Why your councils aren’t living up to your expectations

Student council leaders experience the same thing every year. I call it the “Blue Tape Trap.” Every branch of administration uses it. You contact them with a great idea. They say, “Let’s meet next month.” Eventually, they cancel and say, “Let’s meet next month.” You finally meet and they say, “Good idea. We’ll think about it.” You walk away feeling important, because you met with some low-level bureaucrat.

This happens repeatedly with councils and students and begs the simple question: Why are the student councils ineffective?

Before that question can be answered, we should look at the two approaches to getting things done at Columbia:

A) Be a Diplomat—Get involved on one issue as a freshman, cultivate relationships, go through drafts of proposals, get shot down constantly. Encounter Blue Tape Traps. Ultimately, you will settle for a quarter of the proposal you wanted, because, as the saying goes, “If you want to kill a project, try to make it perfect.” If you are “perfecting” your idea, your peers and administration will mutilate your vision beyond recognition.

B) Be a Pitbull/Pain in the Ass—You don’t have time for Blue Tape Traps. Explore end-runs around the Blue Tape. Talk to the Engineering Student Council or the Columbia College Student Council, professors, or alumni. Visit the relevant people every day until they listen. In the worst case, create the need for a campus referendum to be heard at least. You get the self-gratification of knowing that you used every drop of political capital to get something done.

So, now back to the question: Why are the student councils ineffective?

It isn’t because 75 percent of the council members are merely on the council to improve their résumés. It isn’t because they act mostly as glorified party planners. It isn’t their incessant clinging to political correctness—although all of the above are true.

The reason why ESC and CCSC are ineffective is that members don’t understand the idea of “political capital.” Political capital is the degree to which you will be heard seriously before people become sheep. Even if you become a pawn of the administration, as have many of our past leaders, you lose capital because administrators think they can use you. Of course, there is a grey area, but few can toe this line while still being effective.

Seniors realize that they can make a difference, and try to push through legislation and initiatives. But with so little time left, the administration plays its famous game—“Let’s wait for a few months until you graduate.” They wait you out with the Blue Tape Trap.

What’s the solution? Simple: use every ounce of your political capital. If council members push policy through effectively, they should have no political capital left by the end of senior year.
Perfect example: In 2006, SEAS had no merchandise in the bookstore (but CC and Barnard did…). Barnes and Noble neither wanted to design merchandise, nor allocate floor space. Being a freshman, I initially played the role of a diplomat, until I realized that meetings with the management went nowhere. Tired of bureaucracy, I designed shirts, hoodies, and shotglasses myself, and walked into B&N every day for two weeks, saying, “You will EVENTUALLY stock SEAS merchandise. The question is, do you want to see me every day until then?” To this day, they still sell the same designs I forced through three years ago.

Moral of the story: administrators everywhere like the simple life. New ideas create excessive work, so why would they want to come up with them? New ideas are students’ responsibility. To get things done, students have to be pitbulls, do the legwork, and use up political capital to get it done completely, correctly, and quickly.

The councils currently act as divisions of the administration and are the administration’s single greatest tools in keeping the status quo. The lay student believes that his voice is heard through the councils, but this isn’t always the case. The councils have to start actually representing their students, man-up, pass aggressive resolutions, push the envelope, and utilize all political capital.
The councils have lost our spirit since 1968. We keep falling into Blue Tape Traps. We’ll always need diplomats to keep relations with the administration from deteriorating, but diplomats have to start working with the pitbulls to get meaningful change enacted for their constituents.

Rajat Roy is a School of Engineering and Applied Science senior majoring in industrial engineering and operations research and minoring in environmental engineering. He is a University Senator from SEAS.