Last Sunday, the Students Unite Now Caucus of the Student Government Undergraduate Senate dissolved itself and its members began resigning following the removal of Mike Wang as the Speaker of the Undergraduate Senate. Following nearly an hour of ad hominem attacks and weeks of backroom maneuvering, petty sniping and theatrics by a significant section of the Senate, the vote of no confidence against Wang came as a surprise to few and a victory for no one.
Put plainly, SUN did not resign as a petty act of theater. Rather, our resignation was a response to intolerable working conditions and disillusionment with the Senate as a vehicle for positive changes.
SUN’s basic platform is built around the goal of a popular university, a university which is accessible and safe for all. Our basic program is as follows:
-The reduction and ultimate elimination of student debt
-Access to education as a right
-The immediate end to the epidemic of campus sexual assaults
-Protection of faculty and staff from unsafe working conditions and from precarious employment status
-Defense of students, faculty and staff from racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and all other forms of bigotry
In other words, the principles SUN represents are completely uncontroversial; most people support these goals. Even, for example, if a tuition freeze seemed out of reach for some, almost no one would argue that it is a bad idea in principle given the country-wide trend towards sky-high tuition rates.
What, then, is the significance of SUN’s vilification and our decision to boycott in response?
Certain senators’ efforts to vilify SUN come down to two simple facts: they opposed our basic platform and they feared what would happen to SG if we had successfully advocated for it. Take, for instance, the speaker emeritus’ indignant speech on Oct. 19, when he lost his re-election that prompted an angry speech in which he argued, in a hoarsely raised voice, that SUN is “irresponsible” because SG“can’t deliver” on a tuition freeze.
This diatribe was the keynote for a flurry of activity to isolate and demonize SUN in the three weeks that followed. SUN, representing a third of the Senate, failed to secure any committee chair positions and had no representation on the Senate’s finance committee, despite its popular message and significant presence in the Senate.
Rumors about SUN members—from whispers about a conspiracy originating from SG executives to “overthrow SG” to accusations of hidden bigotry—spread like wildfire among many of the newer senators in a campaign to assassinate our characters. The rumor mill’s coup de grâce came after the deposition of Wang as the Speaker, when the opposition’s Facebook pages triumphantly began donning cover photos depicting the Speaker-elect proclaiming, “I will literally wipe the floor with SUN.”
If those in Senate who maneuvered to marginalize us simply disagreed over tactics, childish boastfulness and gossiping would not have been tactics in their arsenal. What the campaign against SUN shows is that those forces were completely opposed to SUN, in tactic, message and goal.
The success of those tactics read as a death knell to those working to progressive ends in the Undergraduate Senate. The successful ouster of Wang—a longtime activist at AU who has consistently worked for oppressed people’s empowerment—showed our hopes that the Undergraduate Senate could serve as AU’s tribune were misplaced.
We know, however, that we were not defeated last Sunday. Students still long for change: up to 73 percent of AU students know someone who could no longer attend AU because the University cut their financial aid; many faculty and staff still face dangerous working conditions and tenuous employment; despite progress on sexual assault policy thanks to a small-but-devoted section of Student Government and by the broad student movement, there have not been changes in University policy which match the scale of the problem itself.
Students have spoken time and time again: we want a new university. We cannot shoulder our $1.2 trillion debt burden. We will not tolerate sexual assault. We demand diversity and inclusiveness in our student bodies and in our faculty and staff. We demand an end to theater and “House of Cards” mimicry among our “representatives” and for a body appropriate for a popular university to take its stead.
We say to AU: Students Unite Now!
Signed,
Student Unite Now (SUN)
