I realize that this is somewhat old news, but for anyone who saw my tweet or facebook post last evening regarding ASG, this discussion has just begun on the U of A campus. I write this blog post in response to several inquiries into what I meant when I posted to both my twitter and facebook yesterday, "I've never been so disappointed in ASG in my seven years on campus as I am today. We've definitely forgotten our purpose."
In order to amply explain, there does need to be some back story offered for context so I will begin with the Chris Armstrong story. Chris is the student body president at the University of Michigan. Chris also happens to be gay. Not that the latter fact should be important, but unfortunately for the Assistant State Attorney General of Michigan, it is. Andrew Shirvell found it so important that he made it his personal goal to target Chris and attack him via a blog full of derogatory comments as "concerned Michigan alumnus." That's a very abbreviated version, but the story is all over CNN, so I'll let you read up on it should you be interested in finding out more. For your convenience, here is a link to a YouTube video from Anderson Cooper's coverage of the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwObjKZg9Jw. Below is a picture of Chris from his interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Ok, so now that you are caught up on the topic, you may be asking yourself, "What does this have anything to do with ASG?". Well, that was certainly part of the argument last night, but in short, ASG President Fleming and ASG Senator Brumfield co-authored a piece of legislation supporting Chris Armstrong through all of this and calling that a letter be sent showing this support on behalf of ASG. Here's a link to a GoogleDoc copy of the ASG legislation: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B__vgnLkbs3NZGQxNGUwNzMtMzk4Ni00MjVlLTk4YzEtOGQ0NDI1N2U4ZGJi&hl=en&authkey=CIu2sp4J
During debate, questions were asked of the authors such as "So is this about civil rights?", "Is there any evidence that this has happened on our campus?", "Don't you think we should be addressing issues that impact our campus instead?", and other ignorant comments. Once we broke out of authorship and committee reports - of which I was privileged to present the minority report on behalf of the Press Relations Committee speaking on behalf of the legislation - when we got into alternating affirmative & negative debate, Chairman Johannesen, yielded the chair to me as the Parliamentarian so she could participate in debate. Also, I apologize in advance if I offend anyone with my comments that are about to follow, but this blogpost is simply my perception of the events the way that they happened.
In discussion against the resolution, the primary arguments in negation consisted of the following:
1) Shirvell had been fired already, so the legislation is irrelevant.
2) This resolution embodies a political issue beyond the jurisdiction of ASG.
3) ASG should be addressing campus issues and not dabbling in national events.
My support for the original resolution remains on the simple basis that supporting a student leader being targeted and attacked for being a part of a minority group is the right thing to do. However, my response to the negative debate against the legislation is two-fold. First, I stand behind my previous contention that this was NOT a political debate. I believe that showing support for a student leader on another campus who was being attacked for being a part of a minority group does NOT embody a political question. I challenge those speaking in the negative to identify the exact "political issue" that the legislation was poised to take. This legislation instead shows the same support as we have for Virginia Tech in the face of campus shootings and other tragedies across the nation.
However, second, even if you believe that this involves a "political question", it is certainly within the jurisdiction of ASG to discuss and advocate for students on issues that very well might be political in nature. There is ample precedent in my seven years on campus to support such a claim as well. The ASG Senate has considered issues such as the Iraq War and the Bush Administration, the Increase of the Arkansas State Severance Tax, funding for a trip to witness the Inauguration of President Obama, the Arkansas Challenge Scholarship, and I can go on if necessary. If the impact of these "political" issues has even the slightest relationship to student concerns, then by our vision and purpose statements in our very own governing documents, these do fall within our jurisdiction.
Finally, I must also assert that if this was the true belief of the negative speakers that our senate time and effort was wasted on this "political" item beyond our "scope", I ask what exactly was our attention being stolen from... It's hardly a valid argument considering our agenda has been blank nearly all semester. At least we considered an issue of student concern on Tuesday night as opposed to showing up only for roll call and approval of the previous week's minutes describing precisely the same blank agenda. If you do truly feel that we should not discuss events of this nature, please, I beg of you to find something that we should. I'm incredibly disappointed in the apathy of our body in creating policy that has a positive impact on our student body.
However, I'm even more so disappointed in our body for failing an item of business standing up for the rights of students in minority groups. It's a very sad day for ASG to have forgotten our purpose to stand up for all students, and I'm embarrassed to be a part of such a group that supports the bigotry that Chris Armstrong faced in Michigan.
