the past century. He then spent some time discussing tornado recovery efforts, an eight-year-old prekindergarten initiative,and the development of downtown infrastructure, before returning to the issue of tornado recovery.

Bonner never arrived at the meeting, and her absence was attributed to a family crisis. Supposedly she told this to organizers two hours before the meeting, which begs the question why a place was set for her or why attendees were not told of her absence in advance.

The meeting wasn’t terribly informative, but it was interesting in that it unintentionally highlighted many of the University’s ongoing struggles. There are two points about this meeting I’d like to discuss because I feel they are especially representative of larger issues on this campus.

The first is the persistent lack of discussion from administrators on issues that matter to students, such as the voting fraud scandal, greek desegregation, increasing costs and rampant overcrowding. Admittedly, Maddox probably isn’t in a position to describe all of these issues in depth, but Bonner’s unannounced absence didn’t help either.

As a member of the Honors College who cares about the University, I attended this meeting in the hopes that I would learn more about critical, ongoing developments that affect students. Instead, I learned nothing of substance.

The second issue is growth without limits. Throughout the meeting, Maddox touted the University’s absurd growth rates, without ever pausing to explain how this is good for students. He also didn’t bother to explain how the University is evolving to accommodate this growth.

I would contend that we’ve reached a point where a 5-6 percent annual growth rate is no longer an achievement unto itself. We have reached a point where construction is a constant on campus, and students are fighting for insufficient resources. This is evident in cramped lecture halls, swamped parking lots and full apartment complexes.

It’s no longer enough, or even necessarily beneficial, for this campus to expand. Yet expansion comprised the bulk of the discussion Monday evening.

At the end of the meeting, I felt reinvigorated in my conviction that students deserve more respect from administrators. It’s true that we’re young, and it’s true that we can be distracted. Sometimes we’re apathetic, and sometimes we’re misguided. But we’re still adults with adult responsibilities, and we still care about the issues that affect us. That’s why things like this meeting exist.

Until we have officials who will treat us with the respect we deserve, we need not be content. We need to demand honest, forthright communication from the people who run this institution. We need administrators who will address failures instead of refusing to talk about them. We need to stop listening to people who tell us that the only thing that matters is a bigger campus with more and more and more and more students.

That’s what I learned from Monday’s Town Hall meeting.

Nathan James is a junior majoring in public relations. His column runs on Thursdays.