Now throw in the Task Forces on Student Life and Student Learning, which will be tasked to reform the very fundamentals of housing, food service, personal support services, teaching policies, and course curriculum. A busy semester indeed. As our leadership series recently discussed, though, real student involvement in MIT affairs is a new thing that has many pitfalls. Indeed, this idea says that these leaders should not be bound to their constituents' opinions in any way. However, this is not colonial America.
Students here are among the brightest people in the world.
To suggest otherwise is wrong. In both cases, the representative needs to logically prove that adopting the public opinion would cause bad things to happen. Many things leaders have to deal with do fall in this category. However, the above teams and Task Forces, which are designed to alter your life, do not. Note that the constituents make this decision, not the leader.