In my opinion, part of moving from adolescence to adulthood is moving beyond anger or disrespect toward authority to a grudging acceptance. Eventually we realize that some form of authority is inevitable and learn to make our peace with it, working within the system instead of angrily against it.
If a college's success is measured by how many students go through this process while attending, Duke is probably a failure.
The last two years at Duke have been defined, as far as I can tell, by a huge credibility gap between the official organizations of the University and the student body. For instance, many students don't seem to strongly believe that the administration genuinely represents their best interests or really cares about their concerns. When the administration is talked about, it's usually in a disparaging way, in the form of jibes about incompetence. But I think the group that suffers the most from this disdain for official bodies isn't the administration: it's Duke Student Government.
The last two weeks illustrated this sad fact very well. As far as I can see it, the recent DSG election showed that Duke students don't feel it represents their interests.
The election itself could hardly be called a huge success. You could say that since the online voting process got off to a bad start, and considering the sad state of electoral participation in the United States, a 40 percent voting rate isn't that bad. But you'd basically be arguing that voter turnout was merely disappointing, instead of a total disaster. That is hardly a vote of confidence in DSG's ability to inspire the student body to action.
But it's the numbers behind that number that are most important. In the presidential election, 20 percent of voters cast their ballot for a candidate who was obviously running as a joke (In the spirit of full disclosure, I was one of them.). The message I draw from that figure is that only 32 percent of the student body really takes DSG seriously enough to cast a meaningful vote, which slides even closer to "disaster" from "disappointing."
Among the other candidates, another 20 percent of the votes were cast for a candidate who, rightly or wrongly, was closely associated with the past two DSG administrations. There was a feeling, it seems, that a certain clique had become dominant in DSG, and that the people who made up that clique had simply failed to represent the student body well. This was a stunning reversal from two years ago, when then-sophomore Elliott Wolf was elected as a regular sort of guy who would shake up the way DSG operated.
The lesson I draw from the election is that 8 percent of students are very satisfied with the current leadership style of DSG and 68 percent don't even take the matter seriously enough to cast a meaningful vote. Yikes. Can we really say that DSG is serving one of its major purposes-representing the interests of the Duke student body to the administration-with this sort of result? I suppose one could point to the other executive board election outcomes to say that my analysis is incomplete. Of course, half those elections were unopposed, none of the other three was as well publicized as the presidential election, and they all suffered from low turnout.
It seems the student body either doesn't care about DSG or finds its record so entirely disappointing that it doesn't deserve truly serious consideration. Ironically, the result of this view is that, even if DSG had been representative of students' interests before, these horrible election results make DSG even less representative, less credible and ultimately less effective in its major role as liaison to the administration.
Since spring 2006, having some kind of representative who can reasonably present student opinion to the administration has become incredibly important. But when a mismanaged and flawed election parallels a mismanaged and flawed West Campus room selection problem, the image of DSG as a tool of reform or a microphone for student opinion has become tarnished. I think the new administration will have a tough job in restoring-or in fact creating-student faith in student government.
Frank Holleman is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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