IOP Elects New Members to Governing Body

The Student Advisory Committee (SAC) of the Institute of Politics elected eleven new members last Sunday in the organization's annual selection process.

Forty first-years and sophomores applied to join the committee in a competitive application process which included one-page essays and a 20-minute interview.

"[The process] is not rigorous in terms of having to write thirty or forty pages on this," said Richard Cooper '00, who was among the eleven selected.

"It is rigorous in terms of having to write your vision and your ideas in a relatively short space," he said.

A selection committee of past and present SAC members deliberated last Saturday and a large meeting with the entire Student Advisory Committee met Sunday to confirm the selections.

Newly elected committee members were elated to hear they were chosen.

"I'm thrilled to be on the Student Advisory Committee," said Cooper. "It's a wonderful group of people."

Cooper said he wanted to join the committee primarily because of the opportunities the IOP provides for undergraduates to interact with people who are directly involved with public policy.

According to outgoing SAC member Eric P. Christofferson '98, the committee's new selections are an indication of increasing diversity within the SAC.

"When I got on SAC, it was relatively homogeneous," Christofferson said.

This lack of diversity in leadership positions within the committee may have discouraged some people from applying, he said.

SAC has recently made efforts to reach out to larger and more diverse groups of people, a change in attitude which Christofferson said may have increased the diversity of the applicant pool and ultimately helped to make SAC less homogeneous.

Six of the eleven new SAC members are women, and several are minorities.

Such changes will hopefully help to encourage diversity in future applicant pools, Christofferson explained.

"It helps to engender a better feeling among people applying to SAC," he said.

The SAC is a student governing board which directs overall programming of the Institute of Politics.

Although the IOP is based at the Kennedy School of Government, it is an organization run mostly by and for undergraduates.