Will We Uphold Our Civic Duty?

By Francisco Enriquez and Areeba Kamal

In 1999, Castilleja, a Palo Alto private all-girls school that charges $40,000 in annual tuition, raised the idea of expanding its campus to accommodate larger enrollment. For the last twenty-two years, our neighbors have hired attorneys and traffic engineers, started petitions, and flooded city council meetings to stop Castilleja from achieving this goal.

Amidst the towering redwoods, low-slung bungalows, and eucalyptus groves that dot our community, you’ll find hundreds of yard signs documenting this decades-old saga. You’ll see “We Support Castilleja!” on one block, then “Stop Castilleja Expansion!” on the next.

A group called Protect Neighborhood Quality of Life (PNQL) leads the opposition, adamant that Palo Alto must remain “quiet and beautiful,” even as students at Castilleja express confusion at the intense vitriol. “We’ve had an election, immigration problems, human rights violations… How can parking be so important to our neighbors right now, our older girls wonder,” sighs Castilleja’s Principal, Nanci Kauffman.

You and I are interlopers in Palo Alto — temporary residents for whom this local political bickering probably holds little weight. On its face, the fight of Castilleja’s expansion probably seems incredibly dull and unimportant to you, a World-Changer.

But, consider for a moment, the demographics of Palo Alto: 82% college graduates, a median household income of more than $150,000, a median home value of more than $2 million, and 59% White, 33% Asian, 2% Black.

The residents of Palo Alto, for whom the Castilleja expansion has been the defining political story for more than two decades, look a lot like us. They are upwardly mobile, highly educated, ambitious people. They have resources and they are convinced they are right.

Of course, Castilleja is just one of a litany of local political squabbles that have turned California into the US state with the worst poverty rate and 25% of the country’s homeless population.

Consider other defining debates in the liberal oasis of California. Last month, Atherton homeowners opposed a sidewalk on Sharon Road to accommodate children walking to school because it would hurt the city’s “rural feel.” Last year, Palo Alto was forced to respond to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and begrudgingly allow non-residents into a local nature preserve. Two years ago, a homeowner down the road in Berkeley where the median price for a single family home is 5x the U.S. median, held up a zucchini during a city council meeting to oppose a project to create two, two-storey homes because it would cast shade over her zucchini patch.

Since our arrival at the GSB, we have been told we have the birthright to change the world. In Strategy Beyond Markets, a distribution requirement, we applaud examples of businesses that have successfully skirted regulation to capture market share. In Paths to Power, a decorated GSB elective, we are told to accumulate power via a seven-point framework, even if it gets a little greasy and feels a little questionable. We have adopted the slippery moral framework that the ends justify the means. And we have decided that as the chosen few allowed within the hallowed halls of the GSB, we will all do good.

But as moral theorist J.L. Mackie explains in his idea of moral skepticism, our sense of morality is fallible, just as we are. We are incapable of identifying objective moral good — when we try to make moral judgments we systematically fall into error. We are all convinced of our inherent goodness, and therein lies the insidious danger. As a result, we should all remain skeptical of our virtue. And we should all remain adamant not to turn into suburban home-owners who are globally liberal but locally conservative, who prioritize personal convenience over community benefit, and who acquiesce to racial and economic homogeneity after sticking Black Lives Matter signs in their front yards.

Too often at the GSB, we’re caught up in the flywheel of Big Questions and political theory. Do regulations protect residents or reduce prosperity? Are you liberal or conservative?

But as we get ready to leave this gilded institution, it’s vital we don’t remove ourselves from the local political fray that subtly, dramatically affects our communities. It’s necessary we are aware of our privilege, suspicious of our virtue, and cognizant of our civic duties. And it’s critical, as Glenn Kramon likes to say, that we remember not just to change but to improve lives, improve organizations, and improve the world.