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Matt Bruenig, a member of Student for Democratic Society, began addressing his concerns with members of UOSA at Couch Cafeteria Tuesday night. Teeko Yang/ The Daily |
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.
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OSDS made a very positive and powerful point here. Everyone should visit their website concerning the Take Back UOSA campaign. <takebackuosa.org>
The issues on the website shed some very bright light on their issues. SDS is doing a great thing for us as students. We deserve to be represented! Good job SDS.
Here is the website for people interested in greater explanation of the issues.
http://takebackuosa.org/
This article is extremely biased against OSDS - I was at the meeting, and Matt Bruenig was recognized during a period when the chair asked for questions.
The point of Bruenig's criticism of Jennings was to highlight much of superficiality displayed at UOSA meetings. Furthermore, though UOSA had been invited to Davenport's several days before the meeting, members of UOSA and SDS were only notified today, after all the planning had been done.
UOSA is an important student organization, but due to internal factors it has failed to be representative of the student body and thus has little direction, resulting in waste of student money.
What about the absurdity of the fact that a STUDENT organization was shut out of a body that is supposed to represent students?
The point of OSDS' campaign is to get students involved in their government by running for representative positions (rather than being appointed) and voting on issues. http://www.takebackuosa.org
OSDS brought valid concerns to the meeting that should gain student support. This article contains miss representations and inaccurate quotes representing both the OSDS and UOSA. Students interested in these issues should check out the web site and the next meeting on Tuesday! OSDS is doing the right thing by taking action against these injustices and I sincerly hope that the UOSA can adhear to the ideals of a representative democracy and grant the OSDS their rights to speak at the next metting. I look forward to it!
The real story here is how a group of students attended an open meeting of their student congress and were shut out simply because their opinions questioned the student congressional body. The angle of this article is completely malinformed. I attended the UOSA meeting yesterday and was appauled by the way our student congress treated members of the SDS. The UOSA specifically recognized Bruenig, giving him permission to speak, but as soon as he began to speak he was objected to and shut down. The student congress then continued to use every political technicality they could pull from their asses to keep Bruenig or anyone from SDS from speaking. I urge everyone to go to takebackuosa.org and learn about the issues. Inform yourselves!
"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."
Is this for real? Is our student congress actually going around and soliciting meals in exchange for honoring people? I certainly don't agree with SDS on everything, but is this the sort of thing are congress is doing? Going around and honoring people? Where are the resolutions that are fighting for student issues? I will have to follow this story, but as it stands SDS seems about right to criticize the body if this is their idea of student representation.
Regardless of whether they spoke out of turn, SDS did something the UOSA has been unable to do (being blocked by either procedure or unwillingness): stand up for the rights of other students. I have a few sympathetic friends in student government who have been trying for weeks to get the body to address the botched referendum on protecting sexual orientation. To get the Daily to follow up on it, all it took was a visit from the SDS. I have a hard time buying the Daily's characterization of this action as "out of line" when it's so obvious which group is doing the right thing, demanding accessibility and transparency from their governing body.
If Matt Bruenly didn't interrupt the meeting but acted within procedure then the Daily has seriously breached some journalistic standards. SDS did a lot of rude and misinformed things last semester but now they are doing something that simply needs to be done. Does UOSA have more pressing business than finishing the previous business it started?
It seems to me that the SDS was "out of turn" only from a strict procedural viewpoint, and even then it is true that Matt Bruenig was called on after raising his hand. From all other viewpoints, it seems clear that the SDS was doing the right thing by calling attention to the failure of this Congress to fulfill its duty to the student body, and it is quite astonishing that their voice was completely locked out.
Who is Matt Bruenly? I am a member of SDS, and there is no one by that name in our organization. If the Daily errs in something as simple as this, then I am forced to wonder about its accuracy in general.
SDS was out of turn in the sense that instead of using the opportunity to speak in a manner that was relevant to their cause, they began by insulting the body and making personal attacks against the chair. They have not been shut out from speaking. However, there is a way to do this and that was not it.
And they are getting a chance to speak. If they want to be on the agenda all they have to do is give advanced warning that they want to speak before congress. And it is my understanding that they will be given that time next week, as part of the order of business, and they will be given a platform to address their issues.
However, the fact remains that their tactics are still incredibly questionable. Making a personal attack as a way of making an argument is a logical fallacy. Insulting the chair does not make me think that congress needs to be overthrown. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that SDS has this complaint (and seems to have had these complaints for quite some time), none of them have run for Student Congress to try to make a change in the system. IN addition, what is the solution? How do you fix it? I've read the website and I see all complaints but no solutions. The only thing that is suggested is a recall election, but yet I don't see any of these people interested in running for Congress or any interest in why or how thing work. You can't come to someone expecting them to completely bend to your will without being willing to work with them. That's like me walking into your house, punching you in the nose, and then telling you to vote for me because I said so. If there's no compromise and they are unwilling to work within the system, then why should those that they are attacking be willing to listen?
In addition, don't punish the few students who actually were interested enough in student government to run. Just because, in spite of the fact that UOSA is at ever involvement fair, they sponsor major events for students throughout the year, and elections are publicized around campus, online and in the Daily, those people there were the only ones who ran, is not the fault of the people in Congress. I challenge the members of SDS to run, and to find people who want to run to make it really democratic. Congress would love that.
@JJanowiak
Here is what happened. At the very beginning of the meeting, after the pledge, I raised my hand and was recognized without objection. This was before any business was being considered at all. I began to give my speech. About 30 seconds into the speech, members objected to the speech, either because they disliked the content or because they felt that it was not on the agenda and not part of the prescribed business for the organization or some other reason.
To say it was an interruption is utterly false. To say it was out of order is potentially true, assuming we define order as staying within the strict guidelines of the meeting agenda.
I've checked out the website but largely it seems undocumented. Some documentation would prove all of this information as true and relevant: unless of course, it isn't.
To theotherone: I know for a fact that many SDS members plan to run in the election. Not only that, but they plan to strongly encourage other OU students to get involved in the election either by running or voting. Perhaps if you had spoken to any of the members at the meeting you would have found that out. Inform Yourself my friend.
I did speak to many of them at the meeting. There have been applications for open seats out for weeks and only one of their members applied to be a member of congress. Beyond that, they had the chance to run last March and last November and the March before that and . . . so on. I am informed. I'm glad they plan to run. But again, don't punish those who ran unopposed because you all didn't feel the need to promote democracy when the election actually happened.
I find it funny that one of their complaints was that a majority of the seats in congress went unopposed during the last election, so those seats are not a good measure of the voice of the student body and are basically "appointed". But why did they not run for election? Why are they so upset but put forth no effort to be elected into one of those unopposed seats? And the members of OSDS that did fill out an application for a congressional seat did not show up to their interview, "Cough-Cough, Furzanna Iqbal!" And it does not matter if they "plan" to run for election, they didn't. So maybe, just maybe they should go about in an orderly way, instead of trying to dramatically highjack it into a mockery.
To cheveldi: Since you commented, SDS has edited the issues page on the website (http://takebackuosa.org/issues.html) to include citations of their claims.
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