The Council Is Out of Order

To borrow a phrase from a friend, "the Undergraduate Council is atrocious." Or rather, it has proved its atrociousness in the recent Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) debacle, a debacle that, sadly, the campus has forgotten in its two-second attention span, a debacle that Dean Lewis, thankfully, recently quashed by indicating that ROTC's return to campus is nowhere near imminent. Nevertheless, I would like to ask two questions regarding the council's refusal Sunday night to reconsider the rescission of the ROTC Task Force Authorization Bill. 1) Whom does the council represent anyway? And 2) Since when did "compromise" mean homophobia?

I think many of us stopped asking the first question a while ago, but the perfunctory dismissal of the motion to consider rescission happily reconfirmed exactly whose voices count in the council. Numerous council members have argued that recent opposition to the bill comes from nothing but a vocal, tyrannical fringe group that refuses to compromise for the good of the "general public." Never mind that 15 student organizations (and more every day) ranging from ethnic groups like the Chinese Students Association and Society of Arab Students to organizations like the Radcliffe Union of Students and Education for Action have stepped forward urging rescission. Never mind that constituents, including cadets, have been writing their representatives in protest since the bill's passage. Never mind that the bill's sponsors never once consulted the BGLTSA in the writing process and yet claimed to have taken each group's concerns into consideration. Non-discrimination issues aside, many students remain uncomfortable with the idea of an increased military presence on campus in general. By endorsing the bill and framing opposition to it as a "gay issue" alone, the council has yet to even consider these students' concerns.

Whom does the council represent anyway? Apparently, it speaks for the few students who are willing to suspend Harvard's nondiscrimination policy. Certainly, many council members have gone to great lengths to convince themselves they are not discriminatory--the bill goes so far as to even denounce the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. At the same time, the council apparently cannot grasp how the bill directly violates its own principles of non-discrimination and the Harvard wide policies that protect students of all minority status. By recommending that ROTC have recruiting privileges through the Office of Career Services, the bill endorses the practice of discriminatory recruiting on-campus. By recommending that Harvard adopt administrative oversight with the ROTC alumni fund, the bill asks that the University endorse the discriminatory disbursement of monies under Harvard's name. Both these activities can only remind the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBY) members of our community that they cannot serve the military if they desire and will never have access to ROTC resources.

In short, the bill is homophobic. A council that endorses homophobic legislation is a homophobic council. A homophobic council cannot claim to represent Harvard's LGBT community or the scores of students on this campus who thankfully take non-discrimination a lot more seriously than their "elected" leaders do.

Now, of course, cadets deserve respectful treatment and access to their program. A ROTC shuttle service would have been acceptable, as would have been acceptable, as would have more of those "students service" initiatives that the council loves to extol. But the bill's supporters do not seem interested in negotiating ways of supporting cadets that do not blatantly endorse homophobic activities at the college.

Many of the bill's supporters have decried the prima facie dismissal of these ostensible 'cadet concerns," but unfortunately for them, a nondiscrimination policy is by definition a prima facie dismissal of organizations who discriminate. Despite any good intentions, the resolution sets a dangerous precedent by suggesting that the University should suspend its nondiscrimination policy when in the "national interest" or when the "admirable" aspects of an organization outweigh its bigoted ones. This precedent hurts all students the policy protects, whether women, the disabled or people of color. Institutional decision cannot rely on vague criteria that ask us to decide when discrimination is unacceptable on all terms. A non-discrimination policy that does not set limits on a discriminatory organization, even one committed to the defense of the nation, is like a drag queen without her spikes. Many have argued that the existing policy privileges the LGBT community, at the expense of ROTC, committing "ideological" discrimination. Quite the contrary. Nondiscrimination policies protect specific classes of people for good reason: to prevent oppression. Nondiscrimination policies require the ethical courage to limit organizations which, no matter how noble we imagine them to be on other fronts, violate the principles of our community.

I can only explain the council's mental lapse in light of its continuing illusion of "compromise," for the bill's supporter seems to believe that they have not taken a political stance at all but rather have joyously reconciled two chunks of their constituency. Tolerance for everyone. I urge all citizens in the Harvard cosmos to reject this fiction of compromise. Members of your student government a) have effectively disregarded the concerns of students dedicated to non-discrimination, denouncing them as a whiny fringe groups and b) flouted a policy that makes Harvard safe for minorities.

If you have once again found yourself amongst the disregarded or denounced, my sympathies. I only ask that you hang onto your outrage for the next election and maybe we'll get a council that works to make Harvard as fabulous as it can be.

Michael K. T. Tan '01 is a literature and women's studies concentrator in Cabot House. He was recently elected co-chair of the BGLTSA.