In U. groups, faces reemerge

The selection of these students highlights the politics of picking the policymakers that sit on University committees, task forces and working groups.

As broad and representative as the charges of these committees usually are, membership appointments to the groups are handled by relatively few individuals within the University community. In most cases, the students who are tapped for service on committees are either officials in the USG or are notified of the position through USG bulletins.

Similarly, the members of the faculty and administration who participate on committees are generally appointed by a single person: President Shirley Tilghman. She does not determine selection if she does not directly oversee the committee, but even in these circumstances, she is still usually consulted about who should be appointed.

Tilghman said the first criterion in selection is whether the committee’s charge falls under the individual’s professional purview. She said this consideration is why individuals such as Vice President for Campus Life Cynthia Cherrey and Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69 have either chaired or served on multiple committees over the last five years.

Durkee, who has chaired three committees over the last 10 years, said the goal of assembling a committee is always to have a broad spectrum of representation.

Both Durkee and English professor and Master of Rockefeller College Jeff Nunokawa were carried over from the Eating Club Task Force, which released its report in May 2010, to the Working Group on Campus Social and Residential Life, which released its findings one year later. According to Durkee, this type of repeat membership is not typical.

“It seemed particularly appropriate to carry over people from the ECTF in order to keep them a part of the discussion. Normally, you would not see this, but in that case it was deemed appropriate,” Durkee said.

Nunokawa said the two committees he served on certainly accomplished the goal of having broad representation. The committees had members who were affiliated with eating clubs — both bicker and sign-in — and students who were not, in addition to members of different class years, Nunokawa said.

“I think the reason I served on two of those committees is frankly because in the second committee so many of the same questions came up, the thinking was that there should be some continuity from year to year,” Nunokawa said.

Whether or not a faculty member or administrator has served on previous committees is not considered as a criterion for service, Tilghman said.

“In committees related to student life, we’re paying a little attention to academic expertise and we’re looking for individuals who have engaged with students in the past,” Tilghman said. “In some cases, we bring in people with disciplinary expertise so they can contribute to the discussion.”

Students, however, are either selected by the entire student body in elections or by a nomination process administered by the USG.

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Because the search for suitable candidates to serve on committees is delegated to only a few organizations like the USG, many task forces and working groups may draw from similar pools of students.

Former Class of 2014 Senator and current chair of the Student Group Recognition Committee Dylan Ackerman ’14, one of two undergraduates who serve on the Committee for Sustainability, found out about the opening after receiving an email from the USG soliciting applications.

“The reason that there are many USG-affiliated students serving on committees may be because the University believes individuals in the USG have a strong interest in school matters,” Ackerman said. “If they extended applications for committees to the whole student body, two things may happen: First, the number of applications received would be too large to evaluate and you would have some unqualified candidates, otherwise two, you would have a general lack of interest,” he explained.

There are currently 12 undergraduates, all affiliated with the USG, who serve on the Council of the Princeton University Community. Although the CPUC mission statement suggests “a permanent conference of the representatives of all major groups of the University,” the group only draws a select undergraduate representation chosen in a general election.

U-Councilor Haebin Kim ’13, who serves on CPUC, said that while many of the student nominations for committees go through the USG, not all do.

“I don’t think the University ‘targets’ USG representatives to serve on the committees,” Kim said in an email. “I feel like the University only goes through the USG to select committee members because of the fact that the USG is an elected body whose charge is to be a liaison between students and administrators.”

Kim said the USG does one of three things when asked to recruit members for committees. First, it forwards the request email from the administrator to members of the senate and ask them to search for students who might be interested. It also publicizes the opportunity in an email to the undergraduate student body and open an application on the USG website. Finally, it may forward the request to campus leaders who opted to receive additional alerts from the USG.

Kim said that while the USG tries to ensure as much diversity as possible on committees by widely publicizing opportunities, it is currently working on developing a comprehensive review of the advertising and nomination process in order to reach as many interested applicants as possible.

The Eating Club Task Force was one particular group that was well represented by high-achieving students. For example, it included an individual who later won a Rhodes Scholarship and another who won the Pyne Prize.

However, Nunokawa said the group was still an accurate representation of the undergraduate population. “When that committee started, everyone started from very different places and on very different pages,” he said. “I don’t think the caliber of students affected the representation — we had a robust heterogeneity among that group,” he added.

Some groups have turned to creating websites or online forums to incorporate the opinion of students who are not selected to serve on University committees. A website was launched prior to the formation of the ECTF which enabled all students to send in questions and ideas for the task force. Information from that site later became the basis of most of the discussion about eating clubs, according to Deputy Dean of the College Clayton Marsh.

Tilghman noted that ultimately, “diversity” in University bodies depends on the definition.

“There are so many ways in which one can define diversity on committees,” Tilghman said. “We look for people who are interested in the area at hand and have thoughtful comments to contribute.”