Friday, February 24, 2006

UW Student Senate Meeting Minutes for 2/14/06 finally posted

I can not imagine what took so long... The highlight of which was the reaction to the 2/7/06 meeting which featured the comments of amongst others Jill Edwards and Ashley Miller.

Here is the "money quote".
Lee Dunbar said he has been witness to blatant disregard and disrespect toward students and their right to express themselves freely.

He said he personally apologized to Ashley Miller, Jill Edwards, Karl Smith, and others who received hateful or hurtful emails or phone calls.

He said he would do everything in his power to prevent such blatant disrespect
for student's opinions.

He said Senate acts as a center for the community, and that the debate that
takes place in Senate must be preserved.

Rene Singleton said that as an advisor, she thought the debate last week was
superb both in quality and respect.

Sounds to me that Lee Dunbar, President of the ASUW, thinks its OK for student Senators to say anything they want without consequences. So I guess if a Senator dropped the N word or used derogatory language regarding gays or lesbians, President Dunbar would say its inappropriate to criticize those comments. Yea right.

Does President Dunbar understand how the first amendment works? The first amendment allows you to say what you want without fear of being prosecuted by the government for the speech, it does not protect you from criticism for what you have said or repercussions such as public ridicule or losing your job from making outrageous statements. Jill Edwards and Ashley Miller can say anything they want, anywhere they want... as can I. So if they say something I think is stupid, I have just as much right to say so and tell them as they did in making the original statement.

Lee Dunbar is a moron for saying what he said. What are you going to do about that Lee?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wrote one of them, simply to point out that (if it hadn't been for Pappy and his type of warrior) she'd've probably been speaking German or Japanese today.....

Anonymous said...

As an Alum, I am appalled by the attitudes of those who somehow do not believe that Col. Gregory Boyington did not represent the finest our Nation, and our University, has to offer.

The statements of the various senators involved in this matter seem to be a symptom of a deeper, underlying disease of built-in victimhood... a disease, perhaps, fostered by attending this formerly great institution.

As a Nation, we seem far more concerned about our multi-million dollar sports and media heroes than our real life, lay-it-on-the-line variety... everyone from Col. Boyington thru PV2 Snuffy Smith in Baghdad.

My son is a junior at the 'Dub. This kind of crap makes it much more difficult for me to pull out my checkbook. Hopefully, these Senators will understand that everything they do and say is subject to public scrutiny and will have a ripple effect, good or bad, the moment their actions become public.

ALL Veterans, regardless of their service, deserve our respect and admiration. But Medal of Honor recipients are possessed of a character, devotion and spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good that most, including radical leftists such as Sen. Edwards, may only dream about. And those are, I believe, PRECISELY "an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

This unnecessary episode has shamed this university and the senate. This issue must be addressed by acknowledging and memorializing the three men with connections to the school who have received this Medal, with due apology to their families and this community.

If they find that option to be impalpable, they can always resign. But until this issue is properly handled… not another dime.

Army ROTC RA '81 ("Clark Hall Survivor")

Anonymous said...

Its okay to speak against anything I have made that clear. As co-sponsor of the resolution I wanted to make it clear that I am sorry to those that got phone calls to their families and homes saying we will cut your balls off, to me behavior like that was crossing the line, I am sure you agree.

Pedicularis said...

Indeed, such behavior is over the line, and I disagree with those demanding apologies for certain student senators. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to make of fool of yourself without being required to apologize to offended members of the public.

But remember that 99% of the folks who support our veterans have behaved properly. For that matter, there was no marching in the streets (like the anti-war protestors during the Vietnam War), no trashing buildings (like the burning of Clark Hall), and no one was killed (like the Muslim cartoon riots).

Instructor said...

I think this argument is a load of crap and has gone far enough. I don't think anyone is 100% right here, but the students are far more "right" than their attackers.

I am quite familiar with this history, and was long before the fracas. A lot is being left out.

Boyington didn't want to be a marine. He wanted to be an engineer. He started out as ROTC, did a few months' gig with a coast artillery battery and then served as a reservist. He chose his other, more noted path partly to escape a bad marriage... Later, when his drunken excesses got him censured, he fought to get a commission with the marines. They didn't want him! But they needed him...

Which is to say he was like a lot of other people in his day, an ordinary man with more than his share of stain on his life.

On 12-6-1941, most Americans didn't want to go to war. On 12-8-1941, they lined up by the thousands to sign a blank check to their Nation because they were needed. They weren't lured to the recruiter with promises of fat bonuses, huge educational payments, or the virtual guarantee of a cushy civilian job after the fact. They were promised nothing except blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

It's a far cry from today...

Why do the students at the U - or at least some of them - think a Marine isn't the kind of person "we" should honor? Because WWII was the last "just" war this Nation fought.

Who shot down Pappy, symbolically? Who changed what he has come to stand for here from a hero to a villain? US Imperialism did this. Vietnam did this.

FWIW, if I had been there, I would have voted for the memorial. If I had been voting on memorials per se at a time none existed, I would have voted no. There is honor in putting down your plow and taking up a gun for your country. There is no honor in what you do with the damned gun.

The students deadlocked on this proposal. As the fat chickenhawk extraordinaire, Kirby Wilbur, noted, a few years back the vote would have been overwhelmingly "no." Make what you want of that.

A couple of the girls in the Senate made stupid little girl comments. And your point is? One uneducated kid thought Boyington was a rich white guy. Oh well. She made a fool of herself. Maybe she has learned to study before speaking.

If you have read the minutes of the Senate meeting that started the fight you know there was a motion to table the proposal. If they had done so, maybe some of the senators would have had a chance to study this matter, which is, after all, something only we students of history know in detail. The vote might have been different after reflection.

Here's the real issue. The Senate did what Senates do: It debated the question. A lot of the things said by US Senators are over the top; it's not surprising the UW Senators said a few wild things. What they did was perfectly reasonable.

But not to the war party. They just couldn't wait to put a jackboot on somebody's neck because they cannot tolerate any more dissent, especially now, that their Iraq escapade is in tatters. It's not quite a NAZI attitude, but it's on the path to it. Since the wars this fallen Nation chooses to embroil itself in no longer have any real honor, the war fanatics fight at every turn to stoke the inherently tarnished, diminished honor of the volunteers who have chosen to follow our misleaders.

But it doesn't matter. They will never meet Pappy's measure or the measure of his peers because the Pappy generation didn't want war yet they fought anyway.

"Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just"... Pappy's generation could sing the anthem knowing they lived up to it. Today it just comes off as a hustle.

Pappy was famously and possibly incorrectly quoted [paraphrase] "Scratch a hero and find a bum," perhaps an appropriate sentiment coming from a man who flew his most famous sorties with a blinding hangover.

Pappy's collegiate descendent, Jill Edwards, said she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

I'm not so sure Pappy would have disagreed.

Cross posted to Sagebrush and Roadkill Journal.

Anonymous said...

Fortunately, most do not agree with your bizarre perspective, PP. No one anywhere has said that COL. Boyington was a candidate for sainthood.

His personal life is no more a reason to honor or dishonor him then for leftists such as yourself to pull your support for Bill Clinton.

We do not honor COL. Boyington, your attempts to tear him down notwithstanding, for anything but his unquestioned bravery and leadership while a Marine pilot. He certainly put himself, personally, on the line hundreds of times. After all, the worst that could have happened to Boyington in his hundreds of combat missions was a particularly grisly death at the controls of a fighter… while the worst that can happen to Edwards is that she develops her place as a particularly vituperative footnote to the increasingly bizarre UW political scene.

PP, yours seem to be just another example of the left's desire to spin any outrage, any insult, any belittlement. Sen. Edwards exhibits the same type of arrogance and disregard as, say, one of her heroes... one Sen. Dick Durbin, #2 in the US Senate, who had his little "over the top" moment when he referred to members of the US Military as "Nazis," a perfectly acceptable characterization of our military to people of the far left.

So, take your spin and sit on it. Nothing you’ve written justifies Edwards’ idiocy, nor justifies any reason to keep a memorial to Boyington from gracing our “wonderful campus.”

And, of course, if you feel this argument to be a "load of crap," then you may also feel free to stay out of it.