If you go onto campus during the course of this week, it’s likely you’ll be quickly made aware that it’s ASUO elections week. And while I personally will be planning out my route to class with the sole intention of avoiding the yearly 13th Avenue “alley of annoyance,” most of us who have been here more than a year realize the real focus of every ASUO election: grievances. Could you imagine an ASUO election without ridiculous grievances and equally ridiculous rulings in response? I know I can’t.
The election grievance is the weapon of mass destruction du jour in ASUO political thought. Oh, dear freshman reader, do not be misled: There is virtually never any legitimacy to an ASUO election grievance. But probably the most appalling aspect of the grievance process is its result. Successful grievances tend to have the same consequence for those they are levied against: silencing. Because the election is so short, and the concept of “damages” is utterly unascertainable, the powers that be usually respond to grievances by somehow stifling the campaign rights or free speech of the candidates “at fault.”
The Constitution Court kicked off this yearly tradition last week, when it handed down a discouraging excuse for legal reasoning that prohibited this newspaper and other campus publications from running ads for ASUO candidates. I’m not really sure what will happen to the Emerald if it continues to exercise its First Amendment rights and publish what it wants, but the Court’s ruling does reveal the ineffectiveness of this method of grievance recourse.
ASUO candidates, instead of developing and articulating an effective response to a candidate with an opposing point of view, often resort to using the grievance process to try to simply shut up their opponent. This, to me, represents a malignant trend in American politics that is by no means confined to the lofty – or um, less than lofty – halls of the ASUO government.
This kind of silencing strategy is much more subtle than blatant calls to cut publications’ funding or talk show guests’ microphones. Usually it comes in the form of an intellectual response, but the response itself actually spends its time targeting the speaker’s right to speak. The most prevalent example of this we see today might be the “support our troops” logic of responses to anti-war sentiments. Those articulating arguments against the war are met not with a reasoned justification for the war but instead an accusation that the act of making an argument against the war might somehow demoralize, insult or disrespect the memories of those fighting and dying in Iraq. And while this may or may not be the case, it suffers the disease of implicating that the argument they disagree with is somehow forbidden.
Even the president has used language like “it’s unacceptable to think” when responding to critics. Everyone can think of an example, I’m sure, of when you’ve had your character attacked for making an argument that disagrees with the position of the attacker. Perfectly valid arguments for border security are accused as “racist;” legitimate concerns about foreign policy are challenged as “anti-American;” even reasonable claims challenging the discrimination of homosexuals are attacked as “hating people of faith.”
This is bad for both sides involved. Those silenced lose their right to freely speak their minds, or have that right threatened. Those silencing lose the ability to defend their positions on their own merit, choosing instead to simply shut up their critics. Ultimately, if their position ends up being flawed they won’t find out until much later, as those who might have pointed out the problems with it have been effectively removed from the discussion.
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