Letter: Student Senate actions 'illegitimate and failure of leadership'
Posted: 4/25/07
04/25/07 - To the Cigar,
This letter is to the University of Rhode Island community from an outside observer. I want to address your Student Senate's illegitimate actions and failure of leadership.
First, I would like to point out that I have extensive experience in student government. I was a two-term senator and then an executive board member for a year and a half before losing my bid for the presidency. I am also very conservative (think Edmund Burke gone Federalist) and faced my share of legislative battles, so I know how that process works. That said the URI Student Senate has abdicated its responsibility as representatives of the student body.
The URI College Republicans were making a political point about affirmative action by claiming that it is a racist, discriminatory program. Rather than pick up on the not-so-subtle irony in the scholarship, the Student Senate became reactionary and condemned the CRs for being discriminatory.
It is almost laughable: this condemnation is a confirmation of the point the CRs were making in the first place - namely, that discriminatory scholarships should be frowned upon. Thank you, Student Senate, for your dimwitted complicity.
Now, how would the senate react if a minority group offered a minority scholarship? If, because some planets aligned, there was substantial complaining, a good leader would try to mediate the situation by encouraging dialog. Or, in the case that no wrong was committed, a good leader would stand for the rights of freedom of enterprise.
Orwell warned us of "memory holes" and ill-named Ministries. The Senate's Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee treads dangerously close to this territory. Should we watch for a motion on the senate floor to change the name of the campus police to the Ministry of Love?
The URI CRs are a political group. They have an agenda to promote, and one of their points is that affirmative action is inherently racist. I take it this view is unpopular at URI. Our government of enumerated powers and rights inviolable by the state means is designed to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech needs no protecting.
Unlike the URI CRs, the URI Student Senate is supposed to lead the student body, protect minority rights and unpopular speech, and promote understanding. Instead they have chosen to suppress opinions that make them uncomfortable and create division where even a second-rate leader could have found a solution.
I will leave the senate with a quote from Mark Twain, one that should appeal to the counter-culture revolutionary nonsense that the typical university student embraces. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain. Pause, reflect, and read 1984 again.
S. Lee Whitesell II
© Copyright 2007 The Good 5 Cent Cigar
