Ladies and gentlemen, your three finalists for the Undergraduate Young Trustee: all will graduate with a major in economics, all are seniors, two are the highest-ranking members of Duke Student Government and two are members of the Inter-Community Council. In individual profiles of the candidates in The Chronicle, one headline says that a candidate seeks to "embody [the] diverse Duke experience" and another says the candidate wishes to "represent [a] varied Duke experience."
If "varied" and "diverse" mean that they all are economics majors and members of ICC and/or DSG, then I suppose those headlines are apt. This year's Young Trustee finalists are all variations of a single prototype. Choosing the Young Trustee from the finalists is like choosing what to paint your bathroom from the choices of white, snow white and egg shell white.
This is not to say that they are not qualified, because they are. This is not to say that they are not the best candidates for the position, for they very well may be. I am trying to point out, however, that there is clearly a lack of diversity in the finalists that the Young Trustee Nominating Committee-which, surprise surprise, is the love child of ICC and DSG-has chosen.
Where are the engineers? Where are science majors? Where are athletes? Why allow underclassmen to even apply when only seniors are named semifinalists? Where is any candidate that is not a member of the two organizations that form the nominating committee?
Of the eight semi-finalists named by the nominating committee, one is a mechanical engineer, one is a chemistry major and the other is in Program II, concentrating on the connection between physical and mental health. Two of those three candidates are women, which should have been a factor considering there are currently no female Young Trustees, and all three held significant leadership positions on campus.
Are all three of the very similar Young Trustee finalists so exceptional that it was not worth including the perspective of a Pratt student or a science major? Is it necessary to include both Jordan Giordano, the president of DSG, and Sunny Kantha, the executive vice president of DSG, in the finals rather than include a high-achieving female mechanical engineer or a female chemistry major?
Each candidate has pursued his or her own academic interests and has served in some of the most important leadership positions on campus. I am not saying that they are somehow unqualified to be Young Trustee. My problem with the three candidates is that they seem to offer very similar perspectives, and the blame should be placed not on them but rather on the nomination process.
Previous criticisms of the Young Trustee election process-which, in Chronicle commentary, includes words and phrases like "cronyism," "DSG-dominated," "opaque, insular and downright flawed"-often paint a picture similar to the fiasco of the appointment of a Senate replacement for Barack Obama. Perhaps these criticisms are unfair-especially considering that DSG has passed reforms over the past few years to lessen its own influence on the selection committee-but it is hard not to jump to these conclusions when you look at this year's finalists.
In order to bring more legitimacy to the most important position a Duke student can aspire to, the selection process must be made more transparent and the entire student body must have greater involvement. Limiting the nominating committee to DSG and ICC members only reinforces criticisms of cronyism. If the Young Trustee candidates are to truly speak on behalf of the Duke student body, then allow the thousands of students left out of the process to contribute as members of an expanded Young Trustee Nominating Committee.
Jordan Rice is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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