Checking the chair

There is no doubt that Princeton's USG president spends more time in the public eye than the social chair. Unbeknownst to many students, however, this latter figure gets to act more like a student potentate, almost singlehandedly deciding how to allocate an annual concert and event budget around $150,000. It may be hard to find a person at Princeton who hates the Wailers, but it is easy to see the problem in the USG's current system, under which a single student has almost totally free rein to choose which big acts come to campus.

We students elect the social chair, of course, and we have at least a cursory idea of whether we're electing Mr. Margaritaville or Ms. Spears. Once elected, the social chair is, at least symbolically, accountable to our taste.

The difficulties of maintaining professional secrecy and of handling down-to-the-minute dynamics of arranging events create reasons for placing power in a single student.

But in the end, students give a damn about their music, and there are too few practical checks on a social chair's decision about how to spend tens of thousands of students' dollars.

To his credit, Dan Pugliese '06, recently elected social chair for the 2004-2005 academic year, chose to make increasing the position's accountability and openness to student opinion a visible part of his platform. Now we have a chance to ensure that such changes will be formalized.

The USG is currently considering several reforms to its constitution that would create checks and balances in the social chair's decision-making process. One set of changes would mandate the social chair to consult with the USG senate on large concert decisions, and to consult with the executive committee on venue choice. Beyond this, the USG will consider next week whether to create a deputy social chair to divide the labor of the social chair position while grooming a successor.

Institutionalizing a requirement that the social chair consult in some depth with other members of student government before committing so much money to book acts is the right idea. Anyone remember the 2003 visit by Third Eye Blind? Probably not.

It is not immediately clear, though, whether electing students into two years of guaranteed social chair work would be especially feasible or improve the position's performance. In the meantime, the USG should prioritize creating better channels for direct student input.