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.
How utterly cowardly of them!
The modern academic anti-Semitism in action.
There were always a lot of foreign grad students at OSU. I would think that this BDS nonsense does not come from the majority of the grad students, who are more mature and worldly, unless they are Muzzlimes. I could see Muzzlimes trying to spread the anti-Israel poison among the gullible younger students. You would never have heard of any anti-Israel sentiments or demonstrations on campus in the days of Woody Hayes!
It is depressing that the grad programs are dominated by non-U.S. students. This is what comes of libtards having control of public education. They dumbed down most of the courses in public school---not biology, but "How do you feel about biology?" Not English, but "Let's get rid of grammar and spelling and all that stuff and let you express yourself like you text". Stuff like that. That is WHY the grad programs are populated by foreign students, whose native countries would howl with laughter at the dummy-fied nonsense passing for education these days in the U.S. And that is why stupidity like BLM or BDS has gained a foothold---they aren't teaching critical thinking any more either. It's too HARD.
I need some help. Can someone tell me what is going to happen when some college student body in Ohio suddenly cuts classes and goes out with signs to do something, I don’t know what and they can’t either?
The Israelis have been enslaved, murdered, raped, blown up, shot, shelled and gassed for a few thousand years. What can a group of children think they can accomplish by going out on the grass and bad mouthing them in the middle of the US? And they really think they can do something. I don’t think freedom of stupidity is in the first amendment. They are a real joke. And I’ll be gone when they get into power so I hope I can look down and laugh at their stupidity again. Wow!
rwood
“Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it” — Somebody
Snap judgments easily come unfastened.
I think you mean George Santayana, the philosopher. That's his quote. And today's students not only do not understand history, they can't even spell the word.
Modern Israel, the little piece of biblical Israel that it is, is able to be there through the grace of God shown through modern Christendom. Without the joint bible heritage of Jews and Christians, this wouldn’t even be.
This isn’t a Christian critique from these students. It’s a post-Christian one.
That’s a danger in an overly shielded land. Not every problem or disagreement in the world is as trivial or mild as a kindergarten squabble in a Western land. Some are quite wicked. Israel is staring not at abstract Arabs — who don’t have a reason to have a big problem with Israel — but at Islam. Allah is a celestial meanie par abysmance, or however they say it in French.
If they are anti-Israel that means they are pro Palestinian. Losers.
They don’t grok Islam.
If they did, they’d understand a lot better.
And I’d technically disagree on your tag. Islam is a religion. But it is a peculiarly weaponized one. Most other religions are happy to live in peace under well defined conditions if any conditions at all. Even Satanism usually will. Islam has to be the bully.
I’m beginning to notice a trend re Chinese-named students in student governments - taking anti Israel and anti-US stances.
Wonder if they are fans and friends of Red China, are RC students in the U.S., are paid by the commies, or are just stupid? Most Chinese students I knew were very pro-America and anti-communist because their families had suffered under Mao’s murderous regime.
Both of us are seeing that.
Student “government”. Something I never took seriously when I was in college. Always filled with left wing ne’er do wells. Universities should abolish the pretense of “student government”
“This isn’t a Christian critique from these students. It’s a post-Christian one.”
It just seems strange to me when our country, founded because of religion with the arriving of people who felt they were being harassed for it, and the efforts to help create a country of religious freedom defined within our Constitution, should be critical of another nation that is within its rights to be who they are and do what they do. Israel has violated no international laws nor tried to stop anyone’s religious freedom.
So why are thee idiots displaying such disrespect, and looks like hatred, for them? It doesn’t make any sense. And the Israelites could care less. I hope the children get more stupid and get arrested. It would serve them right to post bail if their mommy and daddy have to.
rwood
“Islam has to be the bully.”
Then what you are saying is that Islam requires the harming of, killing, lying to, the destroying of other ways of life, and the overwhelming destruction of those not wishing to join, of all people, sometimes to include their own practitioners, to make them a religion.
We have a group like that in the US that doesn’t openly do that anymore. They were called the mafia. And they weren’t a religion.
Now if you want to call them a religion of Satan or a religion of animals because they kill and harm innocents with no regard who they are, you can do that. I call them a political sect that should have been exterminated a couple of thousand years ago for travesties against mankind.
You may not have been to Kuwait where they herded all women into buildings and repeatedly raped them to try to get them pregnant so they would be scorned by their own tribes. That part of a religion? They’re just animals over there. But they’re smart enough not to lose their status for protection. And that’s all it is. And that’s what they do over here while they support them over there financially and laud their brutal efforts to destroy.
rwood.
My tag is correct. Ideology:
“What Does ideology Mean?
Ideology has been in use in English since the end of the 18th century and is one of the few words whose coiner we can identify. The French writer A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy proposed it as a term to designate the “science of ideas,” and in that sense the word was quickly borrowed into English. Though ideology originated as a serious philosophical term, within a few decades it took on connotations of impracticality thanks to Napoleon, who used it in a derisive manner. Today, the word most often refers to “a systematic body of concepts,” especially those of a particular group or political party.”
Islam definitely has concepts of a political party. It’s called Sharia Law.
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