The Student Association voted Monday night to approve a bill denouncing the university’s practice of allowing military recruiters in the residence halls and dining halls because of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.

According to Anna Hadingham, a member of the Student Peace Action Network who proposed the bill to the assembly, the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy conflicts with SU policies regarding diversity and equality, such as No Place for Hate.

‘We won’t accept institutions that discriminate,’ Hadingham said.

The bill was sponsored by Parliamentarian Joan Gabel and written by the cabinet, according to the bill. Gabel described the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy as ‘blatantly biased, outdated and archaic.’

‘We’re encouraging SU to stop recruitment in the dorms,’ Gabel said. ‘This would be a strong message to send to administrators.’

Should the military discover the sexual orientation of an ROTC student, ROTC can expel the student from the program and stop paying for scholarships for the student, Gabel said. However, Hadingham said she would like to see fewer military scholarships and more academic scholarships.

The bill also requests that the university join the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights in a joint lawsuit against the military to attempt to overturn the Solomon Amendment, which allows the military to revoke federal funding for universities that bar access to military recruiters.

Hadingham said in an interview after the meeting that she wanted military recruiters out of the residence and dining halls because the military’s presence in the dorms made her feel uncomfortable, regardless of their policies towards non-heterosexual students, because she did not think an outside organization, such as the military, should have access to the university beyond that of businesses. Hadingham said she would still be opposed to military recruiters from the university’s own ROTC program as well.

‘The safest thing would be to have them off-campus altogether,’ Hadingham said during the assembly meeting.

Comptroller Andrew Urankar, whose brother is in the Marines’ ROTC program, said he did not see military recruiters as obtrusive to residence hall life.

‘My understanding is that it’s very passive,’ Urankar said. ‘I don’t really see what the problem is with having them there.’

Prior to the bill’s passage, Assembly member Steven Newler attempted to remove a clause from the bill that called for the student assembly to reprove ‘the practice of military recruiting in residence halls, and dining centers’ and vote upon the clause separately. Newler’s version of the bill would still call for SU to join FAIR, support students of all sexual orientations in the military or ROTC and state that the Solomon Amendment and SU policy were contradictory.

‘I think they’re two different issues and have to be treated separately,’ Newler said.

Newler’s motion to amend the bill was defeated after a debate amongst the assembly, including a back-and-forth argument between Newler and Vice President of Student Services Savannah Marion.

‘This ROTC program is discriminatory,’ Marion said.

Gabler said during the debate that assembly members should vote for the bill regardless of the recruitment clause.

‘LGBT issues mandate that we don’t have recruiters in the dorm,’ Gabel said.

Newler voted against the un-amended bill, although the bill passed through a vocal majority.

‘I’m not going to vote yes on a bill I don’t agree on one line with,’ Newler said.

Executive Vice President Eric Crites motioned to vote on the bill with a secret ballot, however, the motion failed through a vocal majority vote.

In other SA news, the assembly passed five Finance Board recommendations to allocate $1,200 to Equal Time Magazine, $1772.04 to SASSE’s Empower self-defense workshop, $1,502.53 to the Association of International Students Medit Arabian Nights, $75 of a $500 request for a conference for the American Institute of Architecture students and $12,268 to the African American Male Congress to bring a speaker to the university on April 23.

The assembly also unanimously passed a Finance Board oversight bill that would require the Finance Board to provide the assembly with summaries of student organization budget requests and recommendations.

The Finance Board oversight bill also recommended that the Judicial Review Board chair, Greg Hoofnagle, attend at least one hour of Finance Board deliberations and report back to the assembly on the objectivity, expertise and attentiveness of the members, according to the bill.

The assembly also unanimously elected two students to the University Senate. The students elected were Tina Notas, a freshman at the State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, and Dylan Moore, a junior in The College of Arts and Sciences.

Published on March 28, 2005 at 12:00 pm