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Columbia Spectator: CCSC Unveils Student Referendum Process

A surprise item at Sunday night’s Columbia College Student Council meeting could pave the way for student referendums on controversial issues including the presence of Reserve Officers Training Corps on campus.

The initiative, which was announced by Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and the CCSC vice president for policy, created a committee of at least one member from each undergraduate council to “develop poll regulations which will govern how we ask the students their opinion on critical issues.” The councils would use SurveyMonkey.com to conduct the online polls, which would be administered infrequently—only for vital decisions—so that their effectiveness would not be diluted.

The goal of the referendums, student government officials say, is to tie the votes of student representatives—in particular the University senators—more closely to student opinion. The proposal was authored by Ahmed, CC Class of 2011 President Learned Foote, and Engineering Student Council President Peter Valeiras and has been submitted to the General Studies Student Council and to Barnard’s Student Government Association.

While the initiative does not mention any issues in particular, it appears to be intended to address two issues which have dominated discussions among student representative this year: the implementation of universal swipe access at Columbia and Barnard dorms, and a revisiting of the University’s policy regarding ROTC programs.

Columbia has not allowed ROTC programs to operate on campus for over 40 years, when the military training groups were banned as a statement of opposition to the Vietnam War. More recently, the University Senate—the highest body of administrative, faculty, and student representatives which makes recommendations to the University’s Board of Trustees—has reaffirmed the ban, citing opposition to the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Final decisions on University policy rest with the Board of Trustees. Students who are interested in ROTC can join programs at other schools.

The ban continues to be controversial. Most recently, the ROTC issue came to the forefront last Thursday after the two major presidential candidates, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made strong statements of opposition to the ban during the nationally televised ServiceNation Presidential Candidates Forum in Lerner Hall.

“I don’t think that’s right. Shouldn’t the students here be exposed to the attractiveness of serving in the military, particularly as an officer?” McCain said.

“I recognize that there are students here who have differences in terms of military policy,” Obama said. “But the notion that young people here at Columbia or anywhere in any university aren’t offered the choice, the option of participating in military service, I think is a mistake.”

Those statements drew a flurry of media attention to the issue over the weekend from outlets such as the New York Sun. On Sunday afternoon, campus blog Bwog reported that a group of students were organizing a challenge to the ROTC policy.

That effort was actually underway long before last week, according to its organizers. Discussions apparently began in May at the impetus of some engineering students who viewed the naval ROTC program as a way to recoup some of their college loans and complained that—unlike the other branches of the military—the closest naval ROTC program is outside of Manhattan.

A coalition of students from groups including all four undergraduate councils as well as the Student Governing Board, Columbia Political Union, and Columbia Queer Alliance began to organize a push to hold a referendum on the issue, according to CC University Senator Monica Quaintance, a proponent of the referendum. Quaintance stressed that not all members of that organizing group serve as representatives for their groups or even support bringing back ROTC groups—some merely want a referendum.

Other chief organizers include Foote and SEAS University Senator Rajat Roy.

According to Quaintance, the organizers wanted to hold off on the referendum effort until after the presidential election in November so as to avoid partisan politics. It is not clear how the new initiative affects that time line.

“We’re not looking to do this until after the election because we don’t want this be colored by the election. We want this to be bipartisan,” she said.

The other issue that the councils could soon hold a referendum on is universal swipe access for residents of Columbia and Barnard dorms. Currently, students can only swipe into the dorms of the school that they attend. The issue has been discussed ad nauseum by previous councils to little effect, but the current officials say that they have a consensus on the issue this year.

“All four councils have never been on the same page before, but now we are,” Ahmed said of the swipe policy. “So that’s a precedent.”

At its meeting the council also discussed the senior class’ push to get Obama to speak at its class day in May. Colin Felsman, CCSC senior class representative, said he submitted a letter to that effect.

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