At one point or another, the administrative powers that be must have turned to one another and said, “Our student groups have simply got to take on the structure of a government. After all, the government is the most efficient and creative organization out there!” At least that’s what they’ve decided at schools like Hunter College in New York City, where official student groups (from the math club to Dumpledore’s Army) are required to adopt the structure of a miniature government, complete with a president, treasurer, and secretary. So inevitably, the students become frustrated about being forced to fit this mold, and the administrators become frustrated because the students are faking their meeting minutes.
My apologies to the powers that be, but this system simply isn’t working. In my experience, successful groups step away from it and develop their own structure. And though they may have a president on paper, more and more groups are sharing responsibilities and taking turns leading one another rather than following one leader. Collaborative web tools like Wikis are gaining adoption and information is just a Google away. The traditional view of top down leadership is starting to look a bit awkward before this digital backdrop.
Then is teamwork dissolving the very concept of leadership? I don’t think so. Leaders are still the folks organizing and motivating others: Wikipedia is the ultimate display of collaboration, but Larry Sanger was the one that nurtured the idea until it took on a life of its own. Increased access to information and increased ease of communication is leading to student groups with multiple or rotating leaders; it isn’t making leaders go the way of the dodo.
So if involvement in student groups is supposed to lead to personal growth, and personal growth is about building leadership and communication skills, and groups with no defined hierarchies are providing precisely these opportunities for their members, then why are we still concerned about official meeting minutes? Maybe instead of an election, student groups should be required to have a Wiki. Instead of minutes, a blog. And instead of a government-inspired chain of command, enough flexibility for any member to be a leader.
P.S. The image above is a Dodo bird. And very sadly, it is not endangered but very much extinct. For whatever reason, I have always been exceedingly fond of the Dodo, and until very recently was convinced that I had seen one at the Bronx zoo.
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