In my past few years at this University, I have spent a considerable amount of my time working within ASM, our version of a student government. More specifically, I have spent my time on the Student Service Finance Committee, which is now currently responsible for distributing over $19 million of your tuition to any group that it deems eligible. The SSFC determines whether a group is eligible based upon 12 criteria, of which I wish to address only one.
The reason I am writing this article is to inform the student body of a situation regarding the Multicultural Student Coalition. The MCSC will surely break the criteria for eligibility. However, by playing the overused race card, they will undoubtedly strong-arm and intimidate students and, in the end, will be voted eligible.
MCSC does many great things for this campus. It promotes diversity, provides informational services and helps students adjust to campus, among other beneficial services. It has affected many students’ lives on this campus.
The question is: Did they affect those students in a positive or negative way? What you often do not read or hear about is the hatred and intolerance MCSC at times propagates across this campus. When MCSC does not see eye-to-eye on an issue with individuals on this campus, it immediately calls them racist and will not tolerate other viewpoints. The most recent form of the group’s hate speech can be found in the newspaper it publishes, The Madison Observer.
In the SOAR edition of The Madison Observer, there is an article calling me and several other SSFC members (one by name), “a reckless white supremacist mob” and a “reckless mob of white students [who] decided to unleash white supremacy on the SSFC process.” Nowhere in the article does it mention how or why we are enacting “white supremacy.” Nor does it provide any example of such an action.
How members of MCSC could come up with such a conclusion is beyond me. I would have to venture the guess that because I am white and because I asked questions about their budget, exceeding $500,000 (the largest budget of any group), I must be a racist.
I can deal with people that stoop low enough to call me the things that they did. I would never lower myself to such ignorance and misguidance. However, the most unfortunate part of this situation is that I and all the other students at this school have to fund this group through our tuition, only to have them call me and other responsible individuals irrational, white supremacists.
This brings me to the main point of this article — eligibility criteria.
Eligibility criterion No. 3: “Can all students participate in the organization/program and/or have access to the services they provide?”
What I want to ask you, the student body, is this: By attacking the very students they are supposed to be providing a service for, is MCSC providing us with a so-called service? By being targeted and attacked by members of this organization, I feel it is clear that they do not make their services available to all students and therefore fail to meet criterion No. 3.
Tonight at 6 p.m. in the Memorial Union, SSFC will be deciding whether MCSC is eligible for your tuition dollars. As the Chair of the SSFC, I am not allowed to express my opinion in the meeting or vote, but I feel students should know how some of these groups operate. I am asking anyone who agrees or disagrees with what I have said in this article to come to our meeting tonight and voice your opinion. Any student is welcome and, in fact, encouraged to come and have their voice heard.
If you are unable to make the meeting tonight, please take 10 seconds and e-mail MCSC at [email protected] and let them know that the group should stick to its goal of promoting diversity, not attacking students.
Aaron Werner ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science. He is the chair of SSFC.