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Volume CXXXII, Number 17 |
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Partisan issues are not BSG's business
To the Editors:
Now, I strongly believe that caveats are for little children (Mommy's gonna be back soon, okay?). There will be none here. The following article is for people who think. Take it however you like it. I am not, however, responsible for your conclusions.
So, whose grand idea was it to ask Haliday Douglas to argue the opposition viewpoint at the Bowdoin Student Government meeting on Tuesday? From the outset it was obvious that he didn't believe a word of what he was spouting. He didn't even pretend to believe it. Now, in order to improve the chances of this article being published, I will restrict myself to saying that his efforts could best be described as "disconnected" - no two words were in any way connected. Uh huh…Tuesday night was about as intensely partisan as I have ever seen the Bowdoin campus get. The Bowdoin Student Government gathered to consider whether or not to endorse the petition against the war on Iraq as the majority opinion of the school body. The mood in the room was great, and most of the arguments solid…most.
The argument in favor of endorsing the resolution was simply that because a large number of students signed the petition- some 900 odd - the BSG was obligated to recognize the deep feelings of the majority by voting to endorse it. The punch line for this viewpoint seemed to be the performance by the women's a Capella group Miscellania. They basically sang a song about some hypothetical war widow who lost her husband (I presume) in Vietnam and was so distraught, that she basically told the government exactly where to put the money they were sending her each month. I must confess that I suddenly had visions of Woodstock '67 (Come on! You know I was there!) Hey, war is bad…not so? Well, whatever -- that wasn't even the point.
The opposing argument went like this: according to its own constitution, the BSG was established to represent students as far as it pertained to school affairs, and that it was out-of-place for the association to be taking sides on political matters-especially since it also has an obligation to represent as many students as possible. That job would be much easier if it avoids politics like the plague. I agree.
I'll tell you what else was out-of-place. The fact emerged several people didn't know at the time of signing the petition that this would become a BSG issue. All this time, Mr. Douglas' fake shell was flaking off like a bad case of dandruff. Then he said it. To peals of laughter, he made a remark that called their literacy into question, implying that the information was on the petition for all to read. No it wasn't-- certainly not in the version of the petition that I read. You see, Mr. Douglas, most people simply cannot read something that isn't there. They just can't. Can you show us how?
Finally, the representatives in support of the motion, after trumpeting the grand significance of the 900 signatures then promptly proceeded to undermine their own argument by opposing a student referendum-claiming that the same students who were so overwhelmingly passionate about the war that they were moved to sign a petition would somehow suddenly become too apathetic to find a browser, type webmail.bowdoin.edu and type "Y-E-S" in an e-mail.
After all the gymnastics with words, I remain clueless as to the usefulness of a BSG stamp on the anti-war petition. If the BSG wants to continue to be regarded as a non-partisan organization, it needs to run far, far away from the Iraq resolution and other resolutions like it. Thank goodness they did.
The BSG put the issue back into the hands of the students- and that's exactly where such partisan stuff belongs.
Sincerely,
Evron Legall '06
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