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Bside
Ballroom blitz: 'U' Ballroom Team turns inexperienced dancers into international champions
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The Statement
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U Administration
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U Administration
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The Statement
Comments
The MSA already does what Pat has suggested. Even when I sign up early, I am typically pushed far down the list. Pat is right about City Council-- every City Council allows anyone to attend, and to speak, without flashing I.D. That's because the Open Meetings Act requires it.
Pat is assuming that the MSA is trying to prioritize speakers. No, it already does that, and the unfairness of it is minor, since you are still allowed to speak.
But Pat is not fully articulating the reason for all this agonized (and failed) legislation by MSA leaders.
The reason is that MSA Zionists find a "Boycott Israel" speech to be unbearable, whether it is 5 minutes long, or 5 seconds long. They are so desperate for total silence about Palestine... they are willing to spend unlimited amounts of time fighting for that silence.
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Last night, the Zionists lost. Rest assured, when card-carrying MSA members push for a "Boycott Israel" resolution, then MSA Zionists will try to silence them, too. We saw a hint of how that would work last night, when the MSA President quickly silenced a Muslim member of MSA in the middle of a question he was trying to ask a speaker. It was an insult that no other MSA member has had to endure.
But the Zionists lost, last night. Every fresh Gag Rule they attempt, to protect "Israel" from criticism, will lose.
The next time Israel bombs Gaza... you may see the Boycott-Israel movement come back to life, on the floor of the MSA itself.
Dream on, Blaine, dream on. Your feeble and always failed attempts to hijack every meeting and event in town with your racist, antisemitic, extremist, lunatic rants will always fall flat just like your unbalanced "cause."
just as many web sites require a word verification/capcha before one can actually post ( thereby inhibiting impulsive messages , posting -while- drunk or other ill advised messages) perhaps the MSA could have a checker at the door to prevent the totally insane from entering and commenting.
one method might be to require entrants/prospective speakers to say 10 consecutive words that DON'T include "zionist atrocity" , "gaza", or "racist throat-cutters"....
then blaine coleman and his wife , at least, wont be wasting any more MSA time.
I can't speak to Chinksy, Ian, or Benson's motives directly, but I'll take moment to address why I voted against it.
The resolution has flaws. It's well-intentioned, but it is too strict. It also would be ineffective at solving the immediate "problem".
As it stands, the resolution would prevent speakers without a "valid, unexpired MCard" to submit a petition to speak 2 days in advance. This includes nearly the entirety of the university's alumni body, as your MCard will expire ~5 years after your matriculation (or *1* year after most graduate). Were an alumnus to come into town to return and address the assembly, which has met at 7:30 on Tuesday nights for a _long_ time, they would be turned down -- preposterous!
Every governing body has a section during their meeting to listen to community concerns. If you visit the Ann Arbor City Council, you do not have to present a proof of voter registration in the city of Ann Arbor to speak; if you are a registered voter the council will likely be more interested, and the same applies to MSA, but anyone can speak.
Finally, people should understand that even this resolution wouldn't have stopped speakers from "wasting" the assembly's time. One of the speakers of the contentious Israel/Gaza issue was asked last night, "Do you have a 'valid, unexpired MCard'"? And the answer was YES.
One of the best comments on this issue was from Mark Rabinowitz in yesterday's article: http://michigandaily.com/node/50524/talk -- I encourage people to read it.
Finally, I would like to see some reform in the Community Concerns section, we should simply arrange to order of speakers a little more logically: Order Community Concerns TOPICS by 'those on the agenda', 'those immediately relevant to MSA/University affairs', 'anything else'. Order SPEAKERS on each topic by, 'current students/faculty', 'alumni / emeritus faculty', 'members of the community at large'. As it stands, Community Concerns is limited to 1 hour. If an agenda is busy, we need not extend this time, and less-pressing concerns will have to wait a week, but it doesn't give us the right to ignore people forever. By electing to this assembly, we gave up an hour a week to hear what people have to say in the UM community (which, you'll note, our alumni AND citizens of Ann Arbor are a part of), it's simply a part of government.
There was only one issue last night, and it was emphatically discussed during the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) meeting.
That issue was a University boycott of Israel for its crimes against humanity.
The MSA was essentially voting on whether it would allow that boycott to discussed at MSA meetings or not. The Zionists begged the Assembly to outlaw free speech by community members. They were desperate to protect Israel from any more criticism in MSA. They are furious that the word "Palestine" is uttered at each and every MSA meeting.
But the Zionists were defeated, their first big public defeat at the Michigan Student Assembly.
To read today's "Michigan Daily", you would have no idea that Palestine was ever discussed at the meeting. You would imagine that some MSA members were passionate to censor community members out of their meetings, but you would have no idea why.
The issue was Palestine, and the Zionists lost their ability to censor it out of MSA meetings. You can see how the MSA is moving towards the boycott of Israel, and how the Zionists cannot exercise a veto over its discussion any more.
You can see how the Zionists will be defeated, again and again, at this University.
Chinsky, Ian and Benson,
Why did you each vote "no" on this resolution when, in this article, you say you wanted it to pass?
Chinsky, Ian and Benson,
Why did you each vote "no" on this resolution when, in this article, you say you wanted it to pass?
Chinsky, Ian and Benson,
Why did you vote "no" on this resolution if in this article, you say you were in support of it?
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