Letter to the Editor 2, 2/26

To the Editor, As a former Pitt Program Council lecture director, I was excited to see the… To the Editor, As a former Pitt Program Council lecture director, I was excited to see the amount of coverage on the David Plouffe event and the Pitt Program Council in general. I’m sure a lot of students looked at the front page yesterday and saw the pie chart and the large figure that the Pitt Program Council receives from our student activities fee. Yes, the budget is large, but what most people don’t put into account is that the Pitt Program Council consists of eight’ committees built into one successful student organization. SGB and Student Life have given the Pitt Program Council the opportunity to have a large budget mainly because of the same reason Dean Kathy Humphrey signs off on everything: trust. As a former director, I can say that in order to figure out what kind of acts people want to see, we would hand out surveys before, after and during events. The students who usually aren’t satisfied are the ones who throw the surveys to the ground after a PPC event and the ones who just sign up for the Pitt Program Council at the activities fair just for a T-shirt. As far as a ‘less scrupulous or less responsible person’ heading the Pitt Program Council, that would never happen. Yes, JJ Abbott and all the former executive board directors have final say, but the Pitt Program Council isn’t a dictatorship. It is a very close group of students doing their part to ensure other students the best possible college experience. Brandon Stirpe College of Arts and Sciences