Tuesday’s Argus editorial, “Resolution without Representation,” makes some provocative claims with regard to the WSA’s April 29 resolution in favor of Wesleyan’s divestment from weapons contractors. The Argus editors, on behalf of the newspaper, argue that the WSA should not have passed the April 29th divestment resolution without surveying the entire student body. “Both sides,” they contend, have not had the chance to speak in this debate, and Students for Ending the War in Iraq has monopolized the dialogue. Next to the editorial there is a comic portraying a fortified, restricted-access tower from which the WSA is presumed to be deciding the fate of the entire student body without any popular input. The comic cleverly reinforces the editorial’s not-so-subtle comparison of the WSA and SEWI with British tyranny.
Let’s ignore the ridiculous, overblown tone of the editorial’s title and the comic for a second. That aside, there are several major flaws in the editors’ logic:
-If the student body should have been consulted before the WSA voted, shouldn’t the same procedure be followed for EVERY vote that the WSA makes? Greater student input is not a bad idea, but why is the Argus up-in-arms now? Every week the WSA makes decisions for the entire student body, and usually doesn’t draw this sort of outrage from the Argus.
-“Both sides” in reality have had plenty of representation in the Argus, most prominently with the repeated “Editor’s Notebook” pieces by Matt DiBlasi. Now, it is true that DiBlasi’s knowledge of the history of US foreign policy seems to be informed exclusively by elite politicians’ rhetoric about “humanitarianism” and “spreading democracy,” rhetoric which he evidently takes at face value. But while DiBlasi may not have offered the sort of “informative arguments” that the editorial calls for, his pieces certainly represent a very loud counter-position in the debate.
-“Both sides” were also represented at the April 29 WSA meeting. Before passing the resolution, the WSA debated it for close to two hours and heard from various members of the assembly who disagreed with divestment.
-Those favoring divestment are not the isolated, marginal grouping that the Argus editors imply them to be; in just a few weeks of petitioning earlier in the semester, SEWI collected over 600 signatures from students and faculty calling for divestment. The divestment resolution is clearly not just “an expression of one group’s opinion,” as the editors claim.
-We agree that it would be beneficial to have some sort of campus wide vote to avoid any faulty assumptions on the status of the student body. Yet even with a vote, the reality will be that the entire student body does not agree on the issue of divestment and we may find that the WSA vote is representative (the resolution passed 17-7). We would support the Argus or anyone else in conducting a vote about opinion on divestment.
-If the editors are concerned about decisions being made behind closed doors, why not take issue with the original decision to invest in weapons contractors, which was made with little or no meaningful input from the student body? Whereas the original investment in weapons contractors constitutes active support for war and militarism, withdrawing those investments would be a simple statement of neutrality, neither supporting nor actively opposing war—the proper position for an educational institution like Wesleyan. The real question is not whether the WSA has the authority to call for divestment, but whether Wesleyan’s trustees and investment board have the authority to directly support violence using our money.
We humbly suggest to the Argus editors that they better inform themselves, and perhaps proofread their editorials for glaring inconsistencies of logic, next time before using their editors’ pulpit to decry the efforts of student activists.
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