USG should listen to the student body

The Princeton student body has a new president today. It took nearly two weeks of campaigning, innumerable posters, a candidate forum, a debate, and a runoff election for us to make our selection. In the end, most of us still didn't know anything substantive about the candidates. We voted based on emails from friends and teammates and posters strewn around campus with catchy slogans and professional photos. Many of us did not vote at all. Today, we have a new president with an obligation to change the face of the Undergraduate Student Government and to make it represent the students it is meant to serve.

The vast majority of students on this campus have no idea what the USG does. They think of it as a place where ambitious undergrads spend hours practicing to run the real world. They think of it as largely useless, a committee factory disconnected from their daily lives. And they're not entirely wrong. But tell this to many USG members, people who have made student government their number one priority since arriving on campus, and they will look at you as though you have three heads. You will hear cries about 24 hour study spaces and concert series and the precept reform booklet. You will know that the USG has entirely missed the point.

Certainly there is a role for student government to do the small things, like making copying free and increasing Airporter service. But it is also the job of the USG to represent the student body's concerns and needs. Time and time again, the USG and its candidates seem to be telling the students what they need rather than posing the question and seeking out answers. The best example is the campaign against anti-intellectualism, one of few broad scope projects undertaken by the USG in the past year. Students at Princeton, who spend entire days doing reading, participating in precept discussions, and broadening their horizons through extracurriculars, found out one day that we weren't intellectual enough, as if the problem had dropped from the sky. The U-Council said it was true and so it was. Fortunately, the USG set out solving this "problem" in the usual way: it set up a committee, printed a few pamphlets and moved on. All over campus, nothing changed.

The student government ought to play a broader role in representing student concerns. They ought to spend more time finding out what is important to the students at Princeton. There are big issues on this campus – broadening academic options, improving information about postgraduate employment and opportunities, addressing concerns of race, gender, and sexual orientation. More than any before it, this past administration seemed deaf, dumb, and blind when it came to these issues. The new president must recognize that taking small, pragmatic steps is not enough; sometimes, even in student government, a little vision is called for.

USG reform is not the sole responsibility of the USG. We, as students, must play a role, as well. I have known more than one student, myself included, to complain that the USG is out of touch and self-important. But for all my criticism, I have never sought USG office. If we want people from a variety of backgrounds to represent a variety of campus interests, then it is our obligation to seek office and to provide assistance and votes to those candidates who attempt to bring change to the USG. student government is not some distant arm, much as it may seem that way. It is ours to change and shape to reflect our needs and interests.

Our new president, Matt Margolin, ran a uniquely constructive campaign. A junior who is active in campus life outside of the seat he held on the U-Council, Margolin is likely to provide just the kind of leadership the USG has been lacking. Margolin has the opportunity to be different, to think broadly and to make students a part of the USG again. As he begins his term, we can hope he makes capitalizing on this opportunity one of his top priorities.

Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J.