Twenty-seven years ago this week, The Student's front-page headline shouted "Students at Amherst: Bound by Paternalism." The feature was inspired by some students' discontent with President John Ward's decision to bar student representation from the Select Committee on the Curriculum. The challenging headline and the issue's articles expressed the students' general dissatisfaction with their role in "crucial decisions which shape their educational lives," which they found to be feeble, The Student reported. Articles describing students' concerns followed the provocative headline and images (see left). Andy Bohjalian '76 described his frustration with the administration's gestures of democracy in "Morsels to the Mob," Dan Quinn '77 proposed that a student representative should have the same voting power as a trustee and Mark Magyar '76 described the available avenues of student influence and found them to be insufficient.

A fourth commentator on the issue, Bruce Teicher '77, chose to approach the debate more imaginatively. Burger King had recently announced their new "Have it Your Way" campaign, and Teicher described his meeting with an executive of the burger joint. Teicher thought the well-known slogan might be applicable to the issue of student power, and asked with the executive whether if he thought customers should be allowed voting power in the company's major decisions. "[C]ustomers were never democratic participants in Burger King," the executive said, according to Teicher. "The better system was people ... trusting that [professionals] would be responsive."

Interestingly enough, the executive's comments were strikingly similar to the answer that President Ward gave in response to questions about students' voting rights. "It all depends on trust," he said. "Students should see the administration and faculty as responsible and responsive. They listen to students and make policy with their interests in mind." In spite of the Ward's close ideological alignment with a fast food maven, the number of dissatified articles in The Student suggests that his seemingly nonplussed response may have left the student body relatively unsatiated.