The Michigan Democratic Party has given permission to a group of students to form a political party called the University Democratic Party, adding a new twist to this year”s Michigan Student Assembly elections.
Only a few weeks old, the new party has already sparked vocal support and opposition.
“Student government should not be an outlet for partisan politics,” said LSA Rep. Jessica Cash, this year”s vice-presidential candidate for the Blue Party.
Cash said her major concern regards the funding bodies of MSA. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1999 case Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, et al., that funding bodies are supposed to be neutral.
“There”s no way that anyone who runs with the Democratic Party could be viewpoint-neutral,” Cash said.
But UDP”s presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Mike Simon and Alicia Johnson, said the party”s focus is only on students and local issues.
“We”re not trying to bring world and national politics into a body that doesn”t need it,” Simon said.
“That”s why we”re the University Democratic Party, not the Democratic Party,” added Johnson, an LSA representative.
The University Democratic Party was formed because of discontent with the current party choices offered for the upcoming MSA election, Johnson said.
“The fact that so many of our supporters and candidates were formerly affiliated with other parties but have come together to form this new coalition says a lot,” Johnson added.
“MSA political parties have drifted so far to the right of where campus is,” Simon said.
Apart from being concerned with the conservative aspect of existing parties, Simon also cited concerns of minority groups on campus as a reason for forming the party.
“The mainstream minority on campus is vastly disappointed with the leadership” of the Defend Affirmative Action Party and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary, Simon said.
Because those groups are so extreme in representing the liberal side of arguments such as affirmative action and abortion, Simon said, some students find them inaccessible.
They chose to use the name of the Democratic Party because “people can look at us and not have to guess at what they”re getting when they cast their vote,” he said.
“We”re all liberals,” Johnson said, “but we”d be liberals even without the party.”
Many past and present MSA members, including former vice president Andrew Coulouris, a first-year Law student, are not supportive of the new party”s choice of a name.
“I was enormously disturbed when I heard that the Democratic Party has actually allowed a student organization to adopt their name to run for office on campus,” said Coulouris, who votes Democratic. “It runs completely contrary to any notion to the way a student government should work.”
“Bringing the state Democratic Party into student government politics is like diving into Lake Michigan in the middle of February,” said Blue Party presidential candidate Matt Nolan, an LSA representative. “It might be new and innovative, but it”s a bad idea all-around.”
Nolan said using a well-known political party name would be taking advantage of uneducated voters on campus who do not know exactly what each party stands for.
“The Democratic Party isn”t the only liberal-oriented group running,” Nolan added.
A full list of students running for MSA in the upcoming election and their party platforms will be released next week.