A resolution declaring the student body’s support for the preservation of McArthur Court passed in the Student Senate last week after two months of debate and several major revisions. By the time the resolution passed, it no longer had the support of its original author, pre-journalism student Jonathan O. Bowers.
Bowers first approached the Senate on Oct. 3 and attended every meeting after, at least briefly, to track the bill’s progress and answer questions.
But the resolution he first drafted, which aimed to preserve Mac Court as the University’s basketball arena and opposed building a new arena, drifted into condemnation of the University’s use of eminent domain laws, and questioned the motivations of athletic department donors.
Those provisions drew the ire of enough senators to ensure the resolution wouldn’t muster the two-thirds vote required to pass. After first being voted down, Bowers brought back a resolution that was almost identical. At the same time Bowers started working with Andrea Blaser, a graduate student in historic preservation.
Blaser was interested in helping Bowers save Mac Court and offered him support in navigating through the resolution process, according to e-mail exchanges between the two. She recommended he gain support for his resolution by forming a committee of students, including senators and “other ASUO insiders.”
Bowers said that by the time the second resolution came out of the Senate’s rules committee it was apparent he and Blaser had different definitions of preservation. He wanted Mac Court to be preserved as the University’s only basketball arena. His resolution included a list of other arenas, collegiate and professional, as old or older than Mac Court. But Blaser told him via e-mail that tying his resolution to the future of a new basketball arena was a mistake.
“If you are trying to make a statement about the new arena and its funding,” Blaser wrote, “that’s fine, and I understand. But as a preservationist who wants to see McArthur Court still standing when, in all probability, the new arena will clear current hurdles and go ahead with construction, I would not want to support a resolution that cemented McArthur Court into functioning only as a basketball arena.”
At last Wednesday’s meeting, Bowers encouraged senators to vote against the second version of the bill. He offered a replacement that simply stated support for continued use of Mac Court as the University’s basketball arena. Senators voted against the bill that had just come out of committee, but no one offered to sponsor his new bill. Bowers left the meeting, and later said he thought the debate was over, or would continue at another time.
But after an unexpectedly short budget hearing, Sen. Lee Warnecke said there was enough time left Wednesday night to come up with a compromise regarding the future of Mac Court. Sen. Kate Jones rescinded her vote against the resolution to allow the discussion to continue. She said she did so because continuing the discussion was “the consensus at the table.”
In an e-mail to the resolution’s sponsor Sen. Samantha Brodey and Senate President Athan Papailiou, Bowers said it was “rather underhanded, slimy and unscrupulous” for a senator to rescind her vote and allow the Senate to continue the discussion without him present. “The meaning of my resolution was gutted and practically raped to the point where it is a separate resolution entirely.”
Bowers’ resolution was amended and replaced, line by line, with a resolution drafted by Blaser and Ted Niedermeyer, former editor of the Oregon Commentator, and sponsored by Sen. Neil Brown. The passed resolution says the Senate strongly supports the right of students to have a voice in any decisions regarding the future of Mac Court. It also states that recent investments of more than $5 million “provide incentive for continued use and renovation as opposed to demolition.”
ASUO President Emily McLain said the resolution “went through many evolutions and each time lost some of its teeth.” While the Executive branch did not take a position on the resolution, she said she thinks it will be important for students to have a say in how Mac Court should be used and how sustainable the new arena will be.
Sen. Patrick Boye, who helped draft the compromise resolution that eventually passed, said it is the Senate’s responsibility to pass resolutions with the backing of the whole student body.
“Obviously there was a split about certain portions of Mr. Bowers’ resolution,” Boye said. “We reached a compromise and we stand behind it.”
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