Notestine: Flaws in the system

The University of Toledo’s culture and problems are built by systems. What we deal with in Student Government is the fallout of those systems. Every time a student is dissatisfied with a class, food or infrastructure, that problem exists because of policy or mistakes the system encourages. Therefore, student life is currently being destroyed by its system.

When I talk about systems I mean institutional habits, procedures and routines.

Our system makes it impossible for students to coordinate effectively. In order to plan an event, for example, student leaders fill out paperwork in an office that most students don’t know exists. Paperwork for over 200 organizations is then funneled to an email account of a single staff member.

That member uses manual spreadsheets. All of the events go into an online database with lag. Eventually they pass it on to another staff member with stacks of paper. Half the time they’ll send it back, partially because the student leader filled it out wrong. Then they file it away in alphabetical order.

Let’s jump across the pond and see what a worse system can do.

In 1987, London’s Kings Cross Station caught fire and killed 31 people and injured over 100. The system that made trains run on time was not designed for anything else and instead orchestrated a tragedy.

Ticket takers were instructed never to leave their booths. If they had they might have noticed the fire, but years of efficiency created a habit of ignoring anything that might distract them. In the stairway, decades of flammable paint layered on top of each other, because no department was in control of maintenance for them. The first employee to notice, Philip Brickell, didn’t report to anyone when he stomped out a burning wad of tissue.

The reason was because he wasn’t in charge of fire safety and he wasn’t going to go against the system, step on toes, and report outside of his department. That was how Kings Cross worked for years because of gradual policy changes — mind your own business, stay divided.

The results were fatal.

At Kings Cross, the system was retooled with less siloing of people and a station-wide procedure for fire safety. Now, when we think of Kings Cross it’s because of platform nine and three-quarters and not the tragedy that happened just ten years before Harry Potter was written.

Looking at UT, we can use the recent Title IX investigations and sexual assault as an example of the same problem. Research shows it’s the system that hires bad employees, encourages institutions to hide rape, and discourage survivors from seeking help. That’s why the Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, and the White House have been so focused on how UT designs student grievance councils and procedures.

Social theorist Max Weber insisted on a system where individuals were logically placed in their own spheres of influence and had a transparent and logical chain of command. When we look at how student organizations are forced to interact with opaque systems or encouraged through a lack of advisors and resources to work independently we can begin to see the emerging problems.

The point of addressing systems as the source of our problems is that it clears the blame of people. Every year we complain that we don’t have the right kind of students to succeed — they’re unspirited or lazy. After a year of being president, I’ve heard administrators, faculty and students suggest the same solutions since I was a freshman senator. How many spirit weeks, leadership programs, and honors dorms do we need to build before we stop blaming a lack of “good” students?

I propose that maybe it’s the environment we’ve created — or more importantly let evolve of its own accord like Kings Cross — that is the problem. If UT can retool its systems just enough, we might get to that state where we can start to focus on something new instead of fighting a losing battle.

Clayton Notestine is a fourth-year majoring in political science.