Editorial: SB 65-70, Summing Up

by: Joshua Howell

We at A&M have a penchant for self-regard. Not only must every good deed, no matter how miniscule, be trumpeted as if it were some herculean effort, we  have failed at what many believe is our core mission: A&M, we are incessantly told, is home to  the friendliest students in the nation.

But if you have to say it out loud…

For 13 of the past 17 years, The Princeton Review has ranked Texas A&M as one of the 20 most “LGBT-Unfriendly” student populations in the country. Recently, in a kerfuffle that garnered national media attention, we secured a spot on The Princeton Review’s list for next year.

The offense centered on The GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill (SB 65-70), which was introduced to A&M’s Student Senate in early March. Authored by Northside Senator Chris Woosley, the bill requested that “students who object to funding the GLBT Resource Center through their student fees and tuition for religious reasons be allowed to opt out from funding the same.”

With its anodyne wording, few realized SB 65-70 would eviscerate the goodwill A&M earned when Johnny Manziel won the Heisman. But ignorance is no excuse. On campus and in the media the bill was rightly seen as targeting one of A&M’s most vulnerable minorities.

The Huffington Post, MSN Now, LGBTQ Nation, San Antonio Express News, and The Eagle all covered the proceedings.

The Human Rights Campaign lambasted the bill as “a direct attack on members of the LGBT community at Texas A&M.” It reasoned that the bill’s implementation would segregate LGBT Aggies into “second class citizens” by “significantly reduc[ing] resources for a much needed institution.”

Perhaps the best response, though, came from Campus Pride, which issued a low-key opinion with which The Left whole-heartedly agrees -- “while SB 65-70 claims to promote religious freedom, we cannot ignore that it only allows students with one religious belief to control how their student fees are used: only religious traditions that disapprove of LGBT interests are given a voice... Whatever the intentions of the bill may be, the effect is clearly discriminatory.”

The Left would add, however, that “religious freedom” does not entail exemptions to rules which are generally applicable. It is a constant refrain of this news site, and deservedly so, that religion is a worldview like any other: the religious can mobilize, advocate, elect, and -- we too often forget -- be compelled to do things they aren’t otherwise inclined to do.

Arguing otherwise is to push for a gross political entitlement never before recognized.

To quell the ensuing indignation -- while simultaneously missing the thrust of it -- Woosley changed “The GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill” to “The Religious Funding Exception Bill.” The new version requested that “students who object to funding various services through their student fees and tuition for religious reasons be allowed to opt out from funding the same.”

The altered document passed the Senate with 35 votes for, 28 against, but was vetoed by Student President John Claybrook. In a confident, well-worded explanation, Claybrook noted that “what this bill represents still remains and must be done away with,” and that “[n]ow, more than ever, is the time to show great resolve and come together”.

Alas, A&M’s faculty was latent in its response; they did not “come together” until after the veto. Two statements stood out.

The first came from the Department of Anthropology, which strongly reaffirmed their “commitment to diversity and support of groups that have felt discrimination on campus,” as well the “GLBT community and the GLBT Resource Center.”

The second came from University President Bowen Loftin, who, in a rather lukewarm email, said that A&M’s recent discourse “has, in some cases, lacked civility and discounted each individual’s right to free expression of their ideas and beliefs.”

Dr. Loftin’s email was poorly timed; an hour later The Dallas Voice broke a story that at least one LGBT Aggie had received a death threat.

In an interview with The Left, Camden Breeding, an activist and senior at Texas A&M, confirmed the incident: “All I can say about the threat is that it was a phone call that threatened death upon ‘faggots,’” he said.

Lacking civility, indeed.

Student Senators recently upheld Claybrook’s veto. Shortly thereafter, a motion to censure Woosley was brought to the floor, but didn’t get the necessary votes for a second.

While solid efforts at rehabilitating A&M’s fractured ego, these legislative moves will not elicit the media attention SB 65-70 did in either of its forms; they will not repair the self-inflicted damage done to our university’s reputation.

We as Aggies must do better.