A few weeks ago, Twitter alerted me to the presence of an ASB Senator who, tragically confusing racism and homophobia with having a conservative political view, had a timeline full of Tweets reflecting such a mistake — at least, that is, until I tweeted him to ask him about it. The aforementioned ASB Senator then blocked me, made his tweets private and supposedly, according to a long, sorrowful Facebook status, deleted certain tweets and expressed remorse for his behavior.
Then, he sent ASB’s Vice President to tell me that he would pursue legal action against me if I didn’t publicly apologize to him.
This, Ole Miss, is your Associated Student Body.
When they’re not asking for votes, they’re acting out Ole Miss-themed episodes of House of Cards. Which is funny — but mostly sad — because this is the same ASB that sends its executive board with omens of legal action to warn students of the dangers of trying to hold its elected representatives accountable.
This is the ASB whose legislature elects to use Change.org for long, curiously-edited petitions battling potential resolutions that they don’t like instead of using their legislative power.
This is the ASB that three months into the school-year didn’t have its Constitution updated online until I asked them why their website wasn’t updated.
This is the ASB that “handles” its senators’ behavior behind closed doors — this is the ASB that the Ole Miss student body is trusting to remove the Confederate-emblazoned Mississippi state flag from the dead center of our campus.
I would hope that despite these clear failures in competency, the ASB of the flagship university of the state would act as a bellwether for the future instead of a bastion of the horrors of our mottled past. Most prominent Mississippians across a wide spectrum of backgrounds, careers, and political ideologies have publicly expressed their recognition of the fact that the flag upholds racist ideology from which the state is attempting to distance itself by acknowledging that that symbolism is unacceptable.
The interim Chancellor of the University of Mississippi believes the flag should change. Coach Hugh Freeze believes the flag should change. Those who are most hurt and humiliated by the flag flying on campus believe it should change. Tellingly, we haven’t heard from our ASB President about his perspective on the issue.
But an egg couldn’t crack under the pressure ASB has to make the right choice to put aside the flag that it is under no legal obligation to fly.
It is easy, for the socially aware and compassionate, to see that a campus that claims to honor and respect all of its students would see that symbols of oppression of the student body should be removed. Again, Ole Miss is not required to fly the flag. Nowhere in the state is. Nothing but blind and stubborn arrogance stands between the votes in the affirmative to remove the state flag from flying on campus. The flag should come down.
The ASB’s loyalty should be to the Ole Miss creed and to the sustained progress of the University of Mississippi, not dreams of rubbing shoulders with intern selection-committees and idiotic arguments rife and flimsy with misuse of the term “politically correct.”
And I hope on Tuesday that the ASB acts in alignment with the goals and priorities they pledged to uphold when they decided to run for their positions in the first place.
