Editorial: Druids’ secrecy detrimental to student democracy

Pitt’s secret society, the Druids, has not been seen congregated on campus in their trademark black robes in almost 10 years. But that hasn’t stopped the group from gaining a disproportionate amount of political power at Pitt.

According to former Druids, the organization has transformed in recent years from a group in which student leaders could gather and perform acts of kindness to one whose members seek to gain political influence on campus. They have also maintained a very discreet presence on campus until last week, when an infraction complaint filed by SGB Elections chair Aaron Gish against Board President Gordon Louderback brought the society back into the spotlight. The infraction mentioned a Druid presence on the Board, which, according to a list The Pitt News obtained, includes Louderback and Board members Thomas Jabro, Sowmya Sanapala, Sarah Winston, C.J. Bonge and John Cordier. (See the story in our News section.)

The Druids have evolved over the course of their history at Pitt. For most of this history, they were a group of loosely affiliated campus leaders who, among other activities, recognized influential student leaders and occasionally awarded them small scholarships for their work.

About 80 years after their inception, the Druids made the decision to change to secret membership after they could no longer be recognized through Pitt’s Student Organization Resource Center, SORC, because they chose not provide the office with a list of students who were members.

And secrecy would be fine if the group wanted to continue its philanthropy and not receive any credit for it. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. The Druids, unknown to a majority of Pitt students, have been gradually building up their representation on SGB.

Secrecy tends to have a negative connotation. John F. Kennedy once said, “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”

The Druids have clearly gone beyond being a group of student leaders who provide their peers with accolades.

While students have a right to affiliate with whatever clubs they choose, the Druids’ anonymity, combined with their dominance in SGB, poses a danger to the integrity of the Board that its members should not tolerate. The Druids typically comprise about 20 students, and six of them are currently members of the nine-person Student Government Board. Out of fairness to the students who unknowingly elected almost a third of the club to SGB, the Druids must be more transparent about their membership and about their activity on campus.

According to former Druids, the society’s members actively try to get each other elected to SGB — and they’ve clearly been successful. Louderback stated in an interview during the campaign season that every student should have a chance to be involved in SGB. Yet now, after he’s been elected, he seems to have forgotten his mission to make becoming active on the Board a more accesible venture. With the 2013 SGB’s inauguration this January, the largest number of Druids ever to be recorded on the Board took office. The majority of current SGB members now belong to this exclusive group, despite seeming like, and presenting themselves as, a very diverse Board. Their lack of candor was misleading, if not intentionally deceptive.

We wouldn’t accuse the Druids of any malicious intentions — it truly seems that the majority of the society’s members want to act in ways that benefit Pitt students as a whole. But if students wanted to trust a small, anonymous group of involved students to make important decisions for the entirety of the undergraduate population, they could cease to participate in seemingly “democratic” elections altogether. And we assume the SGB Elections Committee, which has managed to raise the percentage of student voters on campus over the past few years, wouldn’t want that.

It seems that the Druids maintain anonymity out of a sense of tradition and perhaps exclusivity, but at this point, the society’s members can not fail to acknowledge that continued secrecy for their group would have to come at the cost of an impartial and truly diverse Board. Students deserve to know what organizations their leaders are affiliated with. Being open about their existence could allow the Druids to maintain their traditions, rituals and philanthropic activity while also reestablishing a responsible, visible and, hopefully, trustworthy public presence. Pulling strings from behind the scenes might be effective, but it’s hardly leadership.

None of the Board members who have been named as Druids chose to comment for the story, even though they knew their names would appear.

But now that their secrets have been aired out, it’s time for the six Board members affiliated with the Druids to respect the students who elected them — and whom they have committed to serve — by demonstrating transparency in their on-campus affiliations.