Tonight, Duke Student Government will vote on a by-law that would open the undergraduate Young Trustee process after 10 semi-finalists are chosen. This proposal is an exceptionally important improvement to the process governing what is quite clearly undergraduates' most important position.
Terry Sanford initiated the program-through which, each year, an undergraduate joins the Board of Trustees for a three-year stint-back in the 1970s. He believed the position would provide students with tangible access to the University's chief decision makers. He also reasoned that the student presence would help guide the board's decision-making in appropriate directions.
For too long, however, the selection process flew in the face of Sanford's ideals of open communication and guided decision-making. The 15-member Intercommunity Council received applications, debated them and whittled down the list to three finalists without making any of this information public. In so doing, the process reinstated at the undergraduate level the very obstacles that Sanford's program seeks to remove at the institutional level. Simply put, it is good government to keep the selection process open. As the open nature of most government models confirms, constituents should be privy to the selections of their leaders.
What, after all, could possibly be gained by keeping the candidates' names secret? Some argue that doing so protects the privacy of applicants. But perhaps applicants who would be deterred by an open process should not be applying for the most prestigious undergraduate position. Far more importantly, what if the ICC makes poor selections? Then applicants have been seriously hurt, not helped, by the absence of public scrutiny.
In addition to thinking about these philosophical rationales for an open process, the legislature should think about the selection process' history.
In the words of ICC chair and proposal author Lisa Zeidner, who is also DSG vice president for community interaction, the new by-laws are long-overdue. In her thoughtful advocacy, Zeidner has stated that many of her predecessors realized too late that the selection process was too secretive.
In its previous activism on the topic, The Chronicle stressed one particular aspect of the perils of secrecy: Without a watchdog mechanism, the ICC has made some frightening mistakes such as conducting most of the process last year with the wrong set of by-laws. Ultimately, the error did not affect the outcome, but it reinforces the importance of oversight.
Finally, the selection process' inherent limitations should impress upon legislators the need for this change. Those ICC members most qualified to choose the Young Trustee finalists are themselves running and therefore recused themselves. In the past, regular members' replacements have been rather underqualified-most of them never having set foot in a Board of Trustees meeting. Certainly, lack of experience doesn't make the replacements incapable of making thoughtful decisions, but it increases the importance of having a watchdog.
The proposal could benefit from a few small changes. The by-laws need to allow a little flexibility in the first round cuts by offering ICC the choice of between seven and 10 remaining candidates. Furthermore, they should clarify that applications need to be released along with the names of the contenders; currently the status of the applications isn't mentioned among the proposed changes.
In voting for the proposal, DSG would put to rest a long-standing debate, and permit Zeidner and the rest of the ICC to do their job as they see most fit. More importantly, it would grant the undergraduate community the open selection process it deserves.
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