Let the Students Rule

In agreeing to the recent compromise, both PBHA and the administration have ignored the inherent danger in handing over significant control of undergraduate organizations to non-undergraduates.

PBHA has now vested significant control of its organization in a board that is composed largely of non-students. We agree that granting votes to non-students will give PBHA advantages that it would not have had otherwise, such as greater clout in dealing with the administration. But far more harmful to PBHA's ability to serve its primary purposes is the fact that major programmatic and financial decisions now rest in the hands of non-students, flying in the face of perhaps the primary reason for allowing students to run their own organizations in the first place.

We're not usually proponents of protecting students from themselves. But the administration has an obligation to prevent adult-types from imposing their long- and short-term agendas on student organizations. I recognize that PBHA's opponent in most of its current battles is the College administration. But under the new system, future student leaders will likely find themselves in the much more difficult position of battling against their own trustees.