Wherever you are on campus reading this, stop and look around. The indelible stamp of President Peggy R. Williams is everywhere. The Center for Health Sciences, the Circle Apartments, the Fitness Center and the sparkling-new School for Business all opened their doors during her tenure as president. God bless the Capital Campaign.

Along with adding new features to the South Hill landscape, Williams has increased diversity in each of her 10 years as president with the success of the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar Program.  The development of the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies and other efforts have strengthened our academic profile, closer than ever before, to an elite level. When she retires, she will leave behind a presence that will be hard to fill.  Good luck to the successor.

But with all the good that she has done on this campus, I fear she has made one mistake in judgment in her last six months as president.

In this opinion and editorial column, and in the letters to the editor in the box to your left, an intelligent and mature conversation has taken place about sexual assault and rape culture on this campus. In hallways, classrooms, dining halls and dorm rooms, that discussion has continued. All of the talk, of course, stems from the three, now-infamous incidents reported in February.

Recently, with forums held by SAFER, crucial reforms in judicial policy and the topic’s petering out of the news cycle, the dialogue has subsided. I still feel somehow unsatisfied. Because somewhere in the flurry of responses, there was something missing from the discourse.

What was unaccounted for in the matter was the voice of our president, Peggy R. Williams.

A key responsibility of the president is to unite and lead the campus community. Aside from essential fundraising efforts, the construction of new buildings, organization of events, oversight of academic policy and a laundry list of other duties, there is also an unwritten commitment to the college’s population and their safety.

In an issue that created a firestorm of controversy and outrage, not just on our campus but in the nationwide academic community, shouldn’t we, as concerned students, professors and administrators, expect our highest ranking official, our leader, to make a statement?

What makes this specific instance odd is that Williams has been so vocal on other contentious issues involving her students. At Free Speech Rock in 2005, while surrounded by 500 chanting Bombers, she spoke with vigor and passion about racist and bigoted comments made towards a young black woman. The Erase the Hate rally was a community building and progressive moment that defined her devotion to this campus, and these students.

In 2003, Williams heralded the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the legality of Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan. In a public statement, seen in The Ithacan and on the college’s Web site, her voice ardently commends championing racial diversity at all colleges, including her own.

Maybe legal barriers or pending litigation stands in her way of being the assertive, forthright, president she has built a reputation as being. As outsiders in the issue, her silence is open to speculation. Perhaps it was a journalistic fault by this paper to not ask or demand for her reaction or her guidance.

In her final days as reigning president at this campus, it is only natural that we reflect on Williams’ influence on our campus. From new buildings and a wealth of new opportunities to a wiser, more socially conscious and more diverse student population, her mark is everywhere.

However, in the eleventh hour of her tenure, when her voice could have given counsel and direction to her troubled campus, she was silent.

Brian Hotchkiss is a junior writing major. E-mail him at bhotchk1@ithaca.edu.