Senate denies the 500 Family group recognition

10/30/08 - A seemingly routine request for senate recognition of a student organization generated heated debate that permeated last night's senate meeting.The senate voted 24 to 14 to reject a bill calling for recognition of the 500 Family, a group that acts as a facilitator of diversity. Debate ensued featuring personal recriminations, open displays of emotion and accusations of racial bias.

Sophomore Lowell Williams, who was present as president of the group, said the 500 Family promotes diversity by bringing different campus entertainment groups together, largely through event programming.

"My organization is basically standing up for the lack of diversity on campus," Williams said. "We want to establish bonds between groups that wouldn't work with each other on their own."

Prior to the vote, debate centered around technicalities in the group's mission statement, which had been previously approved by the Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee (SOARC).

A draft of the statement that Williams said had been updated to reflect recommendations from the committee and individual senators was deemed inadmissible for discussion because it had not been approved by SOARC.

Senator Amanda LaRocca was among those who voiced opposition to the bill on the grounds that it too closely mirrored the goals of the Student Entertainment Committee and the senate's Cultural Affairs Committee.

"When you ask them directly they say 'We're not about programming,' but in the indirect answers it's coming out that it seems to me like a lot of it is programming, and we have the Student Entertainment Committee," LaRocca said.

Williams stressed that the group's programming activities were a secondary characteristic.

"Our mission statement does not say that we are here to do programming, that's a detail," Williams said. "That's not what it's about, it's about reaching out into the community."

Senator Shane Lee was among those who spoke in favor of the group's goals.

"If it comes to the mission statement, I think this will be the only group with the sole responsibility of getting special interest organizations to work together," Lee said. "In URI's history we know that minority and majority group co-operations are not really existent on this campus."

Discussion of the organization continued following the vote.

Sophomore Melinda Sajous, secretary of the group, said in a tearful address that the rejection represented a blow to the campus's minority population.

Many senators who voted against the bill said that they supported the organization's goals and had voted against it based only on its technical faults.

Having spoken with senators who opposed the bill, Williams said after the meeting that he did not believe the decision was racially motivated, and that he hoped a re-worked version of the mission statement would be approved by the senate at next week's meeting.

Senators on both sides of the debate eventually made statements apologizing for unprofessional behavior.

In other business:

The senate approved a programming grant request in the amount of $4,496.50 for the Black American Society. The money will go to fund a finale event intended for the upcoming HIV/Aids Awareness Week.

Five new senators elected in last week's internal elections were sworn in.

President Ahrens discussed the rally held at the State House to protest tuition hikes, which he praised, despite a low turnout from URI students.