Friday, September 28, 2007
Student regent doublecrosses students and votes for UARC
UARC is just another Hawaii thing where ordinary people are discounted by "powers that be," whether they rule from the governor's office or Bachman Hall.
It's an aberration when government decides to rule instead of serve the people. George III is dead. Well, ok, George W. is doing the same thing, waging war no matter how many people march for peace. Governor Lingle doesn't care what the Legislature or the people think. It's strange to me that popularity ratings can be so low for our elected representatives yet our government rolls merrily on. How come we let that happen?
It's because George III isn't completely dead, I guess, that we need to defend and strengthen representative government in this country.
And in Hawaii.
In this case, the student regent, Mike Dahilig, voted to go forward with the military contract, "despite the overwhelming student opposition to the proposal, including multiple votes against the program from the Association of Students at UH and the Hilo Student Caucus," according to an email currently circulated by UARC opponents.
It sounds like the students have been thoroughly doublecrossed by their student representative.
More from the email:
He defended his decision by saying that he spoke with many of his professors, many of them from SOEST, and failed to find strong opposition from scientific professors.
He explained that he saw his role as "a decisionmaker and not an advocate." He said that the student member to the Board of Regents is obligated to make decisions on behalf of the university as a whole, not just for students. He said that while he has an increase sensitivity to students' needs, he is "a regent before a student, not a representative of the students."
When asked why he chose not to abstain in light of the contradiction between his personal perspective and that of his fellow students, Mr. Dahilig said "I don't like to do that."
I hope students will have a few words with their "representative." The vote can't be reversed and it wouldn't matter anyway, but there will be more decisions and more votes ahead.
George III's ghost must be exorcised or he will continue to rule over us.
Thanks for raising this issue of the betrayal by student regent Dahilig. The students should demand his resignation.
As a matter of fact, not only Dahilig, but the rest of the BOR who voted for the UARC betrayed the faculty, the Native Hawaiian organizations on campus, and the Manoa Chancellor by approving this anti-competitive, military pork pipeline.
Which leads to another aspect of the story: the secret plans and corruption from which the UARC was born. This is detailed in a report The Dirty Secret About UARC at the Save UH / Stop UARC website: stopuarc.info.
: October 2, 2007 at 4:39:00 PM HST << Home
Post a Comment
Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.