Yale agencies must choose their own priorities

Like so many debates, the controversy surrounding the hiring practices of Yale's Associated Student Agencies ("Fraternities monopolize ASA jobs," YH, 10/19/01) involves the issue of individual rights. In this specific case, in which ASA student-employees admit to having some preference in hiring students from their own teams and organizations, the freedoms in question derive from an individual's right to liberty. Included in this is the freedom of association—that is, the right of an individual to conduct himself as he pleases in his personal, social, and political interactions. Both Yale and ASA businesses were formed through the exercise of this right, and they—as well as their constituent members—continue to possess it. Freedom of association has far-reaching effects, and an investigation of its implications for each party sheds a good deal of light on this controversy.

I'll begin with ASA itself. The rights granted to these businesses by freedom of association are fairly obvious. The agencies currently affiliated with Yale are private associations, formed, staffed, and funded through individual contracts and purchases, and their members have the right to interact—or refuse to interact—with whomever they please. They may hire or reject prospective employees based on whatever criteria they desire, and if association with a fraternity or athletic team is one of these criteria, so be it. In addition, their employment positions and their revenues are their property, and they can distribute them as they see fit. It is in their best interest as corporations to hire the most qualified and competent employees they can find. But in the end, they may set the rules by which they are governed, and as we say in my native Tennessee, they can shoot themselves in the foot if they want to.

But even though these organizations have their rights, it is to their disadvantage to employ those rights rashly, for Yale is a private organization as well, and as such, it has leverage of its own. Just as ASA businesses can hire whichever employees they please, Yale can affiliate or refuse to affiliate with whichever organizations it wants. And if it doesn't like the hiring practices of ASA businesses, it can within its rights offer them a variety of incentives to shape up. Most obviously, Yale can threaten to revoke ASA businesses' right to use its name, which goes a long way toward giving these otherwise small-time establishments an "official" image. In addition, Yale's property rights are a powerful bargaining chip: as a landlord, Yale can evict organizations from their Hendrie Hall offices, and its property rights in general allow it to forbid them from operating on campus. And all of this says nothing of Yale's right to give this endorsement and these resources to a competing organization. In short, all that separates ASA businesses from obscurity or extinction is the assistance of Yale University—assistance that Yale has chosen to give and may choose to take away.

The proper solution to the current controversy thus depends on the priorities of each party. If Yale has no problem with an organization that engages in allegedly unfair hiring practices, it may let the status quo continue. If Yale holds "equal opportunity" to be of paramount concern, then ASA businesses and their controlling organizations must decide whether the benefits provided by Yale's name and favor outweigh those gained from keeping the business "in the family."

Finally, Yale students as consumers have the opportunity to make their views known. If a student is indifferent to the practices a business employs, or if he likes the fact that his dollars go to support a given organization and its members, he may continue to support that business. If not, he may employ the same techniques of boycott and public criticism that supporters of equal opportunity have employed for years. Ned Andrews is a junior in Saybrook College.

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