Earlier this month the incoming Lawn residents were announced for the academic year of 2017-18. Although The Cavalier Daily ran an opinion piece almost immediately that criticized this group’s lack of intellectual diversity, what is often lost in the uproar that surrounds the release of lawn selections is the very establishment that chooses these residents: the Lawn Selection Committee. This body consists of 52 students, 26 of which are ex-officio student members that represent a broad range of individuals such as the University Judiciary Committee, Student Council, the Honor Committee, the Intra-fraternity and Intra-Sorority Councils and various minority-run CIOs such as the Black Student Alliance and Queer Student Association. The additional 26 students are fourth-years chosen at random. I had the tremendous privilege of being selected at random to help choose next year’s Lawn residents. Despite the joyful and enlightening experience that this was for me, the Lawn Selections Committee should not include these 26 randomly selected students.
My desire to eliminate this portion of the Committee stems from my own feelings of being unqualified to select the prospective residents. When I say that I felt “unqualified” for this responsibility, I do not mean that I felt my GPA or extracurricular involvements were inadequate compared to the many students who did have more substantial community and academic accomplishments that me. Rather, I felt unqualified because I thought my only true qualification was the fact I’m fourth-year student. I speak for myself and, likely, the other 25 fourth-years randomly chosen when I say that I have absolutely loved my time at the University and have sought to capitalize on as many opportunities to learn and grow as I can. While this is important, it does not inherently mean we are the most qualified individuals at the University to bestow the tremendous honor of living on the Lawn to the next class.
I feel this way primarily because I had not had the honor of living on the Lawn bestowed upon me; in fact, I never even applied. While some might not perceive this to be a major concern, this dynamic could be equated to having the Oscar Award winners chosen by professionals outside the film industry or the Emmy Award winners chosen by professionals outside the music industry. Although the evaluators in these hypothetical situations might have a cursory sense of what exemplary film or music appears like, only the most established in their respective fields can accurately distinguish between the great and the extraordinary. Each year, the hundreds of students who apply to live in one of the Lawn’s 47 rooms are each outstanding representatives of the University’ in their own way. As a fourth-year who has not had the opportunity to live amongst these individuals, I can only hope that my idea of the “most exceptional” representative of the University is embodied by the 47 students who will live on the Lawn next year.
The best remedy that I have been alluding to is replacing the Committee’s 26 randomly chosen fourth-years with current residents of the Lawn to ensure that the members of the committee do not feel “unqualified” in the same way I did. However, this too raises its own share of concerns. The best quality of the status quo Committee composition is that it accounts for the widest variety of student experiences and elicits the opinions of the common University student, such as myself. Thus, having a future selections committee composed of Lawn residents might only embolden the common critique of Lawn rooms as being overly elitist.
While this criticism is certainly valid, Lawn residents themselves are the only ones truly capable of ascertaining who should have the privilege of living on the Lawn. If students are concerned about the effect this might have on the Lawn’s inclusivity and diversity, then they should find solace in the fact that I feel retaining the presence of the 26 ex-officio members on the committee is absolutely essential. By accompanying this indispensable half of the committee with Lawn residents, we can feel most confident that the beneficiaries of the space’s 47 coveted Lawn rooms are going to the most deserving and representative members of each class.
Jesse Berman is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
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