News-Letter

Every couple months, I sit down to clean the unread and unneeded messages out of my JHEM account. And every time I undertake this housekeeping, I find myself deleting a fair number of memos from the Student Council -- charity events, party updates and reminders about student elections. Lately, the volume of these missives has slowed to a trickle, which can't reflect well on a campus government regarded as increasingly oblivious to its constituents' concerns.

But the indifference runs both ways. In my past columns -- and, more recently, in this paper's editorials -- it has been pointed out that this is a politically lethargic campus. Such apathy naturally infects Homewood's student politics in the same way that it stifles debate on the state and national issues that members of the Hopkins community could, and should, confront with urgency and intelligence.

While StuCo generally does little of note, this year things seem to be drastically more interesting. After announcing a graduation speaker who has been met with a largely tepid response from students and faculty, and stirring up a miniature controversy at America's original research university by characterizing the proven facts of global warming as controversial, StuCo should be in for a charged election this spring. Yet, as poorly as these decisions reflect on Hopkins' intellectual profile, I predict that they will barely affect the way the Student Council operates.

The problem is that the processes underlying StuCo's recent actions are thoroughly mysterious. StuCo has kept key specifics -- such as names and vote counts -- hidden from view. And unless this year's candidates run under a banner of increased transparency, or the student body finds new ways to fight for their opinions (like filling the often empty "Letters to the Editor" section on the opposite page) this is not going to change.

One example of this opacity is the selection of commencement speakers. Late last spring, the officers for the Class of 2007 sent an e-mail to incoming seniors asking for suggested graduation speakers. They then formed a preliminary list from the responses, and settled on Ravens coach Brian Billick. Yet, whether he was anywhere near the top of this roster, or even on it, is impossible to say.

Neither the results of the survey nor the preliminary list were released -- not to the student body, not to the News-Letter reporter covering the story, not to yours truly. This avoidance of criticism is understandable, although rather dishonorable. But if StuCo were serious about popular opinion, it would have given Hopkins seniors some idea of its final few picks, if only to gather student reactions.

A few weeks after the commencement announcement, the Council scheduled a closed vote on a non-binding resolution by the Hopkins Energy Action Team to reduce campus carbon emissions. According to StuCo Executive President Laura Hansell, the only other recent closed vote involved "an impeachment hearing for someone on StuCo." Using this polling procedure to avoid small personal humiliations is one thing. But using it to shield policy decisions and the representatives responsible for them from speculation strikes me as extraordinary. For what anyone knows, the majority of StuCo's members might be interning for James Inhofe, the reactionary Oklahoma senator who once called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Pardon my hyperbole, but without transparent deliberations, it is impossible to know whether self-interest, careless expediency, or earnest but misguided effort has motivated recent decisions.

Although such choices cannot be reversed, there should be safeguards against disappointments. The best methods would be instituting limited guidelines for passing laws by referendum and means of recalling student officials. However, such potential liabilities would never be adopted by any sitting council, and, furthermore, they would demand much greater interest in campus politics on the part of the student body in order to have any effect.

But maybe that is the best place to start. When the next student council comes up for election, don't vote for the first name you see and complain when, one year later, you find that one of the producers of Big Momma's House II is your commencement speaker. It's time to finally bury Hopkins' reputation for on-campus apathy, and start demanding the whole truth.

--Patrick Kennedy is a junior Writing Seminars, history of art and English major from Watchung, N.J. Feel free to write him in for the Executive Presidency of the 2007-2008 Student Council.

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