Selecting our next University president is a crucial step at a crucial time, but it's also a step that lends itself to suffocation by our own ideals.At Brandeis, we like to consider ourselves highly committed to a certain set of ideals that includes fun discussion topics like social justice and environmentalism. And we know with such certainty that if we could only institute our ideals in the world, then things would be better-even if only slightly so.

And though most of our ideals have to do with national and global issues, as human beings our most immediate instinct may be to apply them to our immediate situations as college students.

We've seen this application of ideals a lot since last year. Throughout the University's epidemic budget cuts. We, as students, have based our discussions and responses in our ideals in order to help the University-to show it what we thought was more correct and more just.

The selection of the next University president, just as those other processes of change that began last year, shouts out to us as yet another opportunity for crafting the ideal process and outcome in order to fit the mold of our wildest dreams of social justice and equality. But the seemingly ideal process and outcome aren't always in our best interests. In this case, they definitely aren't.

The soon-to-be-formed Student Advisory Committee to advise the Board of Trustees is a prime example of idealism gone astray.

I'm referring to the concept that we need student representation in the process of picking the next president: We don't. There's no need for the existence of such an advisory committee in the first place.

Sure, it looks like quite the privilege. If you're on it, you may get the exclusive chance to interview the top few candidates for the job, and you'll always have that likely concealed and thus much-coveted knowledge of which candidates didn't make the cut.

Yet I see no possible situation in which the committee could have a markedly positive effect on the process. If it has any effect at all, which it most likely won't, it will be a very negative one.

When it comes down to decision time, it's highly unlikely that the Board will be prepared to select one candidate and the students another. That's because Board members and students alike hopefully have the same sense for what characteristics our next president ought to have, namely, the vision to lead and the charm to solicit. Quite simply put, the president, again contrary to our concept of an ideal community, doesn't need to attend club social events to be considered good at his or her job. We don't want the University president at Pachanga, anyway. He should be busy doing his job. The president only needs to know how to lead us and how best to stimulate our largely Jewish donor base. (Which leads to my personal choice for the next president-a boy in perpetual preparation for his bar mitzvah.)

And if there were to be a disagreement between the Board and the committee, it's not like the Board would suddenly see the light and change its mind over the selection of the next University president. If you think that would actually be the case, then I respectfully disagree with your na'veté.

What could happen, though, is the Student Advisory Committee has a favorite candidate, and when the Board picks someone else for the post, the committee goes public with the disagreement. And public display of dissatisfaction for the forthcoming president of a financially troubled University means the return of media focus and bad publicity.

We shouldn't have the Student Advisory Committee in this presidential selection process. It's a body created due to ideals that, in this instance, are only seemingly correct and nothing more.