***Correction: This editorial states that Chelsea Clinton’s appearance at Pi Beta Phi on Sunday was “sponsored by the sorority system.” In fact, the Jan. 13 event occurred at an Inter-Sorority Council (ISC) member house but was neither sponsored nor planned by the ISC.***

“We are just trying to make my mom’s campaign more accessible to people,” said Chelsea Clinton ‘01 on Sunday night to a standing-room-only crowd in the Pi Phi lounge. The Stanford alumna and daughter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Ms. Clinton arrived at Stanford yesterday for a one-day swing through campus in order to talk to young women, a key target demographic of the Clinton campaign. But the limited invitation policy of the event at Pi Phi, which was only open to members of the Inter-Sorority-Council, left a bad taste in the mouths of the many Clinton fans and political junkies across campus, many of whom would have stayed home from Lake Tahoe ski trips for a chance to attend.

In an effort to sway undecided voters for California’s upcoming Feb. 5 presidential primary, Chelsea hosted a small round-table discussion at Old Union and later a larger event open only to sorority members in the Pi Phi lounge. According to a member of the Stanford Students for Hillary, who was quoted in the Stanford Daily on Monday [Chelsea Campaigns at Farm], the former first daughter wanted to reach out to the sorority audience in order to tap into a “core demographic” of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

By many accounts it was a success. Chelsea reached out to undecided female voters, supporting and explaining her mother’s views on substantive issues such as the war in Iraq and the nuances between universal insurance plans of the major Democratic presidential candidates. The strategy seems almost ingenious: target an all-female slice of the Stanford population that may be less politically engaged but more socially connected, and present them with an impressive young woman who lived in the Cowell cluster herself ten years ago.

But the exclusive setting of the question-and-answer session, however, may have turned off more people than it turned on. Clinton was not a member of a sorority while at Stanford, so her appearance was not a homecoming for a former sorority sister. The campaign and the University kept the event a secret and only members of the ISC even knew Clinton was scheduled to visit on campus.

Perhaps this was the design and intention of the campaign stop all along, however. A school-wide, open event, held impersonally in Memorial Auditorium or Kresge, would have been packed with political partisans and prevented the presidential daughter from forging any connections with voters or personally changing people’s minds.

What transpired on Sunday night, however, created the impression that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has been accused of belonging to a establishment network and resisting grassroots political change, was something less than accessible. Chelsea’s mum appearance sponsored by the sorority system, a naturally exclusive institution that accepts and rejects candidates based on notoriously subjective qualifications, only perpetuates the major criticisms of the Clinton campaign.

Certainly there are many sorority girls at Stanford who are interested in politics and benefited from hearing Chelsea speak — many sorority girls were denied entry into the event at Pi Phi. An open event, however, where perhaps a lottery system could have limited attendance but allowed access, could have drummed up more interest and positive energy for the Hillary campaign. Instead, on Sunday Chelsea sought “accessibility” for her mother’s campaign at a private event that, ten years ago, then-student Chelsea Clinton would not have been invited to attend.