As President of the Union Alex Franz ’10 wrote in last week’s “Derby,” “transparency” is the word of the hour at RPI. Students, concerned about recent administrative actions related to the financial crisis at the Institute, have responded by requesting from the administration a policy of transparency to allow student oversight and involvement in decisions that so directly affect us. The College Libertarians, along with the other political groups on campus, have spoken in support of this movement for student involvement in administrative decisions.
It is interesting, then, to note the parallels between our situation and the situation currently facing the nation as a whole. One of the platforms of President Barack Obama’s campaign was to bring transparency to the federal government. “Government should be transparent,” reads http://whitehouse.gov/. “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset.”
Unfortunately, as it turns out, the group associated with the federal government most desperately in need of oversight and increased transparency is the one Obama is least able to open to public scrutiny. The Federal Reserve is a body that, for decades, has conducted meetings and carried out policy decisions shrouded in secrecy and without any oversight. The Fed occupies a foggy position between being a government and corporate entity: It is essentially in control of the monetary policy of the United States, with the authority to coin America’s legal tender and to deal secretly with foreign governments and banking systems. However, the Federal Reserve is not subject to many of the same oversights to which other government agencies must submit. The Federal Reserve, for example, is not required to comply with the Freedom of Information Act or release the transcripts of its top secret meetings until five or more years after they are held.
Many believe that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies of the past several years, including that of massive inflation, were significant contributors to the current economic crisis. Unfortunately, because of the cloud of opacity surrounding almost all important operations and decisions of the Federal Reserve, we can’t really know for sure to what extent the Fed’s actions have contributed to the recent economic problems. This is why, several weeks ago, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced HR-1207, titled the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. The act would revoke certain restrictions placed on the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which prevents oversight of the Federal Reserve. Passage of the bill would enact a full auditing of the Federal Reserve to be carried out by 2010.
It is important that we, as students, be allowed to have access to the decision-making processes of the administrators to whom we pay tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition money. Their decisions directly and significantly impact our experiences as students, and we have a right to know what is going on. Equally, as citizens who pay similarly massive percentages of our incomes to the federal government in the form of taxes, we deserve access to information regarding the decisions and proceedings of the Federal Reserve which so monumentally impact our economy and our lives. You call for transparency in the RPI administration; don’t stop there. Contact your representatives and insist that they support HR-1207 to bring promised and much-needed transparency to our federal government.
Editor’s Note: The Progressive Students Alliance, College Republicans, and College Libertarians rotate columns triweekly.
