Although the establishment of the Young Trustee student body election garnered strong support two years ago, questions have arisen regarding whether or not the process is entirely democratic.
Many of these concerns stem from the Young Trustee Nominating Committee’s influence in shaping the pool of applicants before students vote. This year, 20 students submitted applications for the position, from which the nominating committee selected three finalists.
Duke Student Government President Mike Lefevre, a senior, said the current process—which involves the YTNC privately reviewing applications—implies that the student body is not fully qualified to select the Young Trustee. Lefevre called the election setup a “guided election.”
“In order to evaluate the system we have, you have to admit a lack of competence,” Lefevre said. “It’s democracy, but we don’t trust the students to choose candidates.”
In fact, last year’s Senate considered an amendment to permit the student body to vote on all Young Trustee applicants—and eliminate the YTNC. The Senate ultimately rejected the amendment.
But those who are or have been affiliated with the YTNC say the committee works as hard as it can to select the most qualified candidates before the election.
Chelsea Goldstein, Trinity ’10, who sat on the committee before running for Young Trustee last year, said the body spends as many as 25 hours deliberating about the candidates. She added that she believes the YTNC is a representative and informed group.
YTNC Chair Christine Larson, a sophomore, said the committee takes special precautions to remove biases. These precautions include disclosing conflicts of interest, removing members if their conflicts are deemed to be too substantial and having members abstain from voting if they feel their biases are clouding their judgment.
Yet some have questioned how qualified the nominating committee is to select finalists. Senior Brooke Kingsland said she decided to run as a write-in candidate this year because she believes committee members have a lack of understanding of the Young Trustee. Kingsland was one of the eight semifinalists in this year’s selection process, but was not chosen as a finalist.
“I felt the nominating committee itself was pretty arbitrary,” Kingsland said. “Their level of familiarity with the role was questionable given their influence.”
Kingsland noted that despite the YTNC’s problematic structure, she thinks a reformed YTNC is a better option than a completely open election.
Before the transition to an election, Goldstein noted that the committee was less attentive to demographics when selecting the Young Trustee.
“If you ask anyone on this year’s committee, there won’t be one person who will not say there had to be at least one girl and that diversity took up a considerable part of their discussions,” Goldstein said. “The finalists should be chosen regardless of gender and ethnicity. There’s definitely a push to look good as a committee.”
The framers’ intent
Former Special Secretary for the Young Trustee process Amanda Turner, a senior, said she started drafting recommendations about possible changes to the Young Trustee selection process in 2009 because of DSG’s significant influence on the process. In doing research while compiling her draft of the Young Trustee bylaw, Turner said that many former students elected to the position had prominent leadership roles on campus.
“Most of the criticism [of the selection process] was that DSG was so heavily involved,” Turner said.
Turner said the election has encouraged students who are not in such influential roles on campus to apply for the position.
“I think the fact that Awa [Nur, former DSG president and Trinity ’10] and Mike [Lefevre] chose not to run has opened up the Young Trustee position to a lot more students,” she said.
When they first authored the bill calling for an open student body election, DSG’s Pete Schork and Will Passo said that an election would encourage more student involvement. Passo and Schork both said they are still in favor of the election.
The process was more corrupt prior to the bylaw change, said Passo, a senior. Prior to the student body election, the Inter-Community Council and Senate jointly elected the Young Trustee after the nominating committee narrowed down the finalists.
“You had only [around] 40 DSG people picking Young Trustee, and that predisposed them to choosing other DSG people,” Passo said. “It was just a very small segment of the student body choosing.”
Now that there is an open election, he said the majority of the student body knows about Young Trustee, he said, citing this year’s 49.94 percent voter turnout.
“It used to only be the really highly informed student leaders who knew what Young Trustee was. The selection process would happen Wednesday night at DSG and then there would be an article in The Chronicle the next day,” Passo said. “That was it. By having an election, the student body knows a lot more about the position.”
Future reform
After two years of the current Young Trustee student body election, the system’s flaws are prompting ideas for reform.
“I absolutely think there will be reform—I don’t think you’ll find a single person who has gone through [the Young Trustee election] who is satisfied with the process,” Lefevre said. “The very people who capitalize and gain from the process admit that it’s wholly flawed—that will be the basis for change.”
In the Fall, the Senate made minor changes to the composition of the YTNC and granted the committee the ability to select up to five finalists. Now that the current process has gone through two cycles, Lefevre said he looks forward to possibly reforming the system. Schork, current DSG executive vice president and a junior, said the Senate will decide the course of action.
Lefevre and Schork agreed that they would prefer the YTNC selection process to be more transparent.
“I do think that having [the YTNC conduct] open interviews is a helpful way of allowing Duke’s undergrad community to observe and evaluate the candidates,” Schork said. “[But] it could alter the objectivity of the committee. A lack of complete transparency protects objectivity.”
Larson added that some of the shortfalls of this year’s YTNC can be attributed to a lack of time for committee members to adjust to their roles. Larson suggested that the YTNC be formed by the middle of Fall semester.
“A lot of the difficulties and resulting criticism we ran into this year were because the process had to be really compressed from the start and then because of that already squeezed timeline, we did not have time to deal with issues as thoroughly as we would have liked to,” Larson wrote in an e-mail.
Senior Michelle Sohn, who was elected Young Trustee Feb. 15, said although she acknowledges that the current process is not perfect, there should continue to be some type of selection process that values the student body.
“I think it crucial that, even if we reform the current process, we make sure undergraduate students have a say,” Sohn wrote in an e-mail.
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