Word: iops
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...minutes you are: Ushering at the IOP...
...Institute of Politics (IOP), Harvard’s premiere organization for directing students’ political passions, itself needs direction. As it stands now, the IOP is an irregular patchwork of programs. Some are brilliant successes. The IOP Fellows program, for example, is nationally unique in allowing students to form close bonds with inspirational political figures, while policy groups are a fantastic way of bringing together similarly-interested students for research and discussion. Despite these individual successes, however, the IOP has struggled to address some of its most important problems. Today, the IOP will elect a new leadership, and regardless...
Foremost among the issues facing the IOP is its not-undeserved reputation for being populated by self-proclaimed political nuts (myself included) and dead-set future presidents. Most are white, male, and from reasonably well-off backgrounds. This is significant not because such specimens are not dedicated and intelligent people—they usually are—but because diverse people bring with them diverse views, vital to a healthy political system. If the new leadership wants to fulfill the IOP’s goal of inspiring all backgrounds of students to public service, it needs to do more...
This means more than posting some ethnically-diverse photos on its website. The participation of women has risen dramatically over the past few years, but minority involvement remain largely elusive. One problem is that Harvard undergraduates are scattered among so many disparate campus groups that the IOP finds itself competing for priority with an endless list of ethnic and political societies...
...Institute has not yet tackled this problem effectively. Occasionally, outside groups plan IOP events—such as the Black Students Association’s sponsorship of Toni Morrison’s visit to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last spring—but the relationships are short-lived. The new leadership needs to form long-term institutional ties to diverse student groups instead of repeated brief encounters. In order to do this, the IOP should be willing to take on the role of patron for well-established student groups that just need a more regular source of funding...