Campus Activists Formed Their Own Alternative Student Government, Now Want to Impeach Their Fake President
25th January 2018
As was once said of academia, the reason why student activist fights are so vicious is because the stakes are so small.
An episode that highlights everything wrong with petty student-politicians is now unfolding at the University of Kansas, where activists want to impeach the president of their own alternative student government.
That’s right: KU has two parallel student governments—an official one, and a rival Multicultural Student Government (MSG). Though both receive funding from the university, MSG isn’t formally recognized as an autonomous government, because that would be ridiculous. Instead, it’s a student group with extra rights and a yearly budget of $45,000 that comes from a $1 fee charged to everyone enrolled at KU.
As in many such cases, acquiescing to stupidity costs the innocent bystanders money.
MSG was born out of an earlier controversy. In 2015, student activists alleged that the president, vice president, and chief of staff of the KU Student Senate—the official student government—had refused to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. The three leaders vehemently denied the charg, and put out a statement affirming that “black lives matter at the University of Kansas.” Nevertheless, activists called on them to resign from office because they were “standing in the way of institutionalizing a safer, anti-racist environment.”
KU activists were inspired by protests at the University of Missouri, which successfully forced a leadership change on that campus. But they ultimately failed to oust the trio. So instead, the activists decided to form an alternative student government that would represent the interests of marginalized students.
The Student Senate permitted the activists to form MSG, but KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little vetoed a proposal to fund it by charging students a $2 fee, on the grounds that setting up a second government was sort of a bonkers idea. Activists said the decision not to fund their group was pure racism—”This is racism, we don’t need to call it anything else,” said one—even though Gray-Little is herself a woman of a color.
Really, you can’t make this shit up. As a general rule, when you hear of some situation in a school that sounds like a parody, it’s more than likely true.
January 25th, 2018 at 09:58
“…both receive funding from the university, …”
And therein lies the source of the problem. The university encourages and fosters stupid behavior, then reaps the proverbial whirlwind and is shocked.