Last spring my friend Eli was ecstatic to learn he had been accepted to live on the lawn for his fourth year. However, the day of lawn room selection, Eli was tasked with a last minute emergency shift at his job and could not attend the meeting. I received a call from him electing me as his representative. Therefore, a consensual fiduciary relationship of agency had been created. Eli the principal, and I the agent tasked to act on his behalf and choose his lawn room.
We all met in a sophisticated conference room, akin to the house chamber, hidden within the labyrinth of Newcomb. Tensions and emotions ran high as the random name generator assigned the order of selection. My heart sank when I saw I would be selecting 41st of 54 people meaning the potential for a principal agent problem of shirking just skyrocketed. Eli texted me a list of 10 rooms ranked in order of preference and they were all gone by the 20s. Among chatter and logrolling between future lawnees, I randomly chose a room number and the conference room halted to a deafening silence. I looked around in confusion unaware that I had just selected a room specifically awarded to students of color at the university.
I was already embarrassed to be imposing at the future lawnee meeting and now I just looked like an ignorant jerk too. After being informed of the gravity of the decision I just made, I changed my approach and started to act within my own interests. Within the utility equation discussed from Kalt and Zupan, I had an ideological incentive to respect the legacy of lawn rooms, and had an economic incentive to not spend anymore of my personal time here viewing more powerpoints on lawnee protocol. Therefore, regardless of my principal’s preferences, I shirked and chose a random room in order to maximize my own utility function.
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