SDS launches Save Our School Campaign

BY ED FELIEN

Members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University launched their Save Our School Campaign in the middle of President Bruininks’ Welcome Week speech to students on Sept. 3. They blew air horns, and unfurled two banners and threw hundreds of leaflets down from the balcony to the astonishment and surprise of the incoming freshmen. The banners read: “Bruininks we can’t afford your mansion anymore.

Cut administrative salaries! No more tuition hikes!” and “We pay Bruininks $700,000+ per year to lay off thousands of workers.” Bruininks said, “The University does believe in First Amendment rights and free speech, but in an appropriate and respectful manner.” SDS responded by saying, “SDS stands firm in recognizing a diversity of tactics when engaging the student body and sees alternative tactics as necessary in pursuing our campaign. A university that claims to adhere to a free speech policy should similarly recognize the diverse ways in which free speech is expressed.”

It is almost a respected tradition whenever the University invites a controversial speaker for students to unfurl banners and make a momentary presence. Jeane Kirkpatrick, an ardent anti-communist and ambassador to the United Nations for Reagan, got a similar reception when she spoke at the University not too many years ago.

For the University administration to pretend that people are not upset about the obscene disparity between administrative salaries and other University workers, to pretend that clerical workers can raise a family on their salaries, to pretend that tuition increases won’t affect the hopes of working people for an education for their children, is to invite the kind of rebuttal that SDS presented.

The University administration now wants to punish SDS for their outburst, and the Student Union Activities Office has threatened sanctions against SDS that would take away their right to meet on campus and promote their activities. According to the SDS statement: “The Student Union Activities Office has placed sanctions against us saying that we stole the banners used in the action, we improperly used the space, and that we were disruptive to a closed University function. We question all of these findings.

“First off the banners that we used were found, and were clearly NEVER going to be used by the University—they articulated outdated goals and campaigns and outdated fashion! Secondly, we believe that the building and event that we interrupted was in need of some perspective. The event is traditionally meant as a rallying point to make students blind to the excesses of the University administration. Our banner drop highlighted to students for only a few minutes the hypocrisy of an administration that is raising tuition while receiving free housing and enormous salaries.”

SDS invites people who support their right to freedom of speech to contact the Student Union Activities Office and Associate Director Denny Olsen at olsen013@umn.edu or 612-625-6295.