The ASUO Senate will vote at its Feb. 10 meeting on a new resolution aimed at opposing the Pacifica Forum.
The resolution, discussed Wednesday night, was sent to a vote by a margin of 17 for, one against, one abstaining.
It doesn’t call for the Forum to leave campus, which some senators said they would not support because they felt doing so would imply a restriction on the controversial organization’s First Amendment rights. Instead, the resolution supports the University administration’s decision to remove the Forum from the EMU and pledges support to the students who have rallied against the group.
The Senate voted down a resolution asking the group to leave campus entirely at its Jan. 27 meeting. However, senators spent the ensuing week hammering out a resolution that would garner enough votes for passage. Many also said the urgency surrounding the issue increased when a swastika was spray-painted onto the floor of the campus LGBTQA sometime between Friday and Monday morning.
The Senate’s rules do not allow it to pass a resolution in the meeting where it is first proposed. Instead, the Senate must send the resolution for review to its rules committee before approving it. That means the resolution is not yet sure to pass: At its Jan. 20 meeting, the Senate voted unanimously to send the last Pacifica Forum resolution to its rules committee, only to vote the same document down the next week.
However, Senators said the likelihood of the resolution’s passage on Feb. 10 is much higher because of the deliberation it has undergone. The resolution’s sponsors also took pains to encourage senators to vote against the resolution on Wednesday night if they opposed it.
“If you can’t support it now, let’s vote it down now and send it back to the drawing board,” Sen. Nick Schultz, one of the resolution’s authors, said.
The Senate’s discussion on the new resolution was calmer than it had been at the Jan. 27 meeting. At that meeting, audience members jeered many senators who questioned the resolution.
The resolution’s sponsors, however, said the Pacifica Forum’s student opponents had since agreed not to interrupt senators.
Many of the Jan. 27 resolution’s supporters of said they would have rather voted for a stronger resolution, but said compromise was necessary if the Senate was to approve any resolution against the group.
“I have a feeling neither side will be perfectly happy,” Sen. Chris Bocchicchio said.
The only senator who voted against passing the resolution on to the Senate’s rules committee was Tyler Griffin, who had previously said he would oppose any resolution that mentioned the Forum by name.
Griffin, along with Sen. Max Barkley, pushed for the inclusion of language from the Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohioruling, which created a legal definition for speech that is not protected by the First Amendment. Resolution supporters rejected the change, saying they did not want free speech to be the main point of debate.
Students have criticized the Pacifica Forum for inviting speakers who hold white supremacist beliefs and deny that the Holocaust happened. Critics say the Forum’s presence on campus creates an atmosphere in which non-white students fear violence and discrimination. University administrators and student leaders called the Pacifica Forum’s rhetoric partly responsible for the incident in the LGBTQA.
Others have defended the group, saying removing it from campus would implicitly violate its First Amendment rights. University officials have said that, for that reason, removing the group could leave the University open to a lawsuit.
The group is allowed to meet on campus because its founder, Orval Etter, is a former University professor, and University policy allows former professors to meet on campus free of charge.
The Jan. 27 resolution’s defeat was unpopular and many Forum opponents criticized the ASUO for it, especially in the wake of Sunday’s incident in the LGBTQA office.
Schultz said over an e-mail to the Senate that he intends to resign in the wake of a dispute with Senate President Nick Gower over the meeting’s speakers’ list.
[email protected]