Student Congress goes stag hunting

The recent controversy surrounding the College Republicans’ fight for funding was the perfect cable news drama. It had all the required elements: the underdog story of a Republican group on a liberal campus, the appearance of bias favoring liberal groups, the irony of a Republican group asking for more government money.

But what the entire story failed to capture was just how purely rational the conflict was. The clash that was splashed across conservative websites was not just the least optimal outcome, it was the expected one.

The game theory angle, so popular in political science, helps to understand why each side acted as it did.

In the case of the College Republicans funding crisis, each side could have benefited from working cooperatively.

The College Republicans would have benefited from a more cordial appropriations process, which could go a long way toward healing old wounds. Student Congress would have benefited by removing as much controversy as possible from club funding.

However, with each side holding biases, the outcome was predictably contentious.

The College Republicans remembered the trouble surrounding the Tar Heel Rifle and Pistol Club last spring. While not the same entity, there are certainly ideological overlaps between the two.

And when a bill was passed to make it harder to buy ammunition with money given by Student Congress, it was certainly difficult to make the case that the legislation was not aimed directly at the THRPC’s mission.

Disappointment is an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of the process, in which requests must be evaluated and often cut.

However, when Student Congress members decided to become the arbiters of intellectual credibility in the case of Ann McElhinney, they invited outrage into a process that is already plenty full of it. And while it’s true that there were across-the-board funding cuts, blanket statements do nothing to ease the tension surrounding a funding proposal’s cut of approximately 62 percent.

Rightly or not, the narrative exists that right-leaning groups on campus are discriminated against on an ideological basis.

What Student Congress failed to realize was that it is exactly that sort of narrative that can catch fire. Between the indignation of the College Republicans and the obstinacy of Student Congress, Chapel Hill was all but guaranteed a turn as the cable news scandal of the day.

The problem is, neither side did anything irrational. College Republicans, assuming the worst in Student Congress, took their fight to the likes of Townhall.com and The Daily Caller. Student Congress, assuming the worst in the College Republicans, refused to budge.

In the end, the College Republicans got the funding they needed within a couple of hours from an Indiegogo campaign. Student Congress did not have to pay the College Republicans any more money. And we’re all worse off for it.