Ivy Council: (noun) A hodgepodge of quasi-student leaders from the “Great Eight” schools (minus Harvard, depending on their budget and/or pretention level) who come together twice a year to share ideas on how to confront current issues affecting student-governing boards within the Ivy League.
Amid the Yom Kippur fasting, Hermione Granger-searching, and carnival-consuming that was this past weekend, you may have easily missed Ivy Council’s presence on campus on October 11 and 12. A small group that is not even recognized by most of the governing boards for which they serve, the Ivy Council spent its weekend holed up in Uris Hall. The drinking age, environmental sustainability, intellectual property rights, administrative transparency, school spirit, and advocacy for GLBT and multicultural organizations served as the realm of topics at this Fall Policy Colloquium. While subsequent conversation in each area was plentiful and helpful, no immediate results came to fruition as none of the participating schools lent legislative legitimacy to the group.
And while Ivy-funding to the Ivy Council is lower than Bristol Palin’s hopes of having a happy marriage, the group was lucky enough to find a sponsor in USA Today. As a result, Joan Biskupic, Supreme Court reporter for USA Today, gave the keynote address at the event. Ranging from her own life to the legacy of Sandra Day O’Connor to the future of the Supreme Court, Biskupic’s 50-minute speech was truly engaging. The adhesive to her discussion constantly returned to the idea of “forming connections in college,” something Biskupic, O’Connor, and other Supreme Court justices had allegedly engaged in as young twenty-somethings.
Upon leaving Biskupic’s speech, however, I started thinking more about this nebulous idea of “connections” that she held up as the gateway for success in the lives of politicians. Her idea certainly did not strike me as revolutionary; I’ve heard it said many times before that one of the main reasons for attending an institution like Columbia is for that possibility of establishing connections. However, it struck me as provocative and disturbing that “connections” was what Biskupic attributed as the main element of success for so many political figures.
More specifically, I was left flustered by the lack of clarity involved in such an assertion. Why do so many of us let this advice of “make connections” go unquestioned? Clearly, it is not the same thing as making friends, because otherwise people would just tell us to—make friends! Maybe “making connections” means that we are supposed to save every name and every number that we encounter on a day-to-day basis. Surely this method would allow for unlimited resources in times of need! But alas, this would prove unrealistic considering the high rate of Blackberry suicides in toilets, pools, and other electronic-unfriendly environments.
All of this leads me to believe that there is a much more unfavorable undertone in this “making connections” business. If the phrase does not mean to make friends, and it does not mean to log every contact, I’m under the impression that the notion relies on our ability to target those who we see as “useful.”
But is this not a crass message to impart? It seems as though such advice propagates a culture where being interested in someone’s assets—whether it is intellect, money, or family background—becomes more important than evaluating a person’s character. Instead of looking for people who will positively impact us in the present, we search blindly for that which will serve us in the future. Furthermore, this blanketing advice seems to ask us to lower our own self-esteem. “Making connections” is commonly placed parallel to the idea of “not burning bridges,” but it is, in reality, simply a superficial way of saying, “Don’t stand up for yourself.” Instead of telling people what you actually think, ignore their undesirable traits—you might need to use them some day! The line between strategic and disingenuous becomes razor thin.
Morality aside, what is the actual usefulness of this advice anyhow? Sure, we might have the good judgment and foresight to introduce ourselves to people who will come to wield power at a later date, but there is no guarantee that their success will in turn make our own. In reality, this whole idea is entrenched in luck. While joining a fraternity, working in the Mayor’s office, or befriending the billionaire’s child might make us feel like we are taking a more active role in our future, we risk destroying our integrity by working out of this false hope of “making connections.” Better advice might just be a simple “good luck.” At least “good luck” does not endorse a system where it is acceptable to see today’s frivolity as tomorrow’s high-yielding dividend.
The author is a Columbia College sophomore. He is an elected representative for the Class of 2011.
