With all the red tape and bureaucracy standing between student government and its goals, leaving a decisive legacy is a difficult charge for any council. But three months into her term as president of the Columbia College Student Council, Michelle Oh, CC '06, may have already left hers.
For better or worse, CCSC's fall 2005 semester will be defined by its efforts surrounding the tailgating policy at Baker Field. As the leaders of the student coalition that launched the concessions boycott at this year's homecoming game, CCSC directly impacted the Athletic Department's decision to reverse the changes to the tailgating policy.
Taking such direct action against an administrative policy is atypical of the council. In recent semesters, CCSC has consistently avoided involvement in issue-based campus politics, such as the protests over race relations in spring 2004 and last year's MEALAC controversy. The council's standard response has been to issue a moderate written statement, avoiding public action like boycotts and protests.
According to Oh, the intrinsic differences in the issues warranted the council's divergent approaches.
"Solutions on the tailgating policy were completely in reach," she said. "Solutions on race relations on campus or discrimination based on religious beliefs are far more abstract and require greater expertise and more thoughtful consideration. ... When a matter is simple enough to address but still affects students in a meaningful way, then we can do something about it."
The response to the tailgating issue was also a break from the council's typical reactions to administrative policies. Attempts to change the administration's stance on issues like financial aid, campus dining options, or what to do with the empty sixth floor of Lerner Hall have all been quiet efforts set on long timetables-a sharp contrast to the noise the council made over the Athletic Department's adjustments to the tailgating policy. Oh said the council needs to pick its battles, and it viewed the Baker issue as a clear-cut fight with strong potential for success.
"You have to look at what's feasible and what's not," she said, explaining that it's much easier to convince administrators to retract a new initiative than to achieve a distant goal that involves reversing long-standing policies. "Goals like financial aid have never been met before," she said. "It takes much longer."
A Well-Connected Council
It is particularly notable that a new strategy of bold administrative maneuvering should come in a year when the executive board was elected for its close, insider relationships with administrators. These aggressive tactics were so removed from the council's typical methods of problem solving that they prompted significant deliberation among council members, with some fearing that they would alienate the very administrators they relied on.
The Impact Party's prior experience-all five members were on CCSC last academic year, many on the executive board-was a key element of their platform that set them apart from their opponents and helped secure their victory.
An affinity with the powers that be within CC may have been a helpful campaign strategy for Oh and the executive board, but the danger in appearing too close to administrators is that the council could appear unwilling to defy them on the student body's behalf.
On the other hand, student council members who have the ear of administrators are more likely to have allies within the establishment-a useful tool when the University's agenda severely diverges from their own, as was the case with the tailgating issue.
"With Baker, I think it was important ... that we had these really big relationships with administrators," said Izumi Devalier, CC '07 and vice president for policy. She cited Deans Austin Quigley, Chris Colombo, and Kathryn Wittner, as well as Executive Vice President for Administrative and Student Services Lisa Hogarty and Student Development and Activities President Kevin Shollenberger, as personal contacts that current CCSC members had developed prior to this year, many of whom helped council members strike the compromise with the Athletic Department that was eventually successful.
"Because we have those connections, we could use those resources to help the problem," Devalier said. "It would have been harder to mobilize their support" without prior relationships.
Debating the Boycott
The difficulties surrounding Baker that pitted the council against the Athletic Department also brought tensions within CCSC to a head. Student council members said it was clear from the beginning that the students expected some sort of response from them, but the form that such a reaction should take was not immediately apparent. According to Oh, "there was definitely some debate before we decided to go ahead [with the boycott] ... there were certainly members who were more vocal and adamant than others, as some were more cautious and less incensed in the beginning."
Given her background, it's not surprising that Oh readily classified herself as one of the more initially cautious members of the council. "Having seen how genuinely well-intentioned the administration was when they started making slight alterations to try to improve the situation, it was difficult for me think about the process of launching this protest," she said. "But because I trust my fellow council members to bring to my ears the needs of the students, I was able to fully support taking a strong stance at the end of the day."
That more adamant faction of council members was lead by David Chait and Kwame Spearman, respectively presidents of the classes of 2007 and 2006. "At first, there were differing opinions. Michelle was nervous about the administration ... but I was one of the largest proponents of taking as harsh an action as possible," Chait said, adding that he "thought it was important to show that, 'We weren't going to accept this.'"
Spearman credited his zeal to a perceived mandate for action from the student body. "Baker was a uniform issue that affected everyone. This is what we do [as a council]-no other group on campus is supposed to help students deal with administrative abuse."
Earning Their Stripes
While not all members of CCSC supported the hard-line stance from the start, they were able to reach an effective consensus on the issue in time for Homecoming. They transferred their collective momentum and energy to convince the Engineering and General Studies Student Councils to join them in the boycott, and then designed and distributed 700 T-shirts sporting the message: "Support the team, not the policy." A series of meetings between Athletic Director M. Dianne Murphy and the three student council presidents followed, resulting in a major alteration to the policy to allow of-age students to bring six-packs of beer into the stadium.
So did CCSC's act of defiance hinder the relationships with the administration that they had worked so hard to build? According to Devalier, not at all. "I think our grievances were very much justified. We weren't throwing a fit about something stupid-we weren't protesting the selection of salad dressings. We responded pretty appropriately to the problem, and [the administration] sympathized with us. I think they thought it was sort of cute," she said.
Chait agreed that decisive action had earned the council the administration's respect.
"In some instances, we made some great relationships with the administration by being fair, being honest, being cordial, but also putting our foot down," he said.
In fact, Devalier said that most of the fallout involving the Baker protests involved students rather than administrators. Some students had expressed frustration that so much of the council's time and energy had been devoted to the Baker issue, rather than to what these students considered "more important things," Devalier said.
Oh agreed that the council had given tailgating "an unbalanced degree of attention," but maintained that it had not monopolized the council's entire fall agenda. "For about two weeks, it definitely consumed the council, but after the peak of activity it became an ongoing negotiation that involved mostly myself and the other three council presidents," she said, pointing to developments in securing shuttles to JFK, the growth of the Campus Life Committee, and progress toward debit cards for student groups as evidence of the council's progress in other areas.
Deborah Beim contributed to this article.
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