ACLU introduces Patriot Act petition

ACLU introduces Patriot Act petition

By Bradford Kim · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · November 20, 2003

In a meeting that ran over two and a half hours this Tuesday, the Student Council (StuCo) discussed an adaptation of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) resolution against the Patriot Act at Hopkins.

The Johns Hopkins chapter of the ACLU (JHUACLU) raised reasons for concerns revolving around how student rights would be affected by this act, particularly international students.

The Patriot Act allows any federal government to investigate any student record, and would not be informed if his/her records were requested.

The JHUACLU argued students would lose their civil liberties with the government's right to look into any file.

The community at Hopkins is also affected by the loss of faculty who cannot get into the country due to rising difficulties in approving a visa.

With this in mind, the JHUACLU came to the Student Council to request "accountability and transparency" to the Patriot Act by providing the organization with their support for the resolution.

A similar resolution was passed in 200 counties, three states and Baltimore city itself.

Georgetown has been the only university to pass this resolution as of yet.

A few of the organizations that have expressed support for the resolution are the College Democrats, Amnesty International, Students for Choice, The Hong Kong Society, and many multicultural societies.

With the closure of debate, the JHUACLU delegates left the room to wait for StuCo to discuss the issues with this resolution, which lasted approximately 75 minutes.

It was later commented that this discussion process was "one of the biggest decisions [StuCo] has had to make this year."

After 30 minutes of the discussion the first of the votes were taken, with 13 out of the 22 members knowing what they were going to vote; on the other hand, six members could have been swayed either way.

There was a definite split within the 13 who were ready to vote, with six for the resolution and seven against. This split did not give the members the majority to end the night.

StuCo went on to edit the ACLU resolution because they felt that it was very "biased and strong worded." One of the other options concerning the resolution that were brought to the table was a petition to the student body to vote for or against the resolution.

Two polls were taken after these discussions. One poll was to see if StuCo wanted the ACLU to bring back a certain number of petitions that were in favor of the resolution, assuming it were revised. The majority favored the petition to be distributed among the student body, and a motion was taken to set the number of signatures required at 1500.

After two and half hours of debate, StuCo still did not have a definitive agreement to support or not support the resolution. As a result, a motion to postpone discussion for two weeks was passed.

Members of the council would then be able to talk to constituents to get an idea as to what kind of vote should be made. StuCo president Charles Reyner reminded everyone that this measure was to ensure that StuCo's actions are representative of the student body.

The ACLU executive board was brought back in the meeting once again and told a vote was not made because there were many problems accepting the document and representing the majority. They also did not guarantee that the resolution would be passed in two weeks.