Institutional Reforms

The Institute of Politics (IOP) is supposed to be a place where folks chat about politicking. But sometimes, it’s the IOP itself that becomes the center of the debate.

Take for example, the former structure of IOP policy groups. Just a few years ago, the small student groups—which research and contribute to public policy through avenues at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government—were elected by a small cadre of insiders. Only three applicant groups were accepted, rewarding the well-connected and not rewarding the, well, not-so-connected.

Now though, like a nascent Latin American democracy, reform is in vogue and the IOP has recently allowed an unlimited number of groups to get approval.

Some argue that the change has made the groups—and by extension, the IOP—more accessible to the entire student body. Others say that it has diluted the program and spread resources a little too thin.

DOING IT ON THEIR OWN

“Each group is organized, managed, and led entirely by Harvard undergraduates, and aims to develop comprehensive yet specific policy recommendations,” writes IOP National Program Coordinator Laura J. Simolaris in an e-mail.

Simolaris is happy about the extension of the program, which she says allow students to get involved and take active leadership roles.

The young policy gurus talk up topics from immigration to trafficking, and genocide to gerrymandering.

Loui Itoh ’07, chair of the sex trafficking policy group and a Crimson editor, believes that the increase in the number of groups has been positive, especially because groups can choose a narrow agenda and stick with it.

“We met as a group and decided we needed to focus on domestic or international law. We need to just pick one and go with it,” she says.

A POLICY OF OPENNESS

According to Simolaris, a group of both students and IOP staff made the decision for an unlimited number of policy groups in the spring of 2005.

As a result, the program has expanded from three to 14.

Not so long ago, however, the policy groups were chosen by IOP insiders based on a rigorous election process says Raquel E. Alvarenga ’07, one of the programs two overall directors.

“You have to be involved in that program in some way...in order to vote [on a student’s proposal],” she says. Consequently, a student’s connections at the IOP used to factor heavily in the fate of his policy group proposal.

“The whole thing was kind of an insider baseball game,” says Eric P. Lesser ’07 of the old three-group structure. Lesser, a student director of the program and co-chair of the redistricting group, understood the need to reform the program.

“People with new or fresh ideas were often either not able to win because they weren’t part of the circle, or they were dissuaded from ever proposing in the first place,” he says. “It was clear that the system had to change or open up a little bit.”

SPREAD TOO THIN?

But some group leaders worry that with a larger number of groups comes a smaller pool of dedicated students. Brian P. Weller ’09 is a founding member of the pork barrel spending group. He believes that the abundance of policy groups spreads the reservoir of politically-active students too thin.

“There’s such a proliferation of policy groups that they’re kind of stealing off members from some of each other,” he says. “They’re competing for the same pools of people who are really interested in these topics.”

Joseph F. Busa ’08, co-chair of the genocide policy group, understands Weller’s concerns.

“At the open house there’s a fixed number of people,” he says. “And we’re all competing for these people.”

Nonetheless, Busa shares Lesser’s enthusiasm for the expanded program. “Policy groups get people in the door,” he says. “It brings different kinds of people to the IOP.”

OPENING UP

Ultimately, the decision to increase the number of IOP policy groups reflects the continued evolution of the program.

“As each semester goes on we learn something about what we could do differently to help the students more,” says Simolaris. “We’ll tweak the structure of the program as we learn different ways to make it better and easier for students to focus on a policy issue that interests them and that they’re enthusiastic about.”

That’s a recommendation that any policy group could agree on.