In one of my classes last week we were discussing Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution in relation to life at Pomona College. The book is a critique of the United States Constitution for killing the democratic spirit of the American Revolution. A very brief summary of her argument is that while the Revolution embraced democratic principles and involved Americans at all levels of decision-making, the Constitution is designed in such a way that government is taken away from the people. Arendt laments the fact that United States citizens don’t live truly political lives; instead we let other people make our decisions for us and we trust them with the political aspect of our humanness. The question is: how much does this also describe life at Pomona College? My answer is: very well. The current method of doing politics at Pomona College is disturbingly undemocratic.

Conventional wisdom says that democracy is more alive in smaller settings. At a small, liberal arts college, life should be more democratic than life in the United States as a whole. Of course, by democratic I mean not just participation in elections (which is only a very shallow version of democracy) but engagement in a real political sphere: democracy as the involvement in decision-making. Democracy should work better at Pomona because, in theory, students here are closer to the decision-making process than the average American citizen is to the decision-making of the United States government. One would expect that governing institutions here would be designed in such a way as to allow for student involvement. Unfortunately, several decisions were made last week on this campus that are highly indicative of the weakness of Pomona’s democracy.

Perhaps you’ve seen the fliers announcing sign-ups for the ever-popular Ski and Beach Day. What these posters don’t let you know is how much money this costs the school. Actually, Ski and Beach Day doesn’t cost the school itself anything, since all of the money (aside from the small fee participants pay on Saturday) comes out of the student fees that we pay when we send in our checks at the beginning of each semester. It hardly seems fair that the Senate spends our fees without letting every student be a part of the decision. Not only is the average student not a part of making the decision, but, unless you attend the weekly Senate meetings, you can’t even find out what decision was made. Despite the encouragement of North Campus Representative Grayson Schaffer, some Senators are none too excited about putting the ASPC budget online, as it would let everyone in on the secret that Ski and Beach Day is not only one of the most expensive events for students sponsored by the school (while $26 may be cheap skiing, $26 is also a lot of money for some poorer students), but Ski and Beach Day is also far and away the most heavily subsidized event the school sponsors (per person involved, Ski and Beach Day spends three times more of our student fees than any other event the throughout the year) and receives much more money than most student organizations.

In another case, the Class Day speaker was announced last week. While no one has reason to believe that Casey Trupin ’94 will be a disappointing speaker, I take issue with how he was chosen. For some reason, the tradition of having the Senior class vote on a faculty member to speak at Class Day was broken without consulting the class as a whole. Perhaps some sort of elusive committee was behind this decision, but the senior class as a whole was certainly not consulted. At least suggestions were sought for Commencement speakers, but Mr. Trupin seems to have been chosen without any involvement from students at large.

Perhaps someone else will think that either of these decisions is important enough on their own merit to warrant an Opinions piece, but I think that there is a bigger issue at work here. Why are students not aware of decisions being made at Pomona? This certainly is not the fault of student apathy. Pomona’s student body realizes that we are directly affected by decisions being made on campus. The problem is that student opinions are not sought in the decision-making process here. One could make an argument that by electing people to office we delegate our decision-making power to them, but we don’t need to settle for that level of representative "democracy." What we get at Pomona are closed-door ASPC Committees and a closed-door Commencement speaker committee, both acting under the presumption that they can make a decision without consulting the student body.

Pomona’s students should not be fooled by a committee system that masquerades as a way for students to get involved. Currently, a large part of decision-making authority is delegated to committees, whose members are not elected. While this could work if committees were part of a larger governing process that also involved the student body (to be sure, some decisions are better and more efficiently made in a committee setting), Pomona’s student committees operate independently of all other students, clearing the way for all sorts of abuses. Our committee system is a way for a small group of people to control the whole campus (by being involved in all the committees) without the check of the student body. Our committee system is a way to ignore the student body. And, most important, our committee system is a way to exclude the student body from decision-making.

What Pomona needs is a real democratic life, one in which all students are part of decision-making. Right now, the difference between political life at Pomona College and in the United States as a whole is merely a difference of degree, while what we need is a difference of order. Student complaints have forced the administration to catch up with the times and allow student voices to be heard. From town hall meetings about the Smith Campus Center to Dean Quinley’s appearances in the dining halls to get feedback from ALL students concerning the food service, the administration is allowing students to shape the College. Unfortunately, the student government has not taken the cue from the administration. Pomona’s student government needs to open up the decision-making process to all students and allow a real democracy to flourish here. Pomona students deserve much better than the current committee system. Pomona students deserve a say in the choices that affect our daily lives.