Sham student organization tests campus freedoms
Ahmad Safi
Issue date: 10/24/05 Section: News
An anti-conservative, anti-military student group never existed except to test the political and administrative waters of the University, says the founder.
Students Against Conservative America and the Military (SACAM) was conceived by several UMKC students earlier this semester as a purposefully controversial student organization that existed only on paper.
The fictitious group's constitution was submitted to the Student Government Association Senate to be accepted as an official UMKC student group. After a month of deliberation SACAM was tabled indefinitely.
SACAM brainchild Austin Case says the "experiment" demonstrated a student senate out of touch with issues and an oft-complacent University administration.
"SACAM was made purposefully controversial. We wanted to push the student senate to recognize a controversial group and [when denied] put our administrators in the limelight to see if they step in," said Case.
He says as egregious as the student group was made to appear, the divisive ideology of the group's constitution, which held the charter to "oppose the growing number of conservatives on campus and local communities," was constitutional under the First Amendment.
"Students have a right to oppose other people's political ideologies and the military," said Case.
He said certain reservations he and other students had were substantiated, such as an inherent bias among student senators and some campus administrators of not understanding they operate on a legislative rather than judicial framework.
Case said the most apparent evidence of this claim was when he submitted SACAM's constitution for approval at the Sept. 21 meeting of the SGA Senate, a body he maintains has several key conservative figures holding sway.
With the preamble of the group's constitution before senators loaded with words such as "genocide" in Iraq and the "growing" conservative presence at UMKC, Senator Sarah Peters dubbed the organization a "hate group."
Students Against Conservative America and the Military (SACAM) was conceived by several UMKC students earlier this semester as a purposefully controversial student organization that existed only on paper.
The fictitious group's constitution was submitted to the Student Government Association Senate to be accepted as an official UMKC student group. After a month of deliberation SACAM was tabled indefinitely.
SACAM brainchild Austin Case says the "experiment" demonstrated a student senate out of touch with issues and an oft-complacent University administration.
"SACAM was made purposefully controversial. We wanted to push the student senate to recognize a controversial group and [when denied] put our administrators in the limelight to see if they step in," said Case.
He says as egregious as the student group was made to appear, the divisive ideology of the group's constitution, which held the charter to "oppose the growing number of conservatives on campus and local communities," was constitutional under the First Amendment.
"Students have a right to oppose other people's political ideologies and the military," said Case.
He said certain reservations he and other students had were substantiated, such as an inherent bias among student senators and some campus administrators of not understanding they operate on a legislative rather than judicial framework.
Case said the most apparent evidence of this claim was when he submitted SACAM's constitution for approval at the Sept. 21 meeting of the SGA Senate, a body he maintains has several key conservative figures holding sway.
With the preamble of the group's constitution before senators loaded with words such as "genocide" in Iraq and the "growing" conservative presence at UMKC, Senator Sarah Peters dubbed the organization a "hate group."
