Editorial: Let SDS’ voices be heard

In the hours surrounding the Students for a Democratic Society removal of its sponsorship… In the hours surrounding the Students for a Democratic Society removal of its sponsorship from the Pittsburgh Freedom School, a regional conference about civil disobedience, people were Tweeting and posting on Facebook that they were “starting to get chills.”

Some said anarchists were “infiltrating” Pitt’s campus. Others said students “hoodwinked” the University, because some of the conference’s events were scheduled to occur in the Cathedral of Learning, the William Pitt Union and David Lawrence Hall.

The group, by definition, seeks to foster a discussion of different, often radical political opinions. Although some members of the group identify themselves as anarchists — a term that does not imply violence — attempting to classify every person in this group as the same shows either a lack of understanding, or even worse, a lack of care to establish one.

Although the group is philosophically against a leadership structure, its listed president is Jordan Romanus for SORC record-keeping purposes. Romanaus said the group felt as though an administrator pressured them to cancel the event. Director of Student Life Kenyon Bonner said that he spoke to the group, but did not pressure them.

Either way, it was evident that members of the Pitt community were expressing sentiment against the group before its conference even started.

But if an academic community isn’t the right place for people to openly discuss controversial issues, where is?

The itinerary for the Pittsburgh Freedom School, which was named in honor of the non-violent freedom schools that began in the Civil Rights Era, consists largely of caucuses. Conference attendees planned to meet on the fifth floor of the William Pitt Union last week to discuss “anti-oppression practice, conflict resolution, consent and emotional support,” according to the conference’s itinerary. Last Saturday, they had planned to use the Union to discuss “campaign strategy, direct action, making demands” and other issues.

Their training session — which seemed to have caused much of the controversy — was scheduled to take place in Schenley Plaza and was designed to teach people how to practice civil disobedience “including affinity groups, blockades, lock-downs, street marches, dealing with police and building occupation.”

Pitt law professor Arthur Hellman said that Pitt can restrict activities done with its resources beyond what would be defined in criminal laws. The University can say it doesn’t want its facilities used for a particular reason, but it can’t say it in a way that would discriminate against a group, Hellman said. Pitt officials, who say they did keep an eye on the event’s planning, clearly did not see enough of a problem to formally prevent the group from meeting.

Blocking the streets or disrupting the flow of traffic is not protected under the First Amendment, and it is unclear whether these training sessions would be protected, Hellman said.

“What the Supreme Court has said is that government cannot prohibit advocacy of illegal activity unless the advocacy is both directed to and inciting immediate, unlawful activity and is likely to lead to it. There’s an immediacy requirement that in some ways doesn’t fit very well with certain kinds of teaching activities,” he said.

SDS says that they do not advocate for or teach any illegal tactics, that they find ways to do it all within the bounds of the law.

Some members of Pitt’s chapter participated in protests in Market Central last week, demanding higher wages and more rights for Sodexo workers. The demonstration remained peaceful, and it ended when police asked the protesters to leave the building. Even though SDS members were involved, it’s unfair to assume that the actual SDS chapter agrees with their actions, regardless of the cause.

The entire point of SDS, remember, is to create an unstructured and open forum for people of differing opinions. If any one member of the group does something, it doesn’t mean that the entire group supports it. This isn’t very different than if a baseball player, for example, were to do something illegal. Does that mean the entire baseball team supports the activity?

Where is the harm in allowing these students and their guests — who are allowed to participate in the conference and use University resources, according to Pitt’s policy — to merely discuss methods of civil disobedience?

The purpose of this editorial is not to agree or disagree with the group’s platform, but since when does this community frown upon civil disobediance simply because it’s civil disobediance? To argue against those tactics would be to argue against actions that helped shape our country into what it is today.

Academia has historically been a haven for open, difficult discussion. Ideas that, at the time, sounded radical and absurd to many are now Constitutional Amendments thanks in large to people not being afraid to debate these issues on campuses across the country.

In the 1960s and ’70s, protesters used civil disobedience to protest the Vietnam War and to fight for equal rights for women and minorities. The ideas that these protesters espoused — that the Vietnam War was wrong or that women and minorities deserve the same rights as white men — are now common in today’s society. But they might not have been if the protesters hadn’t been able to draw attention to them using non-violent methods.

But we must ask: Who are we, as a Pitt community, to limit this group’s ability to discuss non-violence?

Events like the G-20 Summit have made our community afraid of controversy. In response to people who think differently or more radically than us, we shut down, fearing that we will lose control over a situation. And that, we fear, has shut down our ability to think critically.