Wednesday night was a time for inspirational words and brewing controversy as the College Republicans submitted the
“Academic Bill of Rights” at the Associated Student Government Senate meeting.
Evanston Mayor Lorraine H. Morton also addressed the assembly to give a few life lessons.
In a 10-minute speech, the recently re-elected Morton reminisced over her time at Northwestern — as an undergraduate escaping the confines of her hometown in North Carolina and as a middle school principal taking courses to figure out what it was they were teaching education students — and shared a bit of what she’d learned along the way.
Talking about making the transition from college into the real world, the Mayor urged students to be wary but stick to their ideals.
“This world that you have here, you have your problems here,” Morton said. “But when you get out there, be prepared to find people are hypocritical, people who will lie.”
Morton spoke about her opponent in the recent Evanston mayoral race, who she said excused unethical campaign tactics by telling her that politics were dirty.
“Don’t buy that. It doesn’t have to be dirty,” Morton said. “Whatever you are, whatever your principles are, stick to them. You don’t have to compromise your integrity.”
After Morton left the podium, members of the outgoing Executive Board delivered farewell addresses to the Senate.
ASG President Jane Lee called her fellow board members “incredible, passionate advocates.”
Lee, a Weinberg senior, also reminded the Senate that ASG was “an organization based on service, not politics.”
Outgoing Student Services Vice President Alex Lurie took the opportunity to advocate reforms to ASG’s election process, suggesting the adoption of a “slate system” that would force candidates to caucus and jointly prioritize their platforms.
“There needs to be more unity between the ideas of incoming Exec Board members,” said Lurie, a Communication junior.
Ben Snyder, president of the College Republicans, was met with a host of questions as he introduced the “Academic Bill of Rights” to the senate.
The bill is part of a conservative movement to introduce similar legislation on college campuses nationwide. It protects free speech and encourages balanced scholarship in the classroom, ostensibly to counter a liberal bias in higher education. An original version of the bill was written by conservative pundit David Horowitz and is available at students www.foracademicfreedom.org.
Snyder, a Weinberg junior, told senators the bill would not affect funding for student groups, nor was it meant to be partisan legislation.
“We think this bill is a beautiful articulation of principles that everyone can agree to,” Snyder told the Senate. “I don’t want this to be a bill about conservative victimization or victimization of any group on campus.”
Snyder said he approached 15 to 20 organizations to co-sponsor the bill but all declined.
Academic Vice President Jason Downs said he thought it would probably become a partisan argument in the Senate.
“The wording of the bill is broad enough to cover both liberal and conservative positions,” said Downs, a Weinberg junior. “But it’s fairly clear that this is a conservative initiative. So I think this will rupture along liberal, conservative fault lines.”
Downs said the bill already drew an unusual amount of attention to the Academic Committee, which had members of progressive groups and a reporter from the Northwestern Chronicle at its last meeting.
Downs laughed about the coming debate and said, “It’ll be interesting.”
Reach Jordan Weissmann at [email protected].
