Pryor's Move Stuns IOP Students

When Institute of Politics (IOP) Director Sen. David Pryor announced his plan to dissolve the IOP's Student Advisory Committee (SAC), saying the group had become too insular, many students involved in the IOP said they were confused.

They already knew SAC was in need of change, and they had been working hard for two years to change it.

Students say Pryor's decision came out of the blue for a student group already trying to reform itself.

For over two years, the IOP has been questioning the level of involvement students should have in governing the IOP. A major point of contention had been tension between the group's paid professional staff and its elected student leaders.

Last spring, SAC members told the IOP's senior advisory board that they had a proposal to end the tension--the two groups should simply better outline their working relationship, the SAC members said.

The students suggested allowing undergraduates to have more input into final decision about whether to go forward with programs. They also asked for a professional consultant to be called in to look at the situation.

"It was not at all personal, not against any staff member. It's just that when you have two areas of an organization, one being staff and one being students, it's important to have formal ways of interfacing between two groups," says former SAC member Heather A. Woodruff '03.

But the idea of a consultant was dropped over the summer.

Many students saw the unilateral nature of Pryor's decision this fall just another example of the administration's power over students.

"The dissolution of SAC...in a decision made unilaterally by the director without any consultation of students, sends a clear message: meaningful student input is not welcome," Choi wrote in an e-mail message sent out to the Undergraduate Council e-mail list shortly after Pryor's decision.

Choi is one of the most adamant supporters of student input for a group that is made up of students. She says she is insulted that Pryor did not consult with students--and that he has billed his move as part of the continuing restructuring process.

"If you want to restructure a body, you take their input into consideration before making change," Choi said. "You don't first dissolve the body, then ask for comments. When you proceed without a plan of action, you can't consider it part of a larger restructuring process. This move was not something that had been thought about."

Choi says the problem with student-staff relations was that student input in the organization was being cast aside, with lists of student suggestions disappearing and relations with the staff on a personal level beginning to erode.

"On the whole, we were concerned that our voice in the organization was losing out," Choi says. But when they voiced those concerns, students found the staff unreceptive. "To some extent, this created an atmosphere that the staff found threatening," she says.

At the same time as staff-student tensions rose, campus-wide student involvement in the IOP began to thin out. Attendance at weekly study groups decreased, and both students and staff felt that their mission to inspire students was becoming less successful.

Choi says she thinks that limited leadership opportunities disenchanted students lessened student interest in the group.

"We thought the key difference between the IOP and other student organizations is that other groups gave students the ability to become more entrepreneurial, and give more of a leadership role, and much more real responsibility," Choi says.

Executive director Cathy McLaughlin is the longest serving staff at the IOP. She says in the past few years, the IOP has proved less able to get students excited about politics.

McLaughin says the decrease in student participation has come at a time when SAC has evolved from an open center for student politicos to a group without ability to reach out and inspire students to become involved in politics.

She says that when she came here eight years ago, the IOP was a haven for student groups on campus, and a place that reached out to all undergraduates.

She says she disapproves of SAC's focus on internal bureaucratic issues, rather than outreach efforts for the Harvard undergraduate community as a whole.

"In years past, SAC was really a service to students to inspire them in politics," McLaughlin recalls. "[SAC was] an outward looking group who surveyed students, found things that interested the undergraduate body and searched for a political bend to campus affairs that would involve particular organizations."

Political events at that time, says McLaughlin, were a big success because students from all corners of the campus found their interests represented alongside the mission of the IOP.

All student groups approached the IOP, says McLaughlin, when they found a political event tangential to their mission. But recently, McLaughin says, student leadership at the IOP has not made the institute open to other student groups to use as a resource.

"We need to reform what we are about," McLaughlin says. "Students should be less concerned with internal structure and hierarchy, and more with how we can move forward and take advantage of these opportunities. It is incredibly important that we reach out to more people."

But McLaughlin is part of the staff that students now say has only worsened the problem, by reducing student control of the organization.

Former SAC member Robert F. McCarthy '02 says that SAC--well aware of its problems--had put forth its own efforts to eliminate the exclusivity that held back the IOP.

"Attendance numbers have gone down, and there seems to be less loyalty to the IOP, but that's not because we don't reach out to students," he says.

McCarthy says efforts to incorporate the interests of students on campus paid off this semester, when study group attendance rose.

McCarthy attributes decreasing numbers of students involved in the IOP to an increasing number of student groups on campus. He says that SAC has often discussed methods to increase involvement.

SAC has changed its own internal structure in recent years. One year ago, the group created a senior associate position to give a more formal role to younger members not elected to SAC itself. And last spring, the group voted to downsize itself by nearly 50 percent in order to distribute more leadership positions to those not on the body.

McCarthy notes the group also started an outreach program to specifically target the problems McLaughlin outlined.

This year, SAC members aggressively interviewed other student group leaders about what they would like to see at the IOP. McCarthy says the program had concrete effects.

After meeting with students involved with the PBHA Prisoner's education program, IOP started its own prison reform study group. McCarthy says he was very pleased to see the PBHA students attend the weekly study group.

"We could not have worked with student groups more than we have," McCarthy says.

But Pryor says changes simply were not coming fast enough. He was especially disturbed by decreasing attendance numbers and felt that allowing SAC to continue would mean the group did not address the problem.

"It was time to make the change; SAC was getting ready to have elections But the elections would only proceed with the move forward too slowly," he says.

"The time was right to start over," Pryor says.

--Staff writer Sarah A. Dolgonos can be reached at dolgonos@fas.harvard.edu. Staff writer Kirsten G. Studlien can be reached at studlien@fas.harvard.edu