BY BENJAMIN BRADLOW

In print | March 20, 2008

Current Student Council President Peter Gardner ‘08 entered his office under a cloud of controversy and a slight win over “none of the above” in last spring’s elections. Many were skeptical of the future role of a Council that had just received a thorough browbeating, mainly on the part of the campus’s cultural groups. In the controversy’s aftermath, I think most students have been pleasantly surprised on some counts by both the agenda and effectiveness of the Council under Gardner’s leadership.

Before I go any further, I should disclose that Gardner is a good friend of mine. Still, I have to admit that I understood some of the concerns the cultural groups brought up during what one student dubbed “Peter-gate” on a Daily Gazette comments section. The basic fact was - and is - that the most important student-run organizations have a spotty record in their responsiveness to all kinds of minority groups.

What was frustrating for some students about last spring’s debate speaks to a greater concern about the role of Student Council. While Gardner has gained some respect for the Council by casting it as an effective agent of change in day-to-day student life (extended Kohlberg coffee bar hours, extended McCabe library hours, etc.), the Council appears to have ceded any claim to a greater policy agenda.

When cultural groups lambasted the presidential candidates for their lack of familiarity with the groups’ policy concerns, the debate became too much about how many minority friends a candidate had or how many cultural events they attended, instead of challenging the candidates to develop a clear policy agenda that spoke to these groups’ desires.

Coming out of this haze, it might have been unfair to expect this year’s Council to pursue a concrete agenda on the most pertinent issues of Swarthmore’s institutional development. My impression is that the Council served a kind of advisory role to the Board of Managers and the President’s Office in the decision to eliminate loans from the College as part of a student’s financial aid package (federal loans are still on the table). The Council also served as a sounding board for student opinion in its well-attended open meeting about institutional development last month.

These were good steps to regain credibility and visibility for an organization that had been slipping into a malaise of apathy and resume-padding. But the upcoming Council should not be content to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. Last semester’s vice-presidential race hinted at both the possibilities and potential shortcomings of this semester’s elections.

Each candidate ran on a platform that made vague policy pronouncements, though there appeared to be no consensus about what the policy agenda should even be, let alone what kinds of differences the candidates had on a given policy. Too much of the debate focused on continued student life concerns or misguided policy initiatives like “Thanksgiving in Spring,” which, as was obvious to anybody following the issue, would never reach approval by the faculty or Provost Connie Hungerford.

To build on both the successes and limitations of this year’s Council, the new crop of as yet undeclared presidential candidates should craft a policy agenda that indicates an understanding of the Council’s potential as an engine for policy change in Swarthmore’s long-term institutional development, its centrality to the operation of all student government institutions and its role as an advocate for basic student life needs. Too much of the student body remains either willfully or unintentionally ignorant about these issues, and this ends up extending to much of the candidate pool for Council positions.

So allow me to propose a new set of criteria for presidential platforms. At the very least, students should know what each candidate believes is the most important issue for the Council to pursue under their leadership under three different categories: (1) long-term institutional development, (2) operations of student government and (3) student life. What do candidates think about the continuing goals of the college to attract and retain racial and socio-economic minority students?

How much oversight should the Council have over the funding decisions of the Student Budget Committee? What should be the nature of common student space on campus? These are just examples of questions candidates could address in each category.

It is time for the Council to reach its long-abdicated potential as an effective leader of students and student government at Swarthmore. The upcoming elections are the right time to build on the harrowing elections of a year ago, as well as the smaller successes that came out of their wake.

Ben is a senior. He can be reached at bbradlo1@swarthmore.edu.

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