Senate
hosts Puvungna forum, motions against hate
speech
By Joseph Serna
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant City Editor
The fate of the Puvungna burial grounds was again at the forefront of the Associated
Students Inc. Senate meeting, with half a dozen people voicing opposition to
developing on the grounds.
“
The school should be very honored to be a part of that land,” said
Jan Sampson, a 1979 Cal State Long Beach Indian studies graduate. “It
means an enormous amount to this community.”
Sampson said she had been a proponent of saving the Puvungna grounds since a
body was discovered buried there in 1972, but acknowledged that the fervor for
preserving the lands escalated when talk of development rose.
“
[Developing Puvungna] would be like bulldozing the Wailing Wall to Jews,” said
Sean Duenser, a political science student.
The Wailing Wall, or Western Wall as it’s commonly referred to, is widely
regarded as the holiest place for Jews to pray in Jerusalem.
For Robert Leon, a Chumash Indian, though the land may appear unkempt, it’s
significance is not lost.
“
I like to see it bare with weeds,” he said. “To me, they’re
not weeds, they’re plants. We live here, this is the land we love.”
Most speakers were open to questions from the senators, signaling the first steps
toward open discussion about Puvungna, similar to the goal of a resolution before
the Senate.
The resolution, which asks the university to immediately begin discussions for
a resolution about the 22-acre lot, will be brought up for discussion again next
week.
One issue that caused strife among the senators was a resolution authored by
Sen. Amin Km, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Sen.-at-Large
Guido D’Onofrio.
The senators’ resolution calls for the condemnation of hate speech in the
media, stating the cartoons published in Danish media are clearly hateful against
Muslims and do not respect “equality, multicultural diversity, cultural
awareness and dignity,” according to the resolution.
All the senators agreed with the condemnation of hate speech, but division arose
on whether to generalize the resolution to
condemn hate speech against all or to leave it specific to Muslims, who have
become a worldwide target of hate and propoganda, according to Km.
The senators opposing the resolution preferred it be sent down to the Documents
and Bylaws Committee, a subsidiary committee of ASI, to polish the language and
possibly broaden the population mentioned in the resolution.
“
In a whole this resolution is going the right way, as a Senate, as representatives
for our school, we should be standing up against hateful speech, but I don’t
think it is in our best interest as the resolution currently states because
it pigeonholes us into one specific group that has been hurt,” said
Sen. Shelena McClinton, College of Liberal Arts.
On the other side, the power and message of the resolution was most effective
when concerning a specific population.
“
I think we are living in an era, in this country and in Western Europe, where
Muslims are under specific attack,” said
Wayne Dick, a faculty representative to the Senate. “If you don’t
tie this to discrimination against Islam at this time, I think we’re missing
the point.”
The Senate voted to send the resolution down to the Documents and Bylaws Committee
14 to and 4 against.
Both ASI Vice President Hironao Okahana and D’Onofrio were disappointed
in the decision by the other Senators.
“
Personally, I’m disappointed that it got delayed,” Okahana said. “It
didn’t need to go to a vote today, but it didn’t need to get
sent down to ‘Docs and Bylaws.”
“
Some people worry about a slippery slope leading to limiting free speech,
although we said it wouldn’t,” said D’Onofrio, addressing
the Senate at the end of the meeting. “The real slippery slope is of
generalization.”
Former Chief Justice of the Judiciary Justin Todoroff was also sworn in as a
Senator for College of Health and Human Services.
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