The NYU Presidential Search Committee gave students a chance to voice their concerns about the search process for the next university president at a listening session on Sept. 19 in the Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life.

About 30 students attended the listening session and discussed topics ranging from student debt to NYU’s global campuses.

Steinhardt doctoral fellow Daniel Bowman Simon said he hopes the new president will come from an academic background.

“I think it’s very important to have someone with a very strong academic background as an educator,” Simon said. “No offense to people on the board of trustees, but there’s a real absence of educators on the board of trustees, so I think that has some impact on how the board of trustees views education.”

Simon added that he wants the new president to be someone who will help make NYU more accessible and will lower student debt.

“I think that whoever is coming in as the president here should be very interested in actually increasing the amount of federal loans that are available to NYU students because that is a pillar to increasing student diversity in terms of socioeconomic division,” Simon said.

Law student Luke Herrine said he wants the new president to focus more on the school’s New York campuses than on global expansion.

“I think NYU should think of itself as a school that can focus its funds and resources on its campus in New York and on making those campuses accessible and high-quality institutions with well-paid, tenured professors,” Herrine said. “I’d like to see the vision of NYU change.”

Law student Leo Gertner agreed and said he wants the new president to be more transparent and responsive to students’ needs.

“[I’d like] to see a stronger commitment from the president as far as interacting with the board and the board interacting with the students so that this process that we’re going through right now … could be an ongoing thing,” Gertner said.

As during the faculty listening session on Sept. 16, the committee did not respond to the students’ concerns, but simply took note of them.

While this session was the only student listening session scheduled, the committee members said there will likely be another on Oct. 2. No more information on that session is available at press time.

Additional reporting by Abby Moyer. 

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Sept. 22 print edition. Email them at [email protected].