ASMSU held a special general assembly meeting Wednesday night to discuss proposed bill 53-20. The bill failed in a vote of 12-8 after discussion among general assembly members.
If passed, the bill would have retracted the four letters sent out by ASMSU to each political party inviting political candidates to campus. However, because the bill failed, the letters will be upheld.
The bill was proposed by vice president of governmental affairs Alex Noffsinger and seconded by College of Communication Arts and Sciences representative Joshua Slivensky in an attempt to give the general assembly members a chance to democratically vote on whether ASMSU should uphold or retract the letters sent. This opportunity was not previously given to the general assembly members, so the bill was also proposed in part as an attempt to reconcile the mishandling of this situation.
“I think it’s now apparent that the benefits to the student body and the campus of inviting all four presidential candidates isn’t enough,” Noffsinger said. “It’s not enough to compensate for the duress and the danger that this does bring to members of our student body, and I don’t think it’s just one group, I think it affects many different peoples here at MSU.”
As the ASMSU special meeting is called to order at 7:06, protesters enter. @thesnews pic.twitter.com/vmv9W2mKsT
— Madison O'Connor (@madison_o22) October 12, 2016
Student protesters, a majority from the Culturas de las Razas Unidas, or CRU, attended the meeting to protest because they feel ASMSU is ignoring the issues minorities face. They also protested last week’s ASMSU general assembly meeting after a controversy involving ASMSU’s Facebook post of the letters and censorship. This involved comments from CRU members on the post being censored by ASMSU. These comments have since been restored.
The protesters entered Wednesday night’s meeting with signs reading “Donald Trump did not silence us, ASMSU did,” “Fire those who censored CRU” and “Will our tax $$ build ASMSU’s wall?” among other messages.
CRU protesters leave as the meeting concludes. CRU will hold a town-hall tomorrow at 8p.m. at the Erickson Kiva @thesnews pic.twitter.com/rNfG08Z2KJ
— Madison O'Connor (@madison_o22) October 13, 2016
The protesters did not speak during time set for public comment and stood silently until the floor was opened for discussion on the bill. CRU representative Estephanie Lopez-Diaz yielded her time to CRU treasurer Maisie Rodriguez, who read a statement on behalf of the group.
“ASMSU has misquoted, misrepresented, threatened, silenced, invisibilized Latinx students while building social and cyber walls of exclusion, mistreatment, bigotry and discrimination,” Rodriguez said. “These acts of oppression, discrimination and overt mistreatment confirm the secondary status that Latinx people deal with on a daily basis. ... We came to correct ASMSU’s misinformed narrative about Latinx persons and CRU.”
During the meeting, Noffsinger, vice president for internal administration Jason Porter and ASMSU President Lorenzo Santavicca apologized for how the censorship situation was handled and for not involving the general assembly in the decision to send out the letters.
“I want to apologize wholeheartedly, to not only every member here of the general assembly, not only those (students) in the room, to every undergraduate student that has been affected by any of what has happened over the last few days,” Santavicca said. “I want make sure that you all know that ASMSU will remain an inclusive environment, will always be an area for free speech, anywhere, on our social media, our meetings. ... I want to apologize as a student, as a peer. We have to do better.”
There were a variety of different opinions among the general assembly members on whether or not the letters should be retracted in response. Lopez-Diaz and Alliance for Queer and Ally Students representative Olivia Brenner were in favor of bill 53-20 and retracting the letters.
“Frankly, the intent of sending the letters doesn’t really matter because the impact it had,” Brenner said. “We have students on our campus who no longer feel safe, they no longer feel represented if they ever truly did, and they no longer feel that we have their best interests at heart. ...There are students out there who are literally not feeling safe anymore, and that should be a priority over any kind of theoretical discourse, over any type of ‘engagement.’”
However, College of Music representative Isaiah Hawkins and Council of Students with Disabilities representative Julia Christensen opposed bill 53-20 and supported the letters sent by ASMSU.
“This shouldn’t be interpreted as ASMSU sponsoring any of these candidates, because that’s absolutely not what it is, it’s the idea of bringing a political candidate or engaging MSU in the national political climate,” Hawkins said. “Say if a Donald Trump rally occurs on campus, if people want to go to that and protest, all power to you, being frankly honest, I will join you, gladly. But I think this is something that we need to at least put out there.”
Christensen also opposed the bill, and argued retracting the letters would damage ASMSU’s credibility and ability to bring major speakers to campus in the future.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
Moving forward, the association’s Governmental Affairs team will work to draft a plan of action for safety and security for minority groups and all students in the event a presidential candidate does visit campus, Santavicca said in a statement last Friday.
“The bill effectively failed, meaning that we are not retracting the letters,” Santavicca said. “We have other issues that we need to address that have been a part of what’s come up.”
