Duke Student Government's latest snafu needs a lot more than a confessional "oops." Through a series of grave miscommunications and some deception, DSG-led by President Jesse Longoria-excluded several undergraduate applicants from being considered fairly to serve as representatives on the Undergraduate Experience Task Force.
Sept. 12, Longoria and a small DSG committee offered three students positions as official representatives on a Duke-administration task force that will consider the pros, cons and plan for the future of undergraduate life. These student representatives are charged with conveying undergraduate opinion to the administration. In addition, they serve as fully participating members of the committee charged with making recommendations to enhance undergraduate life. In short, these representatives are important.
The potential impact these students could have is why DSG ought to have made a concerted effort to open up applications for these spots. While DSG retains the technical power to appoint whomever it wishes to committees it is charged with filling, an application process open to the full student body increases the likelihood that the most apt students are chosen. But only a transparent and fair process ensures that all appointed positions are not assigned through DSG cronyism.
So far this year, DSG has made an effort to open committees to the community. Maybe that is why what happened next is so disappointing.
Sept. 13, Longoria sent out an e-mail to the student body soliciting applications for a variety of University committees; one of them was the Undergraduate Experience Task Force. The problem? These committee slots were already filled. The application process was phony. Longoria said the e-mail was a mistake. A myriad of other mistakes and miscommunications plagued the administration as it worked with DSG to find students for this task force; in light of these errors, Longoria's claim is entirely plausible. But it does not excuse what came next.
In response to the e-mail, several students applied to DSG for a slot on the Undergraduate Experience Task Force. They wrote essays and came in for 15-minute interviews with a DSG appointments committee, which included Longoria, senior Chris Chin and junior George Fleming.
No one told the students that the positions they had applied for were filled. Instead, the students were considered for a different University committee. This part is more than a minor bungling. It's a fiasco.
Fleming, who is DSG president pro tempore, attempted to downplay the fumble. Only five students, he said, were affected by the mistake. But the few students who applied for the position are only a small slice of the student body who should feel cheated by the process. With a closed application process, the variety of opinions and diversity of perspectives offered to the committee is diminished. The administration had to send DSG back once to appoint a female student. Perhaps such an issue would not have occurred if there had been a fair applicant pool.
The lack of disclosure to the students who applied is more troubling. It is one thing for an organization to make a mistake but another thing entirely to try to hide it. DSG's failure to tell the candidates the positions were filled calls into question its ability to represent students with honesty.
Someone should have to compensate for these errors by doing more than simply admitting there was a mistake made. This community needs a sincere apology. And perhaps this event should call into question whether DSG is the right group to choose students for University committees.
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