Since Reynolds Price gave his Founder's Day speech two years ago, students have actively promoted different visions of residential and social change. Being a junior, I have only a very brief sense of institutional history, but having spoken with several professors who have taught at Duke since the 1960s, I feel qualified to make the following assertion: The past two years saw students take an interest in administrative affairs at a level only seldom seen in the last three decades.
In these pages, I have criticized Duke Student Government numerous times. For the first time, I will now praise its efforts, especially those of President John Tolsma. DSG works best for the students as an advocacy group rather than as a legislative body, and advocacy groups work most effectively when they can make some claim to representation. Tolsma, by going to different living groups and campus organizations to ask those groups' opinions, could legitimately argue that the view he presented to President Keohane at least approximated the general student feeling.
Some might quibble about which groups Tolsma chose to visit and the manner in which the meetings were conducted, but comparing Tolsma's administration to that of last year's president, Paul Hudson, truly demonstrates the difference between trying to represent students and claiming to speak for them. Whereas Hudson spoke to the Board of Trustees about the "students'" vision for East Campus without polling student groups or getting instructions from the legislature, Tolsma has done both, and in doing so, Tolsma has, at least for this one issue, made DSG what it should be--a tool that can advocate by force of the phrase, "The students think thatÉ"
Before this column becomes too saccharine, I will note that DSG still has problems. Students probably still feel that DSG cannot claim to speak for all undergraduates since a representative sample of students was not included in the process, and it is true that little electoral accountability exists for DSG representatives--after all, what threat will non-DSG members make to their representatives if they do not like DSG proposals: "We'll vote you out next year!"? No student government is perfect. It may even be that our student government is less perfect than most, but on this one issue, I fail to see how Tolsma and DSG could have much improved their approach to the problem.
If nothing else, this whole experience should teach us that when students take a strong interest in a particular issue, the administration, at the very least, listens to what students are saying. President Keohane may not alter her decision, but she will listen to what we say if we say it loud enough.
Two problems, however, exist with the previous statement. First, who is "we," and second, it is difficult for students to promote positions actively since they lack sufficient information in most cases to present specific arguments. The first question is more difficult to answer. "We" is any group of students with a well-formed, well-articulated position. In most cases, "we" will be DSG since it has access to trustee committee minutes and administrators. In some manner, all students, not just DSG members, must have access to the information necessary to determine if a potential issue exists to which they want to devote their energies. If the information exists, then the second problem is solved as well.
On these lines, all non-financial trustee committee meeting and departmental meeting minutes should be made publicly available to any organization willing to post them to a World Wide Web-accessible computer system.
Too often, students cannot be advocates in their own defense. Last year, because of budget cuts in Trinity College, a department decided to fire all non-tenure track professors and replace them with graduate students. Undergraduates learned of this change only after it had already been decided. When confronted, one of the departmental figures responsible for the change said simply, "Graduates have to eat, too." I seriously doubt that had the department made available the minutes where those changes were discussed that students would not have strongly protested the decision before it was made.
While it is true that no set of students has the same vested interest in a department that the faculty does (after all, undergraduates are only here for four years), students in general will be here as long as the department exists, and who better to speak for future students than current students. Without a doubt, students should have no vote in departmental decisions, but undergraduates do have the right to comment on decisions that affect them. No defensible decision made by a department that drastically affects undergraduates should be made behind closed doors.
The residential life debate has shown the power of collective student interest. We should agitate for more access to information so that we can demonstrate a broader range of interests than only those which seem to affect how we live and how we party.
Alex Rogers is a Trinity junior.
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