CLASS councils have been around for five years now, yet they have little to show for it. Ask any 10 students at the University what the class councils do, as I did, and one of them might have an idea, two if you're lucky and they're upperclassmen that have gone to a fourth-year bar night. It seems that while the Fourth Year Class Trustees have distinguished themselves by having widely publicized events like their Nar Bights and the Lighting of the Lawn, the rest of the class councils are mired in inefficiency, redundancy and lack of publicity.
The Third Year Council received approximately $17,000 this year for its activities. Three to five-thousand of that came from the Alumni Association and went toward the class dinner, just like the other three class councils. The rest of their expenditures this year have gone toward the Ring Ceremony and Ring Dance. These may sound like valid expenditures, except when you find out that the Ring Ceremony is largely paid for by the ring companies, as it helps them make sales. That, and the thousands spent on the Ring Dance went toward only 100 participants.
The Second Year Council has even less to show for itself, especially considering that, according to their Web site, they have 51 representatives. Their newsletter cites them as having handed out candy on Halloween, as well as sponsoring a Senior Citizen's Prom. This is all well and good except that these feats are just duplicating jobs already done by Madison House and volunteer-oriented CIOs. In fact, all of the class councils are guilty of sponsoring programs that are both redundant and widely unattended. Skimming through the class councils' Web sites you will see events like resume workshops, graduate school forums, and career panels, all of which have been done many times before by University Career Services or any number of professional fraternities. The same goes for service events, like the aforementioned senior prom, as well as numerous blood drives and canned food drives. Events like these have been much more successfully executed by groups like Madison House.
Despite this rampant redundancy, the members of the class councils claim that their events foster class unity. When I asked a few members of the Third Year Class Council about numbers in attendance at any of their activities, they were only able to give me figures for their larger events, for instance only 28 percent of the class of 2003 participated in the Ring Ceremony. As for their smaller events, one member actually remarked that, "If we get 50 people to attend one of our events we're ecstatic." It seems that the "class unity" they are striving so hard to maintain may be found only in the members of the class councils and few others, if that.
Don't get me wrong, I hate to put down things that people work so hard for, and believe me, I don't doubt that some class council members do put their heart and soul into their work. However, shouldn't we be seeing more in the way of events to inspire this "class unity?" Perhaps they could spend some of their money on publicizing their activities better.
I will give them credit for realizing some of their shortcomings, as they are in the process of restructuring the class councils, with the new structure being voted on this spring in the elections. Unfortunately, the restructuring still focuses a lot on having committees that parallel the activities of some already established CIOs. According to Meghan Carroll, who advises the class councils, the restructuring calls for committees under all the class councils to continue to include both an education committee and an academic or career development committee. Both of these council committees' goals would be to schedule events specifically geared toward students in their respective year, which would seem to continue in the current fashion of sponsoring events that mimic those held by other departments and groups.
My suggestion would be to focus on de-structuring the class councils, thereby eliminating all the redundancy and wasted funds, and instead have one group comprised of all classes, save for perhaps the Fourth Year Class Trustees, and let them work in conjunction with Alumni Hall to plan and execute their big events.
(Andrew Fletcher is a third year in the School of Engineering. He is a Student Council representative.)
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