Student Union Senate passed a resolution related to student suspensions and disarming the WashU police during its first meeting of the year on Sept. 10. (Sam Powers | Student Life)
Student Union (SU) Senate passed a resolution calling for WashU to drop suspension cases against students and faculty, disarm the WashU Police Department, and create an Indigenous Studies department, Sept. 10. The resolution, which passed 11-7 with two abstentions, also called for Chancellor Andrew Martin to resign from his post. On the morning of Sept. 12, senior and SU President Hussein Amuri vetoed the resolution, saying that it would divide the student body.
Over the course of two hours, Senate discussed the five-page-long resolution and included 12 different individual calls to action, most of which focused on the aftermath of the April 27 protest.
The resolution was sponsored by sophomore senators Saara Engineer and Emaan Sayied, along with junior senators Sonal Churiwal and Natalia Leon Diaz. While the sponsors chose not to formally present the resolution, they read statements from three suspended students who are currently not allowed to be on campus.
Engineer read aloud a statement from suspended student Daniel Cazares, who was given a court summons after participating in a protest on April 13.
"This is meant to be a place of learning, not one of violence," Cazares wrote in his statement. "Having stationed officers on campus should not delude us into feeling 'safer' -- it should remind us that the bureaucrat administrators only control this university by use of violent force."
The breadth of the resolution was a focus of discussion throughout the meeting. Senator and junior Omar Abdelmoity explained that he thought the resolution would be more effective if it were split up into individual sections, rather than lumping multiple ideas in one vote.
"More is not always better," Abdelmoity said. "I think we need to break it down into separate resolutions."
Abdelmoity said that he believed there were certain points -- such as finding remediation methods for students that were arrested -- that most Senators would agree on.
"But then I bring up the point of disarming WUPD, [and] we just had a [more than] hour-long conversation over that single point," he said. "My worry is that this resolution could go either way because of a specific point."
Throughout the meeting, what many Senators focused on in their discussion was the line item calling for WUPD to be "immediately disarmed."
Two main perspectives emerged in the meeting -- some senators stated that WUPD was violent during their policing of protests last April and therefore should not have weapons. Others said that disarming officers would be a safety threat in the case of an incident such as a mass shooting.
Junior Beni Biswama talked about the scary reality that many students in the United States face due to gun violence.
"Unfortunately, last week, there was another school shooting, and in America, that's become a norm," he said. "Personally, for my safety, I wouldn't want to go to a school knowing that the potential threat would not be able to be neutralized."
In response, Churiwal said that she does not believe WUPD would mitigate that type of threat.
"It's reprehensible to me that we're sitting here talking about this," she said. "Police are not the ones who are going to be stopping school shootings, because we have had police for decades, and we also [have] had school shootings for decades."
Churiwal added that if people are concerned about gun violence, they should focus on other policy issues.
"If you're concerned about school shootings, go look into how to get background checks," she said. "There is literally no age restriction [on possessing] guns in Georgia. That is what causes school shootings, and the police are not going to stop them."
Junior Mika Kipnis had similar concerns about the idea of disarmament, bringing up the point that if WUPD did not have weapons, it might lead to outside police departments coming on to campus more often.
"In an event of needing some sort of armed protection, would the real police of St. Louis be called?" Kipnis asked. "I think that we saw on April 27 what the response of real police in these kinds of situations is. If it's not WUPD, it's something else, and we need to consider what that would be."
Sophomore Maya Santhanam also noted that the term itself is unclear, given that the resolution does not explain a process of disarmament.
"My first question is, what constitutes disarming?" Santhanam asked. "I did a lot of research into the arms that WUPD officers carry, and there's a variety of them, including intermediate weapons that help students with mental behavioral-health issues, in particular. Also, which officers are we referring to?"
The conversation about WUPD, which dominated much of the hour-and-a-half deliberation process, was just one line item of the resolution.
Notably, the resolution called for Martin to resign, just hours after Senators asked him questions in his first-ever appearance at an SU joint session in his six-year tenure as chancellor at WashU.
Junior Sahil Soni suggested that the resolution be amended to remove the line calling for Martin's resignation, stating that SU's relationship with the administration is as strong as it's been in a year.
"In the past year, we've put out resolution after resolution with nothing to show for it, and I think that resolution would just kill our chance of developing a better relationship with the administration," Soni said.
Soni's amendment was one of multiple that were proposed throughout the meeting -- junior Matthew Broome suggested that the line about disarming WUPD be removed, and Abdelmoity suggested that the entire resolution be tabled to the following week. None of the amendments or proposals were approved through a vote.
When talking about Martin's resignation, Abdelmoity said that he does not believe that the resolution would make an impact.
"Raise your hand if you think this is actually going to cause Chancellor Martin to get kicked out by the Board of Trustees," he said. "It's not actually going to do anything directly. I understand that we want to say we're not happy with his actions in the past, but that can be communicated in another manner. He obviously wants to work with us, as he came to our prior session."
Senior Braeden Rose also expressed similar concerns, noting that the line about Martin's resignation was right next to a line about creating an Indigenous Studies department.
"As someone who finds the idea of [an] Indigenous Studies department to be an excellent idea, it's a little bit offensive to put it right next to the line asking for Chancellor Martin's resignation, which we all know is not happening," Rose said.
Rose added that he believed Senate had grown accustomed to passing resolutions that were not making substantive change.
"If you want to be ineffective because we've gotten addicted to not getting things done, we can pass this. But if we actually want to do things, I'd also like to see this Indigenous Studies department not just tacked on at the end of a laundry list of resolutions that are not getting done," Rose said.
Junior Ella Scott, Speaker of SU Senate, told Student Life that resolutions are not policy decisions but are meant to call for a change within the University.
"Historically, they are used to allow Senate to take a stance on a campus issue or to make a collective statement as a representative body," she said.
The topic of efficacy came up during numerous Senate discussions last year, as SU passed resolutions calling for WashU to cut all ties with Boeing and to place Professor Phillip Dybvig on leave, neither of which happened.
However, some resolutions did create channels of communication between SU and administrators, such as the two resolutions passed by Senate last semester regarding dining services on campus. Scott said that prior to passing the resolution, she was unable to get into contact with administration, but afterwards she could.
"After we passed it, I believe that we received communication and met within the next week to discuss dining services workers' rights and the relationship between Sodexo, the dining services employees' worker's union, and the University Dining Services," Scott said.
Another contested line item in the resolution was one that reiterated SU's prior call for WashU to divest from Boeing and sever all ties with the corporation.
However, as multiple senators pointed out, in a recent interview, WashU's Chief Investment Officer Scott Wilson said that, to his knowledge, WashU does not have any direct or indirect investments in Boeing.
Additionally, just hours prior to the Senate meeting when Martin attended the SU joint session, he quoted Wilson's statement about WashU's lack of investments in Boeing when he was asked about the corporation.
Rose said that he disagreed with the reference to divestment in the resolution based on the lack of evidence that WashU is invested to begin with.
"The Chief Investment Officer disclosed that we actually do not have any Boeing holdings, contrary to the beliefs of many who perhaps could benefit from some additional research," Rose said. "It does make some of the lines in this resolution moot and probably make[s] us look uneducated."
Churiwal, a co-sponsor of the original resolution to divest from Boeing, responded by saying that she does not believe that WashU is not invested, based on the lack of communication from the administration.
"If it's true that WashU has no direct or indirect holdings in Boeing, there is not a single reason why they wouldn't just disclose that," Churiwal said. "It's simply irrational."
At the end of the meeting, a final vote was held, and the resolution was passed 11-7 with two abstentions.
Voted for the resolution:
Senators Natalia Leon-Diaz, Beni Bisimwa, Sonal Churiwal, Ian Gomez, Emaan Saiyed, Fatima Elmenshawy, Faheem Rahman, Omar Abdelmoity, Mahid Abdulkarim, Sarah Ash, and Saara Engineer (11)
Voted against the resolution:
Senators Sahil Soni, Lily Smith, Braeden Rose, Mika Kipnis, Salman Yonis, Matthew Broome, and Maya Santhanam (7)
Two days after the meeting, SU President Hussein Amuri vetoed the resolution, citing, in a letter explaining his rationale, the fact that Senate is meant to represent the experiences of all students.
"I admire and appreciate some points that were brought up in this resolution," Amuri wrote. "However, I believe that this resolution, as it stands, does not reflect an aggregate student voice on our campus, as it does not comprehensively reflect the complexities and experiences of all WashU students of that day."
He went on to write that he has spoken to some students who said that being on-campus during the April 27 protest had a negative impact on their mental health.