Student Council's University Unity Project committee met last Sunday to elect its leadership for the coming year. The theme for the Project, as chosen last spring, is environmental sensitivity and sustainability. So far, the committee has decided only about broad objectives. "We're still in the stage of brainstorming and bouncing around ideas," said newly selected committee co-chair Sheffield Hale. He assured more specific initiatives will be decided upon at the committee's next meeting this Sunday.
No doubt more concrete plans will be made. The problem with the Unity Project, however, lies not with its current leadership or the committee's lack of a substantive agenda. The Project simply suffers from a flawed concept and a history of procedural setbacks. It has been tried and tested. Its future looks unpromising.
The first Unity Project was announced in fall 2008, with the theme of "Beyond our Grounds, Within our Community." The goal of the Project from the start has been to focus the collective energy and resources of the University toward a singular objective. It is meant to bring all students together. According to a post on Council's Web site from April 7, 2008, before the Project was launched, "The aim of this Unity Project would be to have as close to 100% student participation as possible on a designated annual effort." The Project clearly has not come close to accomplishing this lofty goal, nor has it given Council the internal focus to accomplish its mission more efficiently and effectively.
In reality, the Unity Project appears only to serve as a "catch all" for Council's planned initiatives. Most projects introduced under the Project's name seem as though they would have been enacted regardless. The Community Garden provides a textbook example. Council unveiled plans for it last March, merely one day after announcing that the upcoming year's Unity Project would focus on sustainability. The two seem to go hand-in-hand. Council's Environmental Sustainability Committee, however, had conceived of the idea for a garden seven months beforehand, and clearly had been planning it before the Project's theme was revealed. Though the two coincided nicely, the Unity Project was not the impetus for the University's Community Garden.
Procedural errors during the past year and a half have also hampered the Project's chances for success. The most obvious of these was the voting debacle of last spring. Following a mistake by the University Board of Elections on the spring ballot, voting for the Unity Project's theme was hastily moved to Council's Web site. Because of a glitch, however, more than 38,000 votes were cast before the poll was removed from the site - about 18,000 more votes than there are undergraduate and graduate students at the University. Once a workable ballot was finally up and running, only 645 students voted on the proposed themes. Given the circumstances of a special election, a dismal turnout was nearly inevitable. Still, it is difficult to push for a University-wide Project when only three percent of total students choose the theme.
Council took steps over the summer to reevaluate the program and to restructure it. In the past, the Project committee was responsible for distributing money to interested student groups, allowing them to carry out their own Project theme-oriented initiatives. This year, the committee itself will consist mostly of representatives from these outside organizations - the focus has shifted from granting funds to deciding on projects to mutually carry out. If anything, this change removes the monetary incentive for these groups to participate and could dilute interest in the Unity Project further.
Pessimism is not a virtue, but Council must be realistic about the future of the Unity Project. Even if the new committee co-chairs are among the University's best and brightest, they have been given an impossible task. Too much has been invested in the Project for it to be abandoned immediately, but it has become clear that the Project is nothing more than a well-intentioned experiement doom to fail. Despite the changes made, Council's time and energy is better spent elsewhere.
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