...orjust party planner?

BY MICHAEL RUBIN

Campus activists complain that students are apathetic. This view is encouraged by the very public, and very useless, actions of needless campus bureaucracy, a.k.a. the YCC. Most students realize the YCC is silly and ineffective when organizing anything but social events. Indeed, the YCC should practice selective excellence and concentrate on what they do best. Their involvement in campus politics is unnecessary and inappropriate.

Yale College is like a small town of merely 5,000 residents. It's not a big campus, where a real student congress might be necessary. Undergraduates here are well-rounded and intelligent. Everyone has an issue they care about, be it boycotting grapes, getting Betty Trachtenberg off the fraternities' backs, U.S. News rankings, or illegal aliens in California.

When an issue is important, students mobilize. You don't like the fact that California wants to stop adhering to racial quotas? Organize a petition drive, get 2,000 signatures, and go to President Levin. If he does nothing, set fire to Woodbridge Hall. Or maybe you think the voters of California know what they're doing. You want to oppose the liberal onslaught. Circulate counter-petitions. Poster. Table tent. Guard Woodbridge with buckets of water. There might be chaos, but it will educate the campus (as in the postering wars between GESO and anti-GESO graduate students). If activists complain that everyone is apathetic, it's probably because their issue is one that ranks low on a long list of student concerns. Let's see where student opinion really stands--that's democracy.

What is the YCC's role in national issues? It has none. They can spew self-righteously about migrant workers or illegal aliens; the Political Union holds meaningless debates all the time, and commands the appropriate amount of student respect as a result. Unless the Administration sees widespread interest in an issue, they won't care. And the YCC's bully pulpit can't change that.

If the purpose of the YCC is to represent as broad a consensus of student opinion as possible rather than trumpet the platform of a couple activists, then they have no business in politics, where they're bound to antagonize half of their constituents half of the time. No wonder most people don't care about what the YCC says (This includes the Administration, who sees undergraduates as transitory anyway). The only place the Council can truly represent student concerns is with social or quality of life issues (e.g., less scrod in the dining halls). With politics, we're all big boys and girls who can speak for ourselves when we care.

The YCC should just be a campus-wide SAC. University standing committees? Let the deans decide. Since the deans care less about student politics on campus, they can be more objective in their selections.

If the YCC limited its efforts to actually useful affairs, students might associate it with more than an annual election scandal. What the current YCC forgets is that every five years, they try to "expand their role" and take on the political issues of the day. Former YCC President Kyu Rhee, SY '92, can be judged with hindsight: How effective was he for the typical Yalie? The Yale Corporation surely enjoys having the undergraduate seats he obtained. Too bad Kyu was too busy to stop the loss of made-to-order omelettes in the college dining halls. To the YCC: stay out of California, Hawaii, and U.S. News. We can get involved in that without you. Concentrate instead on getting a kick-ass band for Spring Fling.

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