After a roughly decade-long absence, Undergraduate Council of Students statements are making a comeback this semester.
A UCS statement, as stipulated in the council's Code of Operations, is issued "when the council wants to formally comment" on a University issue. They differ from UCS resolutions, which are passed to recommend a policy change, in that they are broader, are established as the council's ongoing opinion and do not expire.
UCS has passed two statements so far this semester — written by UCS Vice President David Rattner '13 and Campus Life Chair Michael Schneider '13 — on the proposed athletics cuts and the state of campus housing. Michael Lin '14, chair of the Admissions and Student Services committee, said his committee is working on a statement on student concerns about the current vending system, which uses Card Value Center machines.
This sudden upsurge in statement usage is no coincidence, Rattner said. He began trying to reinstate statements after finding old records of their widespread use during a UCS archival project he started with former UCS President Diane Mokoro '11 last year.
Rattner said his archival search over the summer led him to discover UCS statements written during the organization's early years in the 1980s. He uncovered a statement authored during the Cold War supporting the plan for a campus stockpile of suicide pills in case of nuclear attack. Rattner said he hopes the current UCS statements will carry more weight and that he wants "to use them as a way to reflect student opinion on major issues facing the University."
Rattner wrote the recent statement condemning the proposed athletics cuts and approached Schneider about co-authoring a statement expressing student dissatisfaction with housing. Both statements were well-received by the council.
When UCS was deliberating his statement on housing, Schneider said there was a lively discussion on the council listserv about the specifics of the statement, but that council members generally agreed on the sentiment.
Rattner said consensus is an important aspect for any issue under consideration for a statement. A statement is supposed to reflect the opinion of the student body as a whole and requires a two-thirds majority vote. These requirements have led to an avoidance of controversial issues — when overall agreement could not easily be reached — such as the return of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps to campus.
Rattner and Schneider both expressed optimism about the progress of the two statements passed so far and said they thought the statements allowed student voices to be heard. The athletics debate ended with the result they hoped for, and while no Corporation decision on housing has been made public, Schneider said the statement gave "more credibility to widespread student dissatisfaction."
Though the idea of statements is not new to UCS, Rattner said they are a new tool for the current council. "We don't want to just release statements for the sake of releasing statements," he added.
When an issue can be resolved with direct communication with administrators, UCS will not use statements to express an opinion, Rattner said. Statements are available as a useful alternative for larger issues that need to reach the Corporation or are not handled by a specific administrator.
"We want something that actually carries weight and has teeth," he said.
