Letter: URI SOARC fails to understand satire
Posted: 4/25/07
04/25/07 - To the Cigar,
Everyone appreciates a good satire... well, almost everyone.
The exception to that rule is the Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee. Perhaps their parents paid for all their books, classes, food and diapers, because anyone who believes $100 constitutes a serious scholarship surely has no grasp on reality.
Heck, I thought SOARC was engaging in satire when they demanded the URI College Republicans make a SOARC approved public apology. How mistaken I was. Not only was SOARC serious about imposing an apology because a student group held an event they didn't like, they are now acting against the wishes of President [Robert L.] Carothers.
It's all right though SOARC, as chairman of the Bryant University Republicans, I will give you an apology from a Republican group in URI's place.
Dear URI, We are sorry that we will not grovel and be forced to say something, which we do not endorse in order to placate SOARC. We are sorry that SOARC, despite being a body of student government, has no understanding of the First Amendment.
We apologize for URI having to suffer SOARC's gross miscarriage of justice and ignorance of the laws of our nation regarding compelled speech. We also apologize for SOARC being unable to recognize or appreciate satire, and that they have the incredible stupidity to believe $100 represents a scholarship that will put anyone through college.
The $100 was not even disbursed due to a previous criticism from SOARC, where the URI College Republicans stated that the political message had been sent and therefore the disbursement was unnecessary. The entire point of calling the event a scholarship was to parody actual scholarships that exist based solely on race or sexual orientation.
There, SOARC, you have your apology. Take or leave it. Stop being a rogue group of pompous spoiled brats, get off your high horses, and stop pretending that because you won a student election you were elevated to godlike status. You are not in a higher position than your university's president. You are not the arbiters of what can and cannot be said at URI.
There is a word for a bunch of self-important, bureaucratic busybodies who want to silence anyone who disagrees with them: fascists. I don't know your individual political views, but it is probably safe to say you condemn George W. Bush for being a fascist who has done immense damage to the country.
And yet, who are the people trying to force speech, who are the people cutting off funding to groups they disagree with? Who are the people who think their authority extends over and above everyone else in the land? Why, that would be you, SOARC. Are you on Bush's payroll, because you're doing a fine job in being his strong-armed enforcers of neo-conservative fascism.
Don't fret; I do have a remedy to this problem. From now on, any organization that holds any kind of parody or satirical event on campus will be forced to put up massive signs that say, "This is satire, SOARC. Please don't cut our funding!" If you want, they can also be forced to send a letter to your office, to make absolutely sure your genius-level intellects can inform the stupid rubes around you of the nature of these events. After all, if you can be so blind and deaf to the obvious, surely everyone else must be!
One final word: As assistant opinion editor of Bryant University's newspaper, The Archway, I know our editorial staff would never publish a submission someone was forced to write against their will. Here's hoping the Cigar's editorial staff wouldn't allow that kind of crap either. If any group needs to be de-recognized, it is the clowns over at SOARC.
Brian Kennedy
© Copyright 2007 The Good 5 Cent Cigar
