STUDENT Council has earned a new name: Stupid Council. It has placed such a strong priority on something it really cannot affect - eradicating the "Not gay" chant in the Good Ol' Song.
First off, this is not to condone the chant. As a gay person, I understand that it can alienate gay and lesbian students, it can make the University seem an intolerant place, and it can hurt people's feelings. But Council's making it a top priority and spending money on attempting to eliminate it comes with the opportunity cost of other efforts that Council could actually affect - extended hours for Escort and libraries other than Clemons, more reliable bus service, fairer allocations of Student Activity Fee money.
Council's subcommittee - the Ad Hoc Committee for the Eradication of Homophobic Language from Renditions of the Good Ol' Song - not only is quite a mouthful, it is powerless to do anything meaningful. According to the subcommittee's strategy paper on how to diminish the number of people who chant "Not gay," the primary tactic is to "talk it up." This is extremely vague and unhelpful. Students already talk about what they approve and disapprove of. Students already confront issues that they think need confronting. Students don't need Council's prompting of the issue.
That Council believes that students will fail to deal with this issue themselves is a powerful statement of the fact that it believes students incapable of governing themselves. This fact runs contrary to what Council supposedly stands for and is predicated upon: students governing themselves. This is an important contradiction and one that cannot and should not easily be blown off. Either Council stands by student self-governance or it does not, and its actions should fall into place so that it is consistent with what it supposedly believes. As of now, Council's actions are consistent with the hypothesis that Council does not truly believe in students' capacity to govern themselves.
Council's position, no matter how sound, cannot be foisted upon students. Students, if told how they should behave, are likely to find that to be a gross imposition on their autonomy. The effort is likely to fail just as surely as the "Just Say No" campaign was doomed to fail as a measure to curb drug use because of its condescending and paternalistic approach.
How much Council spends on this ad hoc committee is uncertain, but it is one of Council's major priorities in this coming year. Council President Abby Fifer spoke at Convocation on this issue alone. But any amount spent on this issue clearly is too much because Council's approach to resolving this problem is downright silly. It is futile to suppress a chant among a crowd of tens of thousands of students and almuni, when a strong contingent of them is set on saying the chant.
A "talk it up" campaign and other hokey attempts to change people's attitudes are not going to prove successful. If anything, they will make the position that saying "Not gay" is not OK that much harder to defend. This is because, through its actions, Council is saying that students do not possess the autonomy to make the decision about the rightness or wrongness of saying "Not gay." Instead, Council is volunteering the "right" answer, which is a direct insult to students.
This is not to confuse at all the fact that Council recognizes everyone's right to free speech. But it doesn't seem to recognize that there are different and legitimate decisions that students can make. It seems to think that it needs to inform students of what is right and what is objectionable.
This is troubling to say the least. I want people to stop saying "Not gay" because they don't want to say it. I don't want people to stop saying it because it's the cool thing to do; that's the very reason people started to say it. Council merely affirms the chant in its attempts to eliminate it by affirming what gave rise to it. Council is saying that it is OK to allow social pressure to influence one's actions since that is the mechanism it hopes to use to eliminate the chant.
I'm positive that Council had nothing but the very best of intentions in all of this. But everyone knows what is said of the best-laid plans of mice and men. They go awry.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at jeisenberg@cavalierdaily.com.)
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