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It did not take long at all for the defeat of the May Day-centered response to the Jan. 20 shooting on the UW campus to take center stage, as a bonafide litany of resolutions flooded new business in the ASUW Senate this week.
Among them was an unfortunately familiar piece of legislation I wrote about in short last week, “A Resolution Condemning Violence and Affirming Civil Liberties.” It is a bootleg and heavily modified version of Alexander Peterson’s original proposal, which was introduced in late January, for the senate’s response to the violence.
Some of the language in ASUW Women’s Action Commission Director Erin Nguy’s bill is reasonable and responsible, as it affirms the importance and protection of minority groups on campus, especially by providing lobbying power to the ASUW on behalf of these minority organizations.
However, some of the rest provided a taste of the other “problematic” (God, I hate that word) proposals that had been introduced. Nguy’s bill includes a qualifier, a sort of exception to the affirmation of free speech on campus, which makes the whole concept of “affirming civil liberties” that the namesake touts feel disingenuous.
The other resolution was a whopper, and a slap in the face to the College Republicans. I have no qualms in saying that it is draconian in nature and underbaked in its entirety. In short, it provides power to the Office of Minority Affairs Bias Task Force to implement a three-strikes-you’re-out system so that RSOs can quite literally be disbanded if they’re found to be a part of discrimination or harassment, even tangentially and not in relation to any of its members.
This is quite literally a proposal for thought police. Although it is designed with a good cause in mind — to prevent discrimination and harassment on campus — the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The idea of giving any group on campus the power to shut down student organizations both unorganized and organized is startlingly short-sighted, and the second strike’s threat of pulling funding is weird indeed.
The fact that this wing of the senate argues on the side of anti-fascists is incredibly ironic, and is almost tinged with insanity. They were asked if they ran this resolution by any officials from the UW’s legal team or otherwise relevant officials. Nope. They were asked about specifics on the details of the bills and punted to committee and senate discretion, eventually praising how vague the language was in the resolution.
Its vagueness will allow the General Affairs committee, saturated by anti-College Republican senators, to create a Frankenstein’s monster of a resolution, molding elements from Peterson’s hijacked resolution into it.
At one point, Peterson initiated a motion to table the resolution indefinitely, which was quite rude, and caused a brief rally of support around the resolution as the motion failed. One interesting caveat came out of the debate between Peterson and the resolution’s sponsors: they claimed Peterson’s last bill was troublesome.
I have yet to determine how anyone could come upon such a conclusion, as it was a resolution that was overwhelmingly innocent in its reach, and didn’t attempt to point a finger at any one person or cause for the clashes on Jan. 20.
I would have honestly liked to see this bill redacted, ran through legal, and worked on by more than a handful of very opinionated senators before being reintroduced. Offering the option to table the resolution indefinitely was not a respectful way to handle the situation, but the sponsors should have understood the overwhelming message from the first readings: no one was ready to consider it.
It may be the committee’s job to rework entire resolutions, but I have doubts about the General Affairs committee’s ability to conduct their amending in an unbiased fashion. And ultimately, resolutions like this are going to reopen pandora’s box, and I am going to be forced to write about the Jan. 20 shooting for the rest of Session 23. Boo.
It has been three months since the event and the senate had their chance. At this point I can only foresee a monopoly of attention toward what will — in the grand scheme of the lifetime of the university, or even in the average student’s tenure — be insignificant.
Summary: Close Pandora’s box; let the resolution go.
Reach columnist Zackary Bonser at opinion@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @ZackaryBonser
