Joseph's e-mail to student body takes wrong tone

We are optimistic that new USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 will succeed in achieving his vision of a more civic-minded student body. Moreover, we agree with Joseph that the report on race relations released last week presents a golden opportunity for the sort of civic engagement that the new USG administration is trying to foster. Indeed, it is precisely because we share Joseph's broad goals that we are troubled by the communication strategy he has recently employed in advancing them.

On Thursday, Joseph sent the student body an email titled "Are you talking about it?" He used the bully pulpit to urge and challenge — and at times virtually command — undergrads to take a more active interest in the results of the USG survey on race. The email's tone was unusual and self-consciously so — it was a highly stylized effort to convey a sense of grave, impassioned urgency. Joseph managed to exude both inspiration and frustration, and his readers were supposed to be moved by the sheer fieriness of it all.

We doubt the effectiveness of this approach.

Never mind the bizarreness of being told in an email what we ought to be discussing with our friends over dinner. On some level, we think it entirely appropriate for the USG president to set the agenda and highlight those issues which he thinks most deserve our attention. The problem is not that Joseph told us that we should care about race relations; the problem is that he left us with very little idea of what "caring" might mean.

There is a certain condescension in scolding people for failing to take an interest in something without suggesting to them any truly constructive outlets to express their interest. Joseph's email was moralistic in the worst way — it instructed us to get involved without actually facilitating our involvement.

The only concrete action that students were invited to take was to read the report for themselves. Of course, we do not object in principle to the idea of broad student participation in discussions of race at Princeton. But sooner or later, Joseph should lay out his own interpretation of the report. He should identify the most salient of the report's findings, draw sound inferences and build consensus for specific institutional changes. Only once Joseph has submitted such a synthesis for public criticism can he reasonably claim to be showing leadership on this issue.

In the meantime, the shrillness of Joseph's pitch is counterproductive. We are willing to call this a rookie mistake, and we hope that Joseph chooses a more helpful tone in the future.