Column: Students of the Campus: Unite!

It used to bother me. In the fourth grade, Miss Parse wrote on my report card that I had a "good, strong voice that could be heard all over the classroom." My brother thought this evaluation was hilarious. "All over the classroom!" he snorted. "She should have said you could be heard all over the country!" Of course I resented him for that crack, and believe me, he paid for it more than once. But lately I've begun to see it as more prophecy than insult. Despite Miss Parse's gentle recognition of my modulation problems, despite my mother's near-constant plea that I lower my voice, despite all the messages we send and receive about the appeal of girls and women who are softspoken and demure, I've gotten louder. Only now it doesn't bother me. Since I've been at Penn I've found having a loud voice really comes in handy. You see, the administration doesn't want to hear what students, let alone student activists, have to say. As more students become involved in the social and political decision-making here at the University, administrators have sought ways to prevent our voices, even the loud ones, from being heard. Much of the University's attempt to silence the student voice has taken the form of eliminating or minimizing student representation on University committees. In some cases we have lost longstanding student places on committees, such as the spot for a graduate student on Council of Graduate Deans. In other cases -- the Locust Walk Committee, for example -- the University has established new committees with few or no student members, and then done little to remedy the problem when we complained. Increasing the ratio of non-student to student members on committees is another way the student voice has been muted lately. University Council voted last week to add two faculty members to the all-important Safety and Security Committee, without increasing student representation on the committee. Council is expected to make a similar recommendation about the Bookstore Committee at its next meeting. The last of the University's bag of tricks to limit student input on committees is perhaps the most insidious: some committees simply do not listen to their student members. This was the case two years ago with the Provost-appointed Committee to Review the Judicial Charter. More recently University Council itself threatened to devolve into a public relations campaign for administrators, who used the monthly two-hour meeting to give accounts of the good works they have undertaken of late. The Council's Steering Committee has taken action to correct some of the problems with this year's kinder, gentler Council, but it remains to be seen if University Council will continue to be a place for student input. And all this has taken place in an atmosphere of increasing student interest in committee work. For the first time in recent in recent memory, all the graduate student spots on committees were filled, with students left over. It's difficult to say, in fact, which is the more marked trend: increasing student involvement in campus issues, or decreasing opportunities to be officially involved in these issues. The need to be heard doesn't stem from the fact that we pay a lot to go here. You don't buy your right to participate in politics in this country. (Or if you do, you better hide it.) Rather, we should be heard because University decisions affect us, and they affect us all equally no matter how much it costs us to go here. But even that's not the main reason that the University should reverse the trend towards silencing students. We should be heard because that's how education works: in dialogue, heated or otherwise. Denying us the right to participate in University politics also denies part of our education. In the four years I've been at Penn, it's been my privilege to work with some of the most skilled and dedicated political activists I have ever met, and they are all students. In seeking to make the University a place where all voices are heard, where we speak and listen in turn, as a part of our collective education, these students have demonstrated to me that the separation between scholarship and activism is artificial. I have discovered that the best kind of education is one which requires you to put your beliefs to work. It was in this educational atmosphere that I found my own voice, and it turns out I like it loud. The recent administrative efforts to silence students trouble me, to be sure, but I am certain such efforts will meet with limited success. Over the last few years, student activists have constructed a strong and broad base of student support, and it has shown no signs of structural weakness under administrative pressure. In fact, it's quite the opposite: student leaders have seized the committee participation issue as a point of agreement and unity. Students stand together in opposing the University's efforts to silence us, and this make our voices even stronger. In fact, Miss Parse would be proud of us all: we have voices that can be heard all over campus. Elizabeth Hunt is a doctoral candidate in History and Sociology of Science from Bloomington, Indiana. One Man's Meat appears alternate Wednesdays.