While I was flattered to have been selected for the Dr. Andy Binns Award for Outstanding Service to Graduate and Professional Student Life as a final year doctoral candidate in physics at University of Pennsylvania last year, I ultimately chose to decline it because I had a host of reservations.

I was selected for this award partially on the basis of several years of engagement with GAPSA, on which I served in the Executive Board and General Body (GB). I was tightly plugged into GAPSA's inner circle and developed an intimate understanding of its objectives, innerworkings and dynamics.

My experiences led me to conclude that there are deep structural problem with GAPSA's governance. It is an open secret that there have been serious financial abuses in GAPSA the last few years. Facebook is studded with photos of students—and, even more troublingly, their non-student friends—on expensive “retreats” in Atlantic City, dining on lavish meals and consuming costly alcohol, all paid for by money collected from student fees. Some GAPSA committees are known to enjoy vastly greater spoils. While I am sympathetic to the students who participate in these excursions, young people swept away in the culture of GAPSA taking part in activities billed as “team-building”, these outings are plainly an abuse of trust. I question whether team-building that can only be achieved in this manner is worth pursuing. At many of these meetings, moreover, only a nominal level of GAPSA business is transacted. That’s why I have seen GAPSA General Body members, including past winners of this award, raise shot glasses, tongue-in-cheek, to their sponsors, “The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania”--they know that they’re playing with house money. Penn has recently commenced an ambitious fundraising campaign, The Power of Penn, seeking to raise $4.1 billion; when I receive inquiries from earnest students and staff asking for donations, it’s hard for me to believe that my philanthropic dollars are put to efficient and effective use given the abuses I’ve witnessed.

These are serious charges and some have tried to raise these objections in the past. Recently, a change.org petition (https://www.change.org/p/inquiry-into-how-gapsa-spends-our-student-life-fees) circulated objecting to the misappropriation and calling for transparency and accountability. When confronted about these abuses, student leaders have retreated by saying that the GB voted for this allocation of resources, that they are just independent fiduciaries enacting and abiding by the will of the general body. They pursue co-option to neutralize confrontation, finessing and lawyering their way to innocence. Working groups are constituted and scuttled. Best practices are “investigated” but the financial malfeasance continues, unfettered. As in our national politics, rhetoric, presentation and moral causistry prevail. We need an external audit of all of GAPSA finances from the past five years by a major national accounting firm, the results of which need to be publicly disseminated to all students and alumni. This work needs to be carried out by an external agency because there are too many stakeholders at Penn with entrenched interests in passing the buck. The names of students can be redacted--the objective should be about discovering how to restructure the system to prevent future abuses and not about identifying and censuring particular bad actors. This will not happen without passionate insistence. In the words of Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

To be clear, notwithstanding my distaste at these specious displays of wealth, what bothers me most is not the misuse and misappropriation of student resources because, frankly, it is a modest amount of money for an institution like Penn with such a formidable operating budget. We are blessed to be at a school that has the capacity to provide catered meals for students while they carry out the business of student governance. I certainly don’t mean to impugn the sincere efforts of so many Penn students who do a real mitzvah on behalf of their classmates, working tireless hours doing thankless, unglamorous tasks. The real toxicity of this behavior is that it creates a misalignment in incentives. The GB was designed to function as a check-and-balance on the activities of the GAPSA Executive Board, reflective of how executives and legislators serve as mutual watchdogs. When the GB is this chummy with the Executive Board, it becomes difficult for them to seriously challenge the Board over improprieties. By the same token, when the GAPSA Executive Board enjoys perks of this magnitude, it blunts the force with which they advocate for students with senior administrators. This is why we see such ineffectual advocacy from so many (but not all!) of our student leaders, why resolutions get passed but not posted for fear of inflaming the administration, why so many student leaders are timid with peers and administrators alike. This is also why, when senior administrators put on their paying attention face and filibuster student questions with long meandering answers designed to exhaust their interlocutor and run out the clock, student leaders thank the administrators for their time, generosity and expansiveness. They know that when you curry favor with high-level leaders, plum awards--like this one--await you when you graduate, along with letters of recommendation and tony jobs at top drawer firms.

If you're searching for a model of an honest, authentic human being, there are few places worse to look than politics. We should be wary of individuals trying to raise their social profile, burnish their resumes and gain favor with influential people. Student politics, though, can be more elevated. Trite as it sounds, we can appeal to our better angels.

GAPSA has eroded public trust in recent years. A public, forensic audit will be painful, expensive and morally fraught but is unavoidable if we want to heal the divisions in our body politic and move forward, stronger. Sunlight, Brandeis wrote, is the best disinfectant.