Last Thursday, under the auspices of representing the students, the Associated Students of Madison called in Chancellor Wiley to have a dialogue about the USA Patriot Act. This dialogue never happened.
Instead, ASM mobbed Wiley, yelled and screamed, and tried to intimidate him into making a broad statement about the university. Instead of letting him speak, the ASM had representatives and the ACLU lecture him in hopes he would decree that the UW is formally opposed to the Patriot Act.
Audience members were instructed when??to cheer and when to boo before the show.??At the end of the dialogue, Wiley was asked a series of yes-or-no questions posed to make it difficult to answer \yes,"" and impossible to answer ""no."" His answers were posted on a blackboard, and each ""I can't answer"" was marked a no. Not surprisingly, the ""nos"" were met with predetermined boos.
So ASM, yes or no: In your limited role as students elected to help legislate student issues, why did you choose to discuss the university's stance on a national policy?
ASM does not meet with Wiley often. With a dialogue far beyond their scope, ASM has wasted an opportunity. There are changes that can greatly improve the university, but the university's stance on a law it will still be obligated to follow is surely not one of them.
This school and this chancellor, while right in trying to stay nonpartisan in non-academic issues, has done everything in its power to fight the errors of the Patriot Act and the evils of the world. As a member of the American Library Association, we funded lobbying against one of the most heinous portions of the act, the ability to seize library records without a warrant. The university is subsidizing the SEVIS fee levied on all its international students. Moreover, when the TAA asked for university support in lobbying the state for a better contract,?? Wiley gave it. When the Labor Licensing Policies Committee asked Wiley to ensure that Nike products were not stitched by exploited labor through wage disclosure, he did it.
For student government to work, we need to show those people with power that we can be treated as equals. We have only shown them that we should be treated as jackals.
What ASM did on Thursday only serves to weaken student groups, such as the LLPC,??that Wiley consults with, and more ironically it trivialized ASM itself.
To Chancellor Wiley: We??ask that you do not view the ASM as representing the students when they called you in on Thursday. To ASM: Your actions were inexcusable. You have embarrassed and undermined the students, like those at this newspaper, who agree that the Patriot Act was wrong.
