Vice President of Sitting Around and Blogging

Something I can't stand is the tendency of student organizations at Cornell to toss the word "president" into every executive board officer position. Your typical student organization will have a president, perhaps an executive vice president, and then 2-7 vice presidents of some sort. Forget being treasurer, you're the Vice President for Financial Management. Forget being social chair, you're the Vice President for Events. I wish these titles were jokes.

I understand that students want to make their resumes looks good. Including the words "vice president" makes it seem like the officer is a heartbeat away from being in charge, even if he or she holds one of the less important positions. Consider the InterFraternity Council, which has seven vice presidents. Or the laughably incompetent Slope Media, which doesn't post its organizational chart anymore, but at last check had ten vice presidents.

Last night, one of my student organizations held elections. In typical Cornell style, all of the officers have "president" somewhere in their title. At the end of the meeting, we installed the new officers. To no surprise, the script from our national organization had the word "secretary" instead of "Vice President of Records," thereby proving that the transformation of the position into a vice-president-ship was a Cornell invention.