Posted on 01/27/2018 6:36:03 PM PST by MarvinStinson
Secret ballot votes rammed through in 11th hour
The Undergraduate Student Government at Ohio State University has come under sharp criticism for a rushed, irregular secret ballot vote Wednesday night that rammed through a resolution in support of an anti-Israel boycott.
A six-hour long meeting culminated in a half-hour of rapid-fire amendments to the "Resolution to Establish a Committee to Investigate OSU's Investments in Companies Complicit in Human Rights Violations."
As the USG was being expelled from the room at midnight, two secret ballot votes were quickly cast within minutes—the first attempt returned more ballots than senators present—and it was announced that the motion calling for the University Senate to create an ad-hoc committee to review OSU investments in companies complicit in human rights abuses had passed.
USG chair and vice president Sophie Chang refused to state how many senators voted in favor of the motion. (Chang said the official breakdown would be included in the minutes, which will be published on the USG website.)
Max Littman, who served as an alternate senator for an absent representative, called Wednesday's meeting "one of the most confusing USG sessions I've been in."
"I firmly believe many senators voted without knowing exactly what was stricken, and what was left in at the end of the night," said Littman. "There was only a few minutes of discussion about each amendment, and I still don't know what some of them were talking about."
One of the 11th hour amendments struck all explicit references to Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the resolution, a move welcomed by OSU Hillel, the Jewish center on campus.
Yet, an amendment to add an anti-BDS statement was rejected, and references remained to anti-Israel boycott measures passed by student governments at over a dozen other universities. Links to anti-Israel websites favorably covering boycott, divestment, and sanctions campus activity were also retained.
The motion explicitly cited as inspiration a similar measure passed by the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in November that sought to push the Michigan Board of Regents to investigate its investments with companies that do business with Israel. (The Regents forcefully rejected that petition.)
During the public forum portion of the meeting, 38 OSU students spoke against the resolution, and only 8 in favor. Littman slammed the senators for ignoring the opposition of so many students.
"They did an absolute disservice to their constituents," he said.
Nick Davis, the only conservative representative on USG, said the resolution should never have been brought for a vote at all, as anti-Israel boycott campaigns failed at OSU in student government in 2016, as well as in a campus-wide referendum last year.
"We have voted on BDS, and they lost," said Davis. "But the co-sponsors of this resolution deceived people on what it was by calling for a committee, rather than directly saying, ‘We want to divest from Israel.'"
Like Littman, Davis, who has served in the senate since April, said he had never seen a secret ballot before.
"I spoke up and tried to stop it. It is unfair to our constituents, who have a right to know how we voted," he said. "But it just passed, and we'll never know who voted how."
Davis said he is currently writing a resolution to abolish secret ballots.
Sophie Chang, the USG vice president who chaired the session, defended the secret ballot as "the most stringent method of voting."
Jacob Baime, executive director of the advocacy organization, Israel on Campus Coalition, said in a statement that the meeting had been "plagued by hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric," and slammed the "highly irregular, opaque, and undemocratic process" that ruled the night.
And so, Ohio State will now suffer greatly.
Elected representatives hiding their votes is “stringent”?
bmp
...the first attempt returned more ballots than senators present...
These college millennials have learned quickly how democrats stuff ballot boxes, fraudulently vote, and win elections.
Cut off any and all federal funding,, declare Ohio State and enemy of the Jewish state and let ‘em rot.
I don’t like it either.
These schools think they run foreign policy.
There’s a lot of that going around these days what with Soros and Kerry messing around.
Liberals rigging a vote. No surprise there.
Immature, self-important kids pretending to be important.
The boys would love giving up their TV, beer, computer games, football, etc. and hie their little naive rear ends to prayer 5 times/day with that naive rear end high in the air. IDIOTS! Just believed what they were brainwashed with, never finding alternative sources of information.
The cesspool is growing on the college ranks!!
I know I am old by millennial standards but, When I went to College (graduated 1981). I felt I was paying the University to provide the service to educate me. When did Universities become run by a Student Government? Why does anyone listen to them? Who made them King?
They’re not studying enough.
A bunch of indoctrinated wet-behind-the-ears losers.
I was confused for a second....not your fault....but the headline/writing makes it sound like the vote was to be against boycotting Israel.
Anti Israel boycott vs Israel boycott
Lot of Foreign students at The OSU - especially Chinese. Logistics program almost all foreign students. Grad Programs dominated by Non-US students. Not the OSU of Woody Hayes!
Oh, how I long for the old days when student governments wouldn’t get involved in international politics. They would instead be voting on things like when to hold the spring dance.
Anyway, my cat and I just voted to censure companies that block YouTube cat videos at work. The goldfish, as usual, abstained.
I guess Ohio state university is antisemitic and holocaust.
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