The Student Senate meeting opened with a bang on Tuesday afternoon – the bang of drums as the Mustang Band entered the Senate chamber playing the SMU fight song.
The band, led by Evan Taylor, was addressing the floor from the podium to garner financial support for Pigskin Revue in October. Taylor pitched the event to the Senate with the equation “SNL + Pep Rally + SMU = Pigskin Revue.”
Additionally, he described the event as open to everyone: athletes, Greeks, band, non-band, faculty and alumni. Pigskin Revue is a space in which all members of the SMU community can come together and sell out McFarlin, Taylor said. “It’s time for unity,” he said.
Standing room was sparse as several members of SMU’s multicultural organizations congregated to address the chamber.
Representatives of SMU’s Multicultural Student Affairs (MSA) spoke about the vandalism that occurred on Saturday, Sept. 8, in which a poster for MSA was removed from its posting, stabbed, and strung up in a tree.
This event was eerily similar to event last year in which a peruna poster for SMU’s Association of Black Students was vandalized.
The timing of the vandalism – just three days before Sept.11 – concerned Zain Rizvi, president of Muslim Students’ Association (whose acronym is also MSA). He opined that it is indicative of the continuing hate and fear of Islam prevalent in America.
Karma Orfaly, a freshman, also addressed the Senate. “As a Muslim, I’m scared around 9/11 that someone might commit a hate crime [against me].” She also said it is important to raise awareness at SMU about religious diversity. Furthermore, she said, “On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden hijacked my religion.”
Oscar Cetina, president of Sigma Lambda Beta, told Senate that discrimination exists at SMU, and it is the Senate’s, and by extension the student body’s responsibility to combat it. He also asked everyone to think of the band, how when they played everyone was united as a Mustang.
Devean Owens, president of SMU’s Association of Black Students, exhorted the Senate to issue a statement about the vandalism that intolerance is not welcome at SMU. She also talked on the importance of recruiting and maintaining minority students for SMU, and better diversity and sensitivity training for SMU students in general.
Owens concluded her time at the podium by reciting in unison with the presidents of Asian Council and College Hispanic American Students an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
This quotation was followed a minute-long applause from the entire room.
When he addressed Senate, SMU Student Body President summed up the leit-motif of the afternoon: “Community starts with the way you treat other people.”
