Word: opted
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...opt-in or to opt-out has been the question for the council, who gave us the opt-option on the termbill hike last semester and on the initiative to establish student funding for wind power last week. Incidentally, we chose to pass the hike and pass wind, and to be given the chance to opt-out of both of them. Other groups have been doing this opting thing on the sly for some time: Harvard Right to Life (HRL) helps students opt-out of the portion of their student health bills that can be used to pay for abortions...
...reaction to all this opting has already begun. There has been considerable consternation about the perils of opting out. Libertarian students collectively cursed current council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 this summer when they had to go through so much trouble to opt-out of their termbill fees. Students and deans alike have griped that the wind power initiative will further the trend in termbill opting, leading to 18 pages of opt-options each year asking students to be “in” or “out” on everything from providing retractable...
...think that all this concern is overblown and that an expansion of opt-options, as silly as they may seem, would be a good thing for this campus. Consider for a moment the tremendous triumph of democratic deliberation that is subsumed in the opt-out option: A majority rules, and the rights of the minority to disagree with that rule are actually respected. That’s a compromise that would have pleased Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. It combines a free-market mechanism any conservative can embrace with an inherent toleration any liberal can love...
Most of the concerns with opt-options seem at best superficial. After a little work, conscientious objectors were indeed allowed to opt-out of the termbill hike, and the Student Receivables Office (which administers the termbill) has committed to making the opt-out process easier. The wind power initiative, say what you will of its merits, was deemed by a majority of the council to be worth the small added inconvenience of an additional checkbox on the termbill. I trust that the council will be sensible enough to keep rare the opt-options on the termbill, and if it isn?...
That’s not to say that a world of opting out is without dangers. I see two great risks in opting. One is that with a proliferation of opt-options, we could build a campus culture of opting-out whenever some initiative or program does not directly serve our immediate interests. A “what’s in it for me” attitude would be disastrous for a student body that rightly prides itself on working together for common goals despite significant diversities on every level. The other more serious hazard is that we might...