Democracy in Action

In this year’s Student Senate election, write-in votes, the typically inconsequential poorer relation of votes for candidates named on the ballot, managed to fill the 15-person slate for the Senators set to represent the rising third-year class. This event, however, has not passed by without controversy, as named candidates have complained that the election was unfair because the written-in victors – all purported representatives of Columbia Law School’s public interest and identity groups – won their seats through allegedly unscrupulous means.

The means in question, ostensibly a scaled-down version of the type of routine politicking that takes place in any election, is the last-minute compilation and campaigning via e-mail of a slate of candidates who decided to run for Senate after the official deadline for being a named candidate had passed. Essentially, the last-minute candidates, having missed this deadline, were barred from posting their pictures and usually one-liner campaign platforms on the Student Senate billboard (located inconspicuously by the restrooms) in the hallway of the law school. They did, however, qualify as write-in candidates, and they ended up winning their seats by a veritable landslide.

This win, indeed, was not celebrated by all. A few e-mails subsequently circulated calling the election a “fraud,” stating that it was tantamount to a “coup” and “organized subversion.” One e-mailer sniped that the election was the result of voters' "lemming-like support" for their "tribal leaders." Another one, who dubbed himself “Alexander Hamilton,” stated: “The circulation among this group of a write-in slate ambushed both the unsuspecting candidates and the voters who were unaware of this tactic.” Essentially, this neo-Hamilton, citing “11th hour shenanigans,” imputed to the elected slate and their supporters the implementation of Karl Rove-like stratagem in order to win the Student Senate election.

Amid such complaints (and haughty calls for the elected slate to renounce their seats) the Student Senate Election Committee assured the disgruntled candidates and the student body at large that, under the Student Senate Constitution, the election was in fact fair. All enumerated rules were followed and no violations committed.

Far from representing only humdrum complaints by sore losers, the controversy surrounding the Student Senate election is a microcosm of larger political issues. It plays out underlying narratives of entitlement and privilege that pit multiculturalism against meritocracy in a bid to hold on to power. Lest this editorial painstakingly allude to the underlying racial politics of this controversy through carefully chosen code words, let it be stated flatly that a group of mostly white rising third-year students lost their seats to a diverse bunch of write-in candidates who are mostly non-white. Some of the mostly white incumbents who lost their seats complained that the election was unfair, and they explicitly doubted the ability of their mostly non-white replacements to adequately represent the student body as a whole.

In a nutshell, one such disgruntled person e-mailed: "Will the identity groups . . . that now control this 'diverse' senate . . . fairly represent the actual population of the school and not just their cultural, racial, and religious peers?" How, this person wonders, could members from the Black Law Students Association, Latina/o American Law Students Assocation, or the African Law Students Association (aforementioned tribal leaders), for example, possibly represent the "actual" student body?

Indeed, the "actual" student body, according to one disgruntled e-mail, was well-represented by a Student Senate who last year coordinated the annual Barrister's Ball, bar nights, a Singled Out gathering, Quizzo, a Halloween party, and Thanksgiving dinners among other events. Relatively low on the Student Senate's priority list, apparently, was advocating for public interest groups who want guaranteed funding for their summer legal work, or supporting "identity" groups who hold not only cultural events but also sponsor conferences and academic speeches. The interests of such groups, by the outgoing senators' estimations, do not represent the "actual" student body.

My present interest in this article is not to break down prevailing assumptions of who the "actual" student body is and is not, or who purports to represent general interests rather than "special" interests. There is an implied sense of entitlement and privilege in designating oneself as a "universal" representative and marking certain interests as "special." If this notion is unconvincing to any reader, I won't be able to convince him or her otherwise in the space of this editorial.

Rather, what interests me is that students in a law school, which perpetually reminds us to check our personal judgments at the door before the dictates of the almighty law, could scrap the clear electoral practice codified in the Senate Constitution and cry foul. Appeals to substantive justice despite the clear evidences of procedural justice are normally within the remit of identity politics. Indeed, women’s groups often criticize the legal definition of self-defense, questioning the substantive fairness of depriving a woman brutalized by domestic violence and in constant fear for her life of the defense if she ends up killing her tormentor absent an “immediate” danger to her life. Civil rights groups, despite the 'plain meaning' of relevant statutes, question the substantive fairness of depriving ex-felons the right to vote - a deprivation which has a disparate impact on black Americans.

However, when identity politicians prevail via electoral procedures, which do not even ensure proportional representation or recognize the power of voting blocs, then suddenly procedural justice, according to the disgruntled, is inadequate. The disgruntled want student senators who represent “them,” who represent “the student body” as a whole.

Further, it is also intriguing that the appeals to substantive justice by ex-senators were not just framed in terms of adequate representation, but also in terms of “meritocracy.” The new slate is thought undeserving of their new positions. This kind of "merit" discourse, typically used to discount affirmative action, slipped its way into this particular controversy despite the fact that the newly elected slate was elected via difference-blind (not difference-conscious) procedures. Appeals to the “standards” of Columbia Law School apparently require that the elected slate renounce their seats. Regarding the election that supposedly “mocks the ideals of Columbia and representative democracy,” the self-styled Alexander Hamilton opined:

As the newly elected senate, I call upon these students to take immediate action to repair the damage they have dealt to the legitimacy of the senate by mandating a new election. The candidates who lost deserve that. The voters who were deceived deserve that. The standards and ideals of this institution require it.

Evidently, this election has lowered these "standards and ideals." The new slate of 'diverse' senators are undeserving and the "actual" student body deserves better. Indeed, the specter of Alexander Hamilton (the real one) adds another dimension to this controversy, in that among his key reasons for advocating a strong central government at the founding of this country was his distrust of the uneducated masses, and his belief that government should be run by a "talented few" (at that time a wealthy and 'white' elite).

Crucially, this editorial does not aim to pour salt in existing wounds, but to pose some questions to the disgruntled students who claim that they, unlike the new slate, are dedicated to “bringing us together rather than dividing us.” When do we appeal to substantive justice instead of procedural justice? Only when it suits us? How do we determine who is deserving and who is undeserving of representing the student body? By evaluating processes or outcomes?

This small case study at the law school has demonstrated, at least, that identity politicians and public interest groups can implement some of their goals if they can actually mobilize a constituency to use existing procedures to influence outcomes. This controversy has also illustrated to persons who thought themselves invisible and implicitly entitled to represent the "actual" student body the previously unknown travails of questioning "procedure" in the wake of outcomes, which, for them, are personally offensive to their notion of substantive justice.

In the end, the outgoing Senators sound "emotional" and "irrational," kind of like how some of us black kids must sound in class when we speak out against stuff like cross-burning being upheld by the Supreme Court as a form of protected free speech. What more is there to say when the matter has been decided by the highest court in the land? How can you argue against procedures?