Students: Sign Your Own Name

After almost three decades as a higher education administrator, I’ve witnessed a disturbing evolution in student statements when, in place of signing statements about campus and world events in their individual capacities, students began signing as organizations. This trend toward student organization statements struck me as a terrible practice for several reasons.

First, signing under an organizational name is gutless and inconsistent with educational and professional values of taking an informed stand. We expect students to become informed, to engage in difficult discussions, to explore nuances of complex issues and to reach thoughtful conclusions. At that point, students can decide to take a meaningful stand that represents their individual views. Ceding control and responsibility of this process to an organization diminishes the value of the position, clouds that position and minimizes individual accountability.

Second, students within an organization are often not on the same page about the current events they are commenting on. I have seen statements on everything from exam policies during the pandemic to faculty hiring to national and world events. Nobody should expect students to align on these matters purely because they share an identity or an affiliation. These statements can create enormous rifts within student organizations when students disagree about whether or not to sign. This expectation for groupthink is counterproductive and, again, undermines the goals of education to help students develop informed, sophisticated and nuanced views on complex issues.

Third, student organizations often lack established procedures for deciding whether to sign a statement. Does it require unanimity among the organization’s board? A simple majority? Do the officers poll their membership? Is the full membership aware of the decision before the statement goes to press? Does the organization define membership? Students are often scrambling during a crisis to get statements out quickly, and process is often sorely lacking.

So, what does this mean? It means the student group signature lacks accountability. If the statement backfires, students can hide behind the ambiguity of the organization’s signature to try to shield themselves from consequences. They can claim they were not in support of the statement, even if they were. In most cases, this practice has given students the best of both worlds—the moral high ground of taking a stand without any anticipated costs.

What is equally, if not more concerning, however, are the students who are unfairly drawn into the controversy, who may well have had no say in their organization’s decision to sign a statement. In these situations, students can find themselves on the receiving end of criticism, professional consequences and threats to their safety, despite the fact that they were not involved with the decision to sign. Any disavowal after the fact lacks credibility and makes the student unfairly vulnerable to severe and permanent consequences.

I failed in my repeated efforts to persuade students against sending such organization statements over the years. It has only become more challenging as organization statements have become the norm.

Most colleges provide basic directions for student organization bylaws as a condition of being officially recognized, and most organizations favor a minimal set of rules that do not bind future leaders, so it is not surprising if organizations lack an established process for signing statements. Generally, when an organization experiences a crisis due to the lack of an established process, you may see a spurt of interest in drafting a new rule, but updating bylaws generally falls to the bottom of student organizations’ priorities. The brief student leadership season, punctuated with exams and holidays, combined with annual turnover of officers, all make it less likely that new rules will be promulgated.

In light of the significant ramifications we have seen in the past month—most notably at Harvard University, where students linked to organizations that signed an anti-Israel statement have been doxed and had their employment prospects threatened or, in some cases, employment offers rescinded—I believe this is the time to urge institutions to require that such statements be signed in a student’s individual capacity. Most colleges have a set of requirements for student organizations (e.g., they must abide by the institution’s nondiscrimination policy, they must follow the college’s alcohol policy, they may not hold certain campaign events given the college’s not-for-profit status). Universities could add a requirement that the organization not engage in statement or petition activity solely in the name of the organization. Students may still decide to join forces as an organization to maximize impact and send statements that say, “We, the undersigned members of the X Society.” That would ensure that each student had agency in the process. It protects students and holds students to account for their positions.

Given my criticism of the practice, I do acknowledge that there is context for the shift toward organization statements in the last decade or two. The costs of signing on to such statements have been amplified in recent years. Gone are the days when students had only to consider the reactions of faculty and classmates. In the era of social media, as we have seen, students can have their identities and personal information published and can receive threats from around the world. I have had to support students on the receiving end of such communications and have received such messages myself. It can be terrifying. Even the internal pressure within the college community is significantly worse, as the threat of cancellation by one’s peers is real and the absolute consequences of cancellation make students feel less empowered to take a stand. I would love to return to a world where students could agree to disagree, but that is sadly not the reality on so many campuses today.

Finally, there is an important generational shift. Many students see solidarity as a virtue unto itself and many see real power in the organization’s signature. Most administrators have heard from students who did not want to take an organizational stand on a particular issue but believed that signing on was necessary allyship.

Universities should foster an environment of individual accountability and lead by example. Institutional statements on world events have many of the same inherent flaws. As we’ve witnessed with institutional statements on the Israel-Hamas war, these communications amplified grief and division at a gut-wrenching time. Instead of providing comfort or even clarity, many statements amplified pain, stoked anger and exacerbated divisions.