After all the promises that students would be involved in the presidential search process, it all comes down to this: The Presidential Search Committee is bringing only one candidate to meet the entire student body. The PSC reassures us that ubiquitous student disatisfaction would send them back to the drawing board.  But now that “student involvement” has translated into one candidate, one meeting and one voting member on the PSC, it is getting harder and harder to believe their promises.

The ostensible reasoning behind this decision is the poor experience candidates had with students in the past presidential search. According to College Secretary Robert Haslun, Oberlin “has a reputation...for eating presidents up.” Why? Because we ask the hard questions: How serious will this candidate be about supporting Middle Eastern and North African Studies? Would the president support cutting a given faculty position, or not? Will he or she care about student opinion once he or she has the job?

Precluding students from asking these questions of multiple candidates is misguided. If a presidential prospect cannot handle answering the tough questions of the student body before being appointed, how will he or she answer them after? We contend that such a candidate is not the right one for us.

But the disappointment in the PSC’s decision goes far beyond this one event. Over and over again, we have emphasized how awful it feels when the College makes a decision without considering student input. But perhaps worse than not being involved at all is the knowing that the administration misled us, and not for the first time.

Remember all of the assurances during the Fearless campaign? We were promised that “fearless” would not appear on its own (March 3, 2006 issue). We were told that “fearless” would not be used as a motto or be “something that will be decorating people’s chests” (Class Trustee Elizabeth Welch, March 3, 2006 issue). Yet “We are Oberlin. Fearless” appears at the bottom of nearly every page of the College viewbook. It is at the bottom of the letter accepted students receive from the Oberlin College Office of Admissions. It is on business cards, information pamphlets and the T-shirts worn by Admissions personnel during the recent “All Roads Lead to Oberlin Campaign.”

Given what happened with the Fearless campaign, maybe students were silly for believing that they ever had a real voice in the presidential search process. The College has a less-than-stellar record in terms of involving students; there has been a historic problem with a lack of transparency in the decision-making process and often the College has showed only a modicum of respect for student opinion.

But somehow, we thought that the PSC would be different. Selecting the College’s next president is such an important process, we found it inconcievable that the College would continue its policy of placation, only cursorily involving one crucial aspect of any president’s job: the students. And the PSC promised, so convincingly, that we would be involved.

That is what hurts the most — the feeling of being duped. Why have we been led to believe that our opinion mattered, only to have our opportunity to share it made singular? Have they been purposefully patronizing us all along, feeding us lines and adding non-voting members simply to keep us from protesting? Instead of being afraid of how our prospective candidate will handle intelligent, expectant students, the PSC ought to be worried about showing this side of Oberlin — the cycle of lies, mistrust and secrecy.