As many of us, aglow with newfound suntans and buoyed by nine days without Ithacation, return to campus from Spring Break today, we find ourselves facing the homestretch of the Spring 2008 semester. This time of year is marked by the reemergence of green grass and Frisbees on the Quads, the embarking on wine tours of the great Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area, and the transitioning of campus organizations to new leadership.
Many student groups transitioned leadership in January, while The Sun changed hands just a few weeks ago and the Student Assembly recently elected its newest members. (Full disclosure: today marks the end of my term as Cornell Hillel President.) As members of the Class of 2008 and other retiring campus leaders defer to their successors and new governing boards are put in place, one can’t help but wonder what it means to be a leader in today’s culture.
Cornell student organizations weren’t the only institutions undergoing management transitions over the past few weeks. The Cornell Board of Trustees saw itself change ex officio members as New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned following public revelations about his involvement in a high-end escort service, making way for Gov. David Paterson to take office — and join Cornell’s Board of Trustees. Paterson’s public confession about his marital infidelities last week raised the question in both political and nonpolitical circles: what behavior is unacceptable from a leader or public figure and does his or her constituency have a right to know about it?
In an article on the gubernatorial tumult and New Yorkers’ subsequent reactions, James Barron and Lisa Foderaro wrote that “many said there was, in effect, an implicit bargain between a public figure and the public: The public figure — whether a politician or an entertainment star — is playing a role and must realize that what he or she does in private has to be very private if it is at odds with his or her public image.” The college campus may be the best example of where that implicit bargain plays out — this is where classroom, residential, social and extracurricular experiences are intertwined.
One of the most exhilarating, yet draining, aspects of the university environment is that all situations are social. The private sphere often doesn’t exist for campus leaders; it’s likely that your behavior on College Ave. at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night will not be forgotten by the time your student group’s board meeting on Monday afternoon rolls around.
The transparency of a college environment may be the model of 21st century society and culture. With Google, Facebook and MySpace at virtually everyone’s fingertips, the privacy of one’s private behaviors and habits has diminished sharply. While the public nature of information allows people to maintain connections all over the globe, transparency is changing the way we are each presented to the world. Information or images, once placed on the Internet, are difficult to live down. Last month’s campus-wide discourse about the gossip website Juicy Campus reflected such concerns as students worried about future employers stumbling upon their names in posts titled “Sluttiest Sorority Girls” or “Biggest Cornell Cokeheads.” As the International Herald Tribune wrote on March 18th, the site “has been a formative lesson that an online reputation is as much a part of one's permanent record as a grade-point average or a credit score.” Spitzer was ousted after investigations into his personal finances yet America learned all about “Kristen,” the prostitute with whom he rendezvoused in Washington on February 13th, from her MySpace page. It’s assumed Paterson publicly revealed his indiscretions in order to one-up investigative reporters still reeling from Spitzer’s sex scandal.
Are the lessons from the gubernatorial scandals and Juicy Campus that the downfall of public figures is inevitable and we must each monitor our online reputation compulsively, out of fear of public exposure? Not necessarily. Leaders today still hold the capacity to inspire. This was clearly evident last week both in people’s reactions to Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on the history and present state of race relations in America and in Coach Steve Donahue’s comments in a New York Times profile of Cornell’s basketball team — that he hoped the presence of injured teammate Khaliq Grant ’08 at almost every practice and game is an inspiration to the team. And while we should all be mindful of our online reputations, compulsive monitoring would probably be more frustrating than helpful.
This changing campus and societal environment, while it poses challenges, is an exciting setting for Cornell’s newest crop of leaders. Intertwined environments provide numerous and ample opportunities for effecting change in your realm of choice. I wish you all the best of luck.