Regarding “Das ’12 loses appeal, cannot run for senior social chair” (Monday, April 18, 2011):
The USG Senate’s recent decision to bar Aparajita Das ’12 from running for Class of 2012 social chair reflects the extreme lack of transparency and utter uselessness of our USG Senate.
Regardless of Das’ abilities as social chair and her three-year track record, she deserves a chance at an election because the initial rules and circumstances that disqualified her candidacy are complete bureaucratic nonsense. The fact that the election managers did not even respond to Das’ request for information demonstrates that the USG dropped the ball; if they want to uphold the honesty of the organization, the elections managers should take responsibility for their mistake. Rules should be made and enforced with the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the mission of the USG, not to give USG members loopholes to show off their power.
The USG president, Michael Yaroshefsky — who I do not know and have nothing against personally — appears to have greatly influenced the USG Senate against Das before the appeal. The so-called “public hearing” was not advertised to the student body at large, and I only came to know of it through Das herself (disclaimer: I am a close friend of Aparajita). How is a public hearing public if its location and time are secret? Why wasn’t the appeal mentioned in the six emails we all received from the USG last week? If upholding the mission of the USG — “for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments”— was not the goal of this decision, then we should be questioning what other factors might have been at work.
While I have never been very active with student government at Princeton, I have learned a lot about how bureaucratic authoritarian regimes operate through various courses. The established and time-honored tradition of disqualifying candidates for bogus reasons is a staple of authoritarian regimes, and it is a favorite tactic of those in power in Iran, China and the former Soviet bloc. I guess Yaroshefsky did learn something useful in his trip to Putin’s Russia after all.
Rohit Gawande ’11
Correction
An earlier version of this letter included an inaccurate quotation from an email purportedly sent by Yaroshefsky.
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