Members of Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society spoke out of turn and interrupted the Student Congress Tuesday evening as part of their “Take Back UOSA!” campaign.

The campaign, according to a Web site ran by OSDS, is a movement to address what they feel are inadequacies of Student Congress.

Remarks from OSDS started as a personal attack against Student Congress Chairman John Jennings and an accusation that Student Congress was hiding by holding their meeting in Davenport’s, a restaurant inside Couch Cafeteria, which caused members of Student Congress to make a motion to continue business as usual and not initially recognize OSDS.

“We want to have a conversation that adheres to our bylaws and civil and respectful,” said Matthew Gress, UOSA Student Congress vice chairman. “We are glad you are enthusiastic about change and improvements that need to be made to student government.”

According to the UOSA agenda from Tuesday evening, Dave Annis, OU Housing and Food Services director, invited the members of UOSA to Davenport’s to share a meal and in return, UOSA was to honor Annis for being “one of the most responsive and customer-oriented employees” of OU.

Student Congress moved to continue regularly scheduled business without listening to a speech prepared for the meeting by Matt Bruenig, OSDS spokesman and philosophy junior.

Members of OSDS silently stood up the rest of the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, Student Congress members addressed issues brought up by OSDS members, and decided to add OSDS to next week’s agenda.

Three members — Issac Freeman, Shayna Daitch and Joe Arabizad — voted against adjourning the meeting so OSDS could be heard on the record before the entire Congress Tuesday rather than waiting until next week.

“It would be unwise of us to not listen and consider their ideas,” said Issac Freeman, social sciences representative. “But at the same time, [OSDS] needs to see that there is a difference between throwing stones at a wall and helping to tear a wall down. I look forward to hearing what they have to say about ways we can improve, but I think we should work together as well.”

After the meeting, some members met with OSDS to discuss their problems with Student Congress.

Bruenig said OSDS showed up to the meeting to speak out against the inaction and ineffective government they saw in Student Congress.

“All we wanted was four minutes to express our concerns, and instead we watched this body that is supposed to represent the students, debate for twenty minutes on whether they will hear us this week or next week,” Bruenig said.

Bruenig said OSDS showed up to express specific inactions they have seen in Congress.

“We haven’t seen any action in this body on the smoking ban and the amendment to the UOSA Constitution about sexual orientation,” Bruenig said.

A referendum was approved last spring to add sexual orientation to the list of non-discriminatory clauses, but the referendum did not include to which documents the referendum would be applied.

Bruenig said another focus is to bring democracy back to UOSA Student Congress.

“These people are supposed to be elected and instead they were just appointed to fill vacancies,” he said. “An appointment does not represent the voice of the students.”

OSDS plans to recall all members who were not elected to a seat last spring, Bruenig said.

Despite the attacks made to UOSA from OSDS, OSDS members said personal attacks were not the focus of the meeting.

“We don’t have any problems with specific members of Student Congress,” said Furzanna Iqbal, classic and international and areas studies senior.