Staff Editorial: The token committee

It's a long-standing tradition at Penn that whenever a controversial decision needs to be made, it goes straight to a committee.

Over the last few years, we've seen them spring up to handle the debate over sweatshop monitoring groups, student health insurance and the controversial alcohol policy. They are generally slow, bureaucratic monsters, and they provide an easy means for administrators to deflect the responsibilities of decision-making onto a broad, "representative" body of constituents.

This week, the University unveiled plans to employ a committee to handle yet another controversial matter: the proposal to make visible PennCards a permanent, around-the-clock part of our campus landscape.

Obviously, the debate over visible IDs has found a number of supporters and detractors. Students -- many of whom show a distaste for existing PennCard regulations -- have voiced early opposition to the plan, citing the inconvenience of wearing an ID to enter campus buildings. Public Safety officials, on the other hand, claim that visible IDs would help keep this campus safe, by identifying those who "belong" inside University buildings and those who don't.

What's clear so far, unfortunately, is that Penn officials expect the committee charged with deciding the fate of the ID proposal to simply rubber stamp a decision that has already been made.

Call it window dressing. Call it administrative manipulation. But whatever the name, it's tough to conclude otherwise -- especially when University President Judith Rodin remarks, somewhat suggestively, that American universities are "outliers" when it comes to requiring visible campus IDs.

The possibility becomes even clearer when Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush appears on local television showcasing the appeal of the new ID holders, and is cited in several national publications -- including the Chronicle of Higher Education -- as a staunch supporter of visible IDs.

Take those examples, and consider the fact that neither the ID proposal nor the list of committee members has yet been made public, and it appears all too obvious that this "debate" has effectively ended even before it began.

That's unfortunate, because good judgment -- as well as the sentiments of most Penn students -- seems to suggest that visible ID cards would be an obtrusive, ineffective and wholly inappropriate part of the University lifestyle.

And it's even more unfortunate, because at a university well known for its academic freedom and spirit of openness and discussion, visible ID cards have started clamping down on those ideals even before they have arrived.

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