Op-ed: Can you name your TCU President?

(Spoiler: it’s Brian Tesser.)

I bet more of you than you’d like to admit struggled with that question. After an election in which Tesser ran without a single opponent and still managed to scrape together barely the votes necessary, it’s clear that the disconnect between the Tufts community and its elected representatives is gaping.

At a school like Tufts, though, that feels odd. Every incoming class is filled with countless high school student government officers, hopeful diplomats-in-waiting and wannabe congressmen. This environment of political activity is levied by an immense presence of social justice activists on campus. Tufts Climate Action, #thethreepercent, SJP, Tufts Labor Coalition and countless other groups have shone spotlights on the issues they fight for. There is, without question, no lack of political engagement on campus.

So why not engage with TCU? For starters, no one knows how. Or even, for that matter, much of anything about what our student representatives actually do on campus. TCU right now is a seriously opaque organization. When club funding requests are submitted, club finance officers are forced to navigate through a series of TCU-enacted financial regulations so complex that clubs are frequently forced to request more money than they will ever actually need to account for percent-of-total-budget clauses. Last year, as club sports budgets fell in the face of a TCU budget deficit, some sports lost their affiliation (and with it their right to use the school’s name in their official team name), even though they did nothing to justify being dropped.

In both cases — and the many others like these — club members’ questions were met with answers that cited TCU’s existing bylaws and the responsibility of its senators to work within that framework. The underlying logic of those bylaws was rarely addressed.

In fairness, TCU has commendably begun to address this issue of opacity on its own. Its members have recently worked to popularize Two Minute Thursdays — short videos that share major issues at play in TCU from week to week. It’s a good step in the right direction, but it’s not nearly enough.

This lack of clarity was TCU’s only problem, though it wouldn’t be a great leap of faith to assume that of the many politically-minded students on campus, some would step up to change the system. But few do, especially if they don’t get involved with TCU right out of the gate their freshman year.

This is due to the fact that TCU has created a culture of exclusivity. Its archaic bylaws and the often-lukewarm explanations of their logic are part of this problem. Even more responsible, though, is the fact that per the TCU Constitution, only TCU senators are allowed to run for TCU president. That means that in a campus of more than 5,000 students, there are only a few juniors even eligible to run for the right to represent their fellow students.

Why circle the wagons like this? The role of TCU president is to represent the entirety of the Tufts community, not just the community of TCU. By demanding that the student body president comes from within its own ranks, TCU has managed to stifle a campus that is filled with vocal leaders from all walks of life. The campaign for student body president should be a platform to amplify the voices of all who want to impact our community — not just those preselected by TCU.

With the presidential campaign season about to begin, I hope that both the candidates and the rest of TCU take this issue to heart. TCU has its flaws, but our representatives are undoubtedly good people dedicated to representing the student body as best they can. Expanding the pool from which the TCU president can come from will only serve to strengthen this group and our community.

 

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