UW Senate Discusses Boyington Issue

The UW student senate meets in the wake of the "Pappy Boyington" resolution controversy, as reported in the student newspaper the Daily.

Hate mail and threatening voicemails flooded in to students who spoke out against an ASUW Student Senate resolution this week.

The resolution, which aimed to create an on-campus tribute to World War II fighter pilot Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, was voted down last Tuesday. Senate Chair Alex Kim cast the tie-breaking vote after a lengthy debate.

Kim and ASUW President Lee Dunbar responded to community lashings at the beginning of last night's Senate meeting. Dunbar commended the Senate's debate and said he was appalled by the hateful responses members received.

He said he hopes the Senate can continue to operate in an open, non-threatening environment. Senate members received hateful phone calls and e-mails after their personal information was posted on Internet sites and blogs.

ASUW vice president Ashley Miller said she received between 50 and 100 threatening letters from people outside the UW community.

Miller was one of the main contributors to the resolution's debate. "The information about what happened that night was sent out to different sources and people were misquoted and misrepresented," she said.

"This just got ridiculous, everything was blown totally out of proportion."Following commentary about last week's meeting, the senate read and passed a resolution in support of holistic admissions.

While I certainly don't condone writing threatening e-mails, what were they expecting to happen? I would imagine if one of the senators had said something along the line of "civil rights activists are not the type of people that UW wants to produce" or "We don't need any statues of poor black men" then much more would have happened than a few nasty e-mails. If you insult people, they get angry. But I guess "rich white males" are open season.

I particularly noticed a bunch of whining about the reports being inaccurate, but a complete lack of specifics as to what was inaccurate. If the story is not being reported right, then correct it, don't just attack the people who are offended.

Update: Once again Michelle Malkin is several days behind me on a story. Oh well, she is cute, and she tries hard.