I call b.s… From the title of this thread you would think the students had voted to discontinue a 14 year tradition. Instead, this is about a proposal to initiate some sort of yearly remembrance that didn’t get enough votes. Whose business is it but the University of Minnesota’s?
I accept that the immediacy is over, but I fault the student association for declaring that the reason for dropping the silence is that it might offend muslim students, and turning it into another PC teachable moment.
Re: #21
There may have been background politics involved, since the proposal apparently came from the College Republicans, whose image may have been (not necessarily fairly) tainted by the kinds of things that Republican presidential candidates have been saying recently, so that others were suspicious of the motivation.
The University of Minnesota administration has decided to take this matter over, announcing that is moving ahead to plan a campus-wide remembrance of 9/11 without waiting for input from student government. In making the announcement yesterday, Board of Regents Chair Dean Johnson and President Eric Kaler noted that the Board of Regents had held a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of the 9/11 attacks at their September board meeting. After that meeting, Kaler met with some students who requested a campus-wide remembrance of 9/11, and at that time Kaler indicated he supported the idea, but he suggested they take it to the student government “to gain additional input.”
http://discover.umn.edu/news/campus-community/university-remember-911-victims
My editorial comment: it appears to me the students who pushed this at the last meeting of the MSA and then tried to build it up into a big kerfluffle were more interested in using it as a political football than in advancing a serious proposal. Had they been serious about it, they would have developed some ideas about what such a campus-wide remembrance would look like, as had been requested of them when it came up in committee. Instead they pushed a half-a**ed resolution with no meat to it, and were only too delighted when it was rejected by the MSA, giving them the opportunity to attack the University for “political correctness.” Over a proposal that already had the full backing of the University’s president. That’s a pretty cheap stunt, in my opinion, one that dishonors the victims of 9/11 by holding them out as political bait.
Right, the students who didn’t fully flesh out a proposal to honor the 9/11 victims are the foolish ones…not the whiny, ignorant “leaders” of the MSA who tried to paint a moment of silence ceremony as racist and Islamaphobic.
I certainly see something here that half-a**ed, but it sure isn’t the initial resolution.
I’m glad to see the administration isn’t kowtowing to the embarrassing reasoning of the MSA. If the school doesn’t want to do a ceremony that’s fine…but the reasons presented by the MSA are nothing short of pathetic and offensive.
The “whiny”-ness here is all coming from the proponents of the resolution, I’m afraid. They didn’t do their homework, didn’t have a real proposal to present, and when it was shot down they leaped at the opportunity to spin it as “political correctness.” Pure horsepucky.
If you want the University to do something, the burden is on you to say what you want it to do. they didn’t do so, after being told in committee that the proposal needed more specifics to get favorable consideration…
I think they are exactly right. Does the university have an annual recognition of Peal Harbor Day?
Sounds like this is an area where Republican kids could learn some lessons from SJW kids.