In a January 24th op-ed, the Daily Princetonian’s Editorial Board called upon “leaders at the Naussau Weekly, Princeton Progressive, Princeton Tory, University Press Club, and all other campus publications [to] join us in embracing and encouraging safe behavior to help amplify a message of community care to your audiences.” They are absolutely right — students should be doing everything they can to hold one another accountable. However, we should not pretend that COVID safety is simply a matter of individuals’ actions. While every person must do their best to prevent the spread of the pandemic, structural failures in our guiding institutions render this a much more difficult task than it ought to be.
For instance, although Mercer County provides free testing to all its residents, and the system has been much improved since it was first implemented, testing is not always readily available; people with jobs and strict schedules have to go out of their way if they are not to wait long periods of time before they can get their hands on a test, and even then it is not guaranteed that testing will be ready as soon as it is needed, depending on supply and demand. Similarly, while it is illegal to charge those who cannot pay for a COVID vaccine, it is not clear at what point vaccines will be easily accessible to all. Princeton University has massive amounts of resources at its disposal: it must deploy them for the benefit of all. And yet, the Board of Trustee’s autocratic control, with only perfunctory input from the staff, faculty, student body, and townspeople, does not, and indeed, cannot, meet our needs. Only democratic control of the University, with a commitment to accountability, can ensure every person’s access to basic necessities.
It would be simple enough to recount instances of the government’s disastrous mishandling of the virus, from the administration’s late response to their bungling of testing protocols. At one point, such critiques are beating a dead horse. The problem Princeton townspeople, students, faculty, and staff are facing is different insofar as our decision-making apparatus, the University’s administration, is not incompetent — but the situation is analogous insofar as the system is rotten.
What is the system as it stands?
The Board of Trustees, replete as it is with millionaires and billionaires, is officially charged with “prior review and approval of substantial new claims on funds, on the allocation of any significant proportion of the University resources, and the setting of priorities for development, changes in instructional method with broad implications for the University, the determination of tuition and fees, changes in admission policies affecting sizeable categories of potential students, and changes in relations with outside educational and social institutions and government agencies.” In other words, they do not merely ensure that Princeton continues turning a profit, they also control anything and everything that might influence the University’s funds — which is to say, anything and everything.
Note that this includes “relations with outside educational and social institutions and government agencies.” Wielding a $26.6 billion club, the University easily pressures local policy-making bodies, like the Town Council, into supporting whatever projects may profit it, such as the return of students to campus.
The Board touts its charitable gifts to the municipality; but let us understand what these payments really mean. Princeton, as a non-profit, does not need to pay property taxes. All the same, Communications is always quick to point out that the University shelled out $9.3 million in taxes in 2019, of which $6 million are voluntary donations that are often advertised as a gesture of goodwill. Let’s leave aside the fact that these donations were instituted after a legal battle with the town’s residents that forced the University to pay $18.2 million, divided amongst a number of causes, over the course of six years. Instead, we should remember that in 2016, a for-profit entity with Princeton’s holdings would have been liable to pay $400 million in taxes. Given the amount of money they should be paying, the University’s charity can be viewed as little more than a PR move calculated to stave off the town’s ire. It has not yet worked. Why would it? A top-down decision-making structure whose sole purpose is to fatten its pockets is fundamentally incapable of incorporating average people’s concerns in any meaningful way.
What would take its place?
The University is neither a state nor a business, as such. It has aspects of both in its management and daily experiences, but it cannot be understood as either one or the other. Insofar as it gathers and allocates enormous amounts of resources — housing, food —, it is a state. Insofar as it seeks a profit and exploits its workers (see, for instance, its sub-contracted labor), it is a business. Its state machinery supports its business and vice-versa. Thus, it must be approached as it is: a combination of the two. “Democratic control,” then, does not just refer to meaningful input in the decisions that are made, it refers to self-management of unionized workers in the business sphere, and, in its state functions, actual control of resources by direct vote, which would then be carried out by representatives of the student bodies, the staff and faculty, and the town.
We would not be the first to enact this pedagogic model; beginning in the 1970’s, numerous educational facilities in Latin America have adopted “communitarian control.” It is only in countries like the United States where this kind of management is intuitively, irrationally, fervently mistrusted. Americans would like to think that we have perfected education, our institutions being the illegitimate children of Puritan clergymen and German bureaucrats. Even those among the 33% of Americans who had received at least a Bachelor’s as of 2018 must admit that there are better ways to go about things.
Let me be clear, democratic control of the University can be implemented any number of ways. The easiest solution, to give student government a modicum of power, would probably be the worst way to go about it. Perhaps this kind of power would change the institution of student government, render it something more than a transparent résumé-builder. But the more likely scenario is that it remains what it is, only with much more influence. In other words, inflating the student government would only amplify its dysfunction. There is a more challenging path ahead, one that would require time and effort, but its benefits would far outweigh its difficulties. It involves building an active community of people who are actually willing to embark upon the processes implementing self-management and just redistributions of our endowment. It would take holding ourselves and each other truly accountable.
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