LAST WEEK, the lead editorial in The Cavalier Daily labeled the Lawn Selection Committee a nepotistic aristocracy, alleging that 20 out of its 35 members consist of student leaders and heads of select CIOs like the UJC, Honor and University Guides, while only 15 are randomly selected by lottery. In the tradition of democracy and meritocracy, it argued, the Committee should either increase the number of random seats, or democratize the process in its entirety.
But what's so bad about aristocracy?Judging or recognizing service and academic achievement is rarely a democratic, randomized process, nor should it be. Simply put, the best student leaders from the most active community groups will better appreciate and gauge service contributions compared to a random individual, just like a professional chef can better recognize good food, top-class writers can better recognize good books for the Pulitzer, and top economists can better determine this nation's monetary policy.
Democratizing the committee will undermine meritocracy, rather than promote it. While I am sure every fourth year will be able to marvel and point to various academic and service achievements using general theoretical knowledge, they may not share the extensive, practical, first-hand knowledge of service involvement, which is, and should always be, a critical component of gauging such achievements.
An analogy for clarity: You could randomly pick a few chefs to judge the outcome of a national food contest on the basis that they all know what food should taste and look like, but this would cause a relatively less comprehensive evaluation of the food compared to a selection of very experienced chefs with more extensive knowledge on cooking and better equipped to judge. In the same way, the most active members of the community who have been actively involved in service and shown academic excellence are the most experienced and best equipped with both the theoretical and practical knowledge to select Lawnies.
Equally disturbing is the Lawn Process Organizing Committee's proposal to give permanent seats to a more diverse cross section of student representatives on the Lawn Selection Committee. The reasoned observer might ask, how does integrating more blacks, Asians, Latinos and LGBTs solely on the basis of their sex or gender help us move toward a better assessment of academic and service commitment? It seems more like a misplaced affirmative action program rather than a true recognition of merit.
In an e-mail exchange, Missy Jenkins, Senior Resident of the Lawn, said that this may allow for a diverse set of opinions and experiences on the Committee. But diversity alone should not guarantee one a permanent seat on the Committee. The allocation of permanent seats should be based primarily on service contributions and academic excellence, since these are the criteria to live on the Lawn.
If QSU, BSA or ASU are the top contributing organizations in terms of service programs for the University during a certain period of time, then they deserve a seat on the Selection Committee. But playing the race card on something that ought to be non-race based, like service or academics, should not be tolerated, nor should the Organizing Committee give in to this in the spirit of political correctness. In terms of allocating permanent seats, all groups should be held to the same standards, black or white, and minority student groups are as capable to live up to these standards as are others. Permanent seats that exemplify extreme service dedication and academic excellence should not be trivialized as race or gender-based concessions.
But why not give these minority organizations seats, considering the fact that mainstream active service organizations like Honor and UJC are predominantly white? Because these organizations do not determine their racial makeup, students do. Hollow arguments like the "whiteness" of UJC reflect poorly only on these minority students themselves, since they have the free will to join these groups, but do not, and then cry foul. The reality is that boycotting mainstream active service groups like Honor and UJC and opting for race-based groups limits the overall impact of one's service contribution to a particular group, instead of the whole University. But that is an individual's choice, and it is no reason to allocate a permanent seat to minority groups.
The Lawn Selection Committee should revert to an exclusively aristocratic group that best exemplify community service and academic excellence. After all, even if the Committee is choosing individuals who identify with their same traits, as some allege, these are traits we ought to encourage. Every potential Selection Committee will have its biases; the question is which ones we should promote. And we can all agree that relying on the biases of academically proficient and active students, rather than random fourth years, is the better option.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswaran@cavalierdaily.com.
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