We’re done begging for change. Dissolve the UConn Board of Trustees and make it a democracy.

Imagine this: You live in a town governed by an unelected committee with near total authority. They control taxes and budgeting while hiring unelected bureaucrats to manage the day-to-day affairs of the town. They even have their own police force. Town residents have few avenues to pressure the committee, besides staging protests and generating bad press.

But that’s not some far-fetched dystopian scenario. It’s exactly how the University of Connecticut and its all-powerful Board of Trustees works. We need to replace this unaccountable system with a democratically elected group of faculty, staff and students.

UConn is governed by a Board of Trustees that forms, by the dictionary definition, an oligarchy. They are wholly unaccountable to students, faculty or workers. Within their ranks are multiple health insurance executives and two Wall Street bankers (including David Lehman, who was at Goldman Sachs in the run-up to the 2008 financial meltdown).

The Board of Trustees has near unilateral authority to set tuition, housing and fee rates (which are always rising), while the people who actually make the University what it is — students, faculty and workers — hold no real institutional power.

The University does understand, however, that without offering nominal representation, they would face a legitimacy crisis. So they give us crumbs. The Undergraduate Student Government receives just under $2 million of student fees every year to distribute to student organizations. The University Senate, which includes faculty, makes academic policy. The Board of Trustees reserves two of its 21 seats for student representation.

The administration is also fond of task forces and working groups. In September, 500 students marched on the president’s office to demand climate action. Administration response? Working group (full disclosure, I serve on this group). In October, a video emerged of two white students shouting the n-word while walking through a UConn parking lot. In response, Black organizers led a massive protest. Administration response? A diversity council. In December and January, two students were tragically lost to suicide, and students descended upon a Board of Trustees meeting to demand full funding of mental health services. Administration response? Task force.

Between USG, University Senate and the myriad collection of task forces, the administration hopes to blunt and eventually co-opt very reasonable student demands, while claiming that they are letting us “have our say” in the process.

But we want more than a say. We want power.

We’re done begging the University to fund mental health services, or to stop protecting racist students, or to halt construction of new fossil fuel plants. We’re done groveling before the undemocratic, unaccountable Board of Trustees.

It’s long past time to dissolve the Board of Trustees and replace it with a democratically elected and fully accountable committee of students, workers and faculty. We do not need nor want to be ruled over any more.

The Board of Trustees and their allies will likely respond to this demand by claiming they are impartial experts who do complicated work that we could not handle.How else would they justify their existence besides claiming some kind of special power? This kind of reasoning is akin to how a king would justify his place in the world over a peasant.

If we, as students, faculty and workers were to realize our collective power — not just to protest, but to run the University — we would quickly demonstrate that the Board is no different than us. We would discover that governance rooted in community and accountability is far more conducive to a thriving university than governance rooted in oligarchy and unaccountability.

I’ve been at UConn for three years now. I’ve been involved in a number of serious protest movements, including the climate strike. I’ve read the countless stories of racist behavior by fellow students or faculty that have made Black students, indigenous students and students of color feel unsafe at UConn. I’ve listened to the stories of students with serious mental illnesses who have struggled to receive counseling due to UConn’s underfunded mental health services. In my time here, I’ve also gotten to know many seasoned campus organizers and countless students who care deeply about the UConn community.

Through their experiences and mine, there is a common thread:

We’re tired of getting on our hands and knees to beg the university to change. It’s increasingly apparent that the only way to build a university that values all of its students, that is committed to education rather than economic growth, that acts in a socially just manner and that utilizes its resources responsibly is to shift the balance of power.

No more groveling. No more petitioning. No more task forces and false promises.

We want power, and we want it now.

Dissolve the Board of Trustees. Create a democratically elected committee of students, faculty and workers to run the University.

Harry Zehner will be a senior at the University of Connecticut studying political science and environmental economics and policy.