President Keohane should change the young trustee program so that only juniors are eligible to run.
President Emeritus Terry Sanford set no "class" requirements on the young trustee when he created the position. The student legislature could choose anyone, sophomore through senior, for the position. In recent memory, however, no non-senior has won and very few have even made it to the final selection round of the nominating process.
The young trustee serves on the Board of Trustees for three years, during the first of which he or she serves as a non-voting member. During that first non-voting year, the young trustee learns how the board works, what issues are of long term importance to the University and how to work within the group to effect change.
The rationale for having a young trustee is twofold. First, most board members were undergraduates many years ago and therefore lack the immediate experiential reference to determine what issues are of major importance to undergraduates today. Second, a generational gap exists between the average board member and the average Duke student. Cross-generational differences in opinion and perspectives lead to policies and explanations which may or may not resonate from one generation to another.
At any given time, three young trustees sit on the board. They provide a bridge between more recent college graduates and their older counterparts and across decades of different experiences. All three young trustees serve in this capacity.
One important role which no current or forthcoming young trustees can fulfill, however, is as a connection between next year's campus concerns and the Board of Trustees.
Only a student living at the University within the midst of whatever controversies make a "young" trustee so valuable can simultaneously be in touch with immediate issues of concern and be able to express those concerns to the board.
For good reason, no board member can be an employee of the school since both overseeing and working for the same institution would create a conflict of interest. Similarly, it would be inappropriate for a current student to have a vote on the board while his or her vote might still materially affect his or her situation at the University. The non-voting status of a young trustee's first year on the board diminishes this concern.
Moreover, conflict-of-interest concerns, while legitimate, belie the existing state of student-trustee relations. As it stands, students sit on trustee committees such as the Student Affairs or Academic Affairs Committee, as well as on the President's Advisory Council on Resources where their votes could affect their current situation. The importance of having student perspectives on these groups, however, outweigh whatever potential negatives their dual roles as policy makers and students might involve.
Frequentl, juniors or even sophomores sit on those committees. Although seniors presumably apply for the positions, some qualification of the underclassmen makes them more attractive than seniors applying for the available positions. If one were to argue that only seniors have the requisite institutional experience necessary to adequately present the "student" view at the University, that person would denigrate, or at the least deny the validity of, many current student trustee committee members.
While it is unquestionably true that a senior has more experience as a student than a junior, it is not necessarily true that the nature of those experiences make for a more qualified candidate.
The young trustees chosen during the last three years at Duke have all had outstanding qualifications for their position. In the case of our current young trustee-elect, does anyone truly believe that this past fall semester offered any more "experiences" or "insights" that make her a more qualified candidate now than she would have been last year? No. Sarah Dodds is a fine candidate now; she would have been a fine candidate last year.
The only difference is that next year, when she actually serves on the board, she will no longer live on campus. Next year, the qualifications on which she was chosen will not have changed; she will serve admirably in her position, but she will be unable to speak as knowledgeably about next year's campus concerns.
Once young trustees leave the University, they are faced for the first time with the "real world." Life at the University that had affected them daily for the last four years will now take a back seat to rent payments, law school, medical school or whatever else they might choose to do with their Duke degree.
At board meetings, they will still build bridges across generations and across educational experiences, but they will not connect undergraduates with the Board, for they will no longer be undergraduates; they will no longer face the daily issues which make the undergraduate's life so unique.
The young trustee program has served the University and its undergraduates well. It is now time to make the program work even better than before by permitting only juniors to run for the position of young trustee.
Alex Rogers is a Trinity junior.
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