“Embracing Protestors” Article Filled with False Information to Slander SDS
Dear editor,
It has come to my attention that the opinion article, “Embracing Protesters,” published on November 3, 2011, is full of errors and misrepresentations of Students for a Democratic Society. It is upsetting to see that no one has taken claim for writing the article AND that the Montclarion was not even at the event discussed in the article.
First of all, SDS did not “burst into a Board of Trustees meeting with their mouths symbolically duct-taped shut.” We quietly entered the meeting and put duct tape over our mouths 15 minutes before the meeting started. It is also important to note that the meeting was open to the public.
Second, the article says, “the protesters were not met with the type of resistance they had originally anticipated.” This is true. Instead of being ignored by the Board members, the student trustees approached the SDS members and gave them the wrong information. Similarly, the student trustees gave the Montclarion the wrong information. Jon Aronoff is quoted in the “Occupy the Board of Trustees” article, published on the same date, saying, “We let them know that if they had any other questions they can contact us. Anyone can talk at a board meeting; they are just asked to e-mail or write a letter ahead of time.” SDS was suspicious of the student trustees’ claims that they could speak at the board meetings, and SDS was proven right when, in a personal email, both student trustees admitted their error saying, “Students are not allowed to speak during the BoT public session, unless it is a special session - i.e. the tuition hearing this past April.”
The student trustees assured SDS that they would bring up any issues in their next Student Report. However, a student trustee mentioning someone’s concern is a lot different from allowing a student to actually speak his or her mind to the board or engage in dialogue with the board. Hence, what SDS was protesting holds true and is a relevant concern to all students.
Yet another error is found in the same sentence that I last quoted: “they were actually encouraged by the Board to attend the following week’s meeting where they would have their own space on the agenda to voice their concerns.” No such meeting took place “the following week,” and SDS members were not encouraged to attend it to voice their concerns. I have no idea where the Montclarion came up with this one—I don’t think even the Board members would tell Montclarion reporters this.
So, I am sorry, anonymous slanderer for the Montclarion, but public speaking is NOT a “standard practice at these meetings already”—it is 100% denied to the public. Maybe rather than stick up for an inhuman bureaucracy and argue that SDS needs to learn their rights, it is better to criticize the structures that exist for their undemocratic procedures.
More errors are found in the history that the anonymous slanderer tries to give of SDS. SDS did not “voluntarily disband in 1969 after there was an escalation in violent protests.” SDS split into two groups, the PLP and the Weather Underground; both groups continued with their forms of activism that best suited their ideologies. I would also like to ask, what “disorganization and impulsive behavior” did the original SDS use? You provide no examples, and I cannot think of any. SDS was very well organized and still is today.
It can be argued that SDS is better and more efficiently organized than the SGA, because it was the SGA whose disorganization and impulsive behavior led to misreporting about the Board of Trustees policies. Perhaps the SGA needs to investigate their own rules, as well as the constitutionality of those rules, before they start telling people they can and can’t do certain things.
Next time, anonymous slanderer from the Montclarion, do YOUR research! Question the SGA and the Board of Trustees! Know the rights that have been denied to you!
Sincerely,
Lisa Grab
You can read the Montclarion article "Embracing Protestors" here.
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