The Undergraduate Council of Students has written a preliminary proposal outlining its interest in creating a permanent position for a recent graduate on the Corporation, the University's highest governing body, in hopes that the young alum would be able to add a youthful perspective.
UCS has presented the current proposal to a few members of the Corporation, including Chancellor Thomas Tisch '76, who has told the council he is committed to making the issue a top priority.
The proposal, drafted in March, includes three suggestions for how the Corporation could add young alumni members. For example, one proposal would put three young alums on the Corporation's Board of Trustees, which has 42 members. The young alums would be chosen every other year and serve six-year terms.
The recent graduates would "not be beholden in any way to UCS or any other student organization on campus," said Melea Atkins '10, a former corporation liaison for the council. "The point of this is not that they are a representative of the current student body, (but) instead that they would offer the perspective of a student and have the full powers of a trustee."
"The young alum will be a Corporation member like any other," UCS President Brian Becker '09 said.
"This isn't about getting someone on the Corporation for our sake. It's really about making the Corporation better," said former UCS Vice President Zachary Townsend '09, who worked on the proposal in its early stages. "It's about giving the Corporation the ability to have more information while they're making decisions."
The UCS proposal does not include a course of action for how to create the position. Becker said that it is not up to UCS to decide how a young alum will be selected to serve on the Corporation. Now that UCS has drafted a proposal, members will continue to advocate for it. But Tisch must bring the proposal to the Corporation in order for its members to take action, Becker said.
Atkins said council members hope the Corporation will discuss the proposal before the end of the academic year.
Russell Carey '91 MA'06, senior vice president for corporation affairs and governance, said in a presentation to the Brown University Community Council last month that the Corporation is taking the council's proposal into account as the University completes its once-per-decade self-study this year.
However, no one should expect anything to come out of next weekend's meetings, he added later in an interview.
At the BUCC meeting, Carey said that in addition to considering the council's proposal, the Corporation has been making an effort to inform itself about current students' biggest issues and needs. The presidents of the student bodies of the Alpert Medical School, the Graduate School and the undergraduate College serve as ex officio members of the Corporation's committee on campus life.
Carey also said there was not currently anything preventing a young alum from being elected to the Board of Trustees, in the same way that all other trustees are elected or appointed. He added, though, that young alums have definitely not been the norm and that most current trustees graduated at least 10 years ago.
Because Corporation members have usually made substantial contributions to society, to the University or to their fields of study, it is difficult for a recent graduate to compete in elections alongside older and more distinguished alums. The youngest member on the Corporation is Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal '91.5.
"How young alums would be chosen is very much up in the air," Atkins said. "We are very flexible in the manner in which this is done. We just want it to happen. There are a lot of different ways to do it."
Townsend warned against a method of selection that would require elections. "I think the Corporation is slightly afraid about who would be elected if there were elections to appoint some very recent graduate," he said. "Fundamentally it should not be a popularity contest."
"I'm not saying there shouldn't be an election," he added, "but I'm saying that the Corporation might be wary of what an election will produce."
Becker, however, has not introduced or advocated any form of selection or nomination of a young alum.
The idea of having a young alum on the Corporation was first suggested by Townsend, although Atkins and former UCS President Michael Glassman '09 continued the work of the project.
Townsend said he exchanged e-mails last year with the vice president of Princeton's Board of Trustees as well as leaders from Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about how those schools were able to create young alumni positions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
All bestowed high praise on the young alums elected to positions on the governing bodies of their universities. "The young trustees have been very effective members of the board," wrote Robert Durkee, the Princeton trustee. "One measure of this is the fact that four of them were later returned to the Board as 10-year trustees."
