Oregon State University did it. So did the University of Montana at Missoula and the University of Wisconsin. But the University has been reluctant to take a formal stance in opposition to military action, and the fact that less than 10 percent of the University Assembly attended a Friday meeting to discuss the issue underscored the difficulty the University is having in taking a formal stance.
According to University Professor Emeritus Frank Stahl, the difficulty might involve the controversy that ensued in the spring of 2000 when the University joined the Worker Rights Consortium, at the advice of the University Senate, and temporarily lost $30 million in donated funds from Nike CEO Phil Knight.
“President Frohnmayer had his knuckles stomped by corporate America when he stood up for workers’ rights,” Stahl said. “He might be hesitant to take that position again.”
The University Faculty Senate voted against a resolution condemning a war with Iraq in December, several days after Frohnmayer sent a letter to every senator asking him or her to rule the resolution unfit business for the senate. However, the group decided in January to call for a non-binding meeting of the University Assembly, made up of more than 2,000 members, to reopen discussion on the resolution. The Friday meeting in 180 PLC was attended by an audience of about 200, which included assembly members, students and community members.
Members of the University Assembly were the first to speak on the resolution. Barbara Pope, interim director for Women’s and Gender Studies, asked Frohnmayer to look at the resolution as an individual decision, not as a precedent for the University in the future.
Faculty senates across the country have decided against condemning the war for fear that it will stifle debate on campus, a sentiment that was repeated by the National Association of Scholars in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Members of NAS said that senates should stick to education and curriculum, and remain separate from foreign politics.
University Professor Emeritus Thomas Givon seemed to agree with NAS.
“The question is to me … just by moving the topic here does it make it University business?” Givon asked. “Bringing political free speech to the University in the way that it is done here is basically hiding. You don’t want to go out in public, you don’t want to go in person so you go and hide behind your tax-paying institution. And I think this is not the most courageous act that I’ve seen.”
Michael Stern, professor of Germanic Languages and member of the University Assembly, argued the other side of the issue.
“The opposition to our resolution has come from people who have said that it would stifle debate,” said Stern. “I’d like to point out that the resolution is about opening debate. It’s about discussing the issue and coming to some kind of statement as a faculty and as a community.”
Concerned Faculty for Peace and Justice, a University group, has been working to gather the signatures of 508 assembly members for a petition that would summon an official legislative session of the University Assembly. The special session would allow the group to speak for the University, and could not be overruled by the University Senate or by Frohnmayer.
Students for Peace has been collecting its own petition, which it presented at the meeting. Dinae Horne, a junior business major, was part of the congregation of students who gathered on the steps of Johnson Hall last week in protest of a war against Iraq, and was one of many Students for Peace members to speak out Friday.
“My more intelligent and compassionate friends, I’ve noticed, are talking more and more about becoming Canadian,” said Horne. “The desire to ditch my country is one that I’m not proud of. I can’t help but feel like it’s just cowardice. I don’t want to be part of it. I want to stand here and say that I am opposed to this, and that I am an American and that’s legitimate.”
One of the few students who stood up in support of the war and in opposition to the resolution was Greg McNeill, a senior political science major.
“I do support the president and the administration in this war, and I realize that a lot of you don’t,” he said. “And it’s the simple fact that we have differing issues, differing beliefs on this, which is why the University should not take a stand on the issue.”