When I received the email from the student senator, I informed the county sheriff and all of the major university officials as well as students, faculty, staff, and the student newspaper. Here is what was reported in the newspaper on Monday (there are 3 stories below):

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ASBSU budget funds centers, but...draws criticism regardless

By...News Reporter
April 19, 2004

Students look on as ASBSU president ... addresses the senate on Thursday. There were multiple questions from the crowd about club and organization funding for the coming year.

ASBSU President ... put to rest rumors of possible cuts in Diversity Affairs contributions by unveiling a budget on Thursday that included funding to the groups. However, ... budget was unable to stifle some sharp criticism from the gallery.

The president’s budget included individual $4,000 contributions to the Women’s Center, Cultural Center, and the International Students Program- amounts that equaled last year’s funding. The money given by ASBSU is not part of the organization’s budgets; rather, they are a gift from student government.

..., flanked by vice president..., fielded questions from a gallery bursting from the seams of the Jordan Ballroom. The crowd of over 130 Boise State students and faculty members waited patiently through the budget reading to question Morriss on the controversy surrounding the possible loss of ASBSU contributions. Some of the sharpest criticism from the crowd came from English professor Marcy Newman.

Newman, who considers herself an advocate for under-represented students on campus, grilled ...[the President] for using what she called “underhanded practices.” During the reading ... said he didn’t know where the rumors regarding budget cuts started. However, Newman didn’t buy it.

“He...was the one communicating that he was going to get rid of funding to these people. And then he turns around and tries to pretend there were people spreading rumors,” she said.

After the reading, ...[the President] tried to clear up the misunderstanding.

“Had we considered dropping the Women’s Center? The answer is yes. Had we considered dropping the International Student’s? Yes. Had we also considered dropping our [ASBSU] retreat completely? Basically, every single thing on the budget was considered,” he said.

...[the President] said in order to remain fiscally responsible, every item on the budget was considered for cuts.

Some of the doubt as to whether the diversity affairs groups would receive the ASBSU gifts came from statements Morriss made to Women’s Center Coordinator .... ... met with the president to inquire if the $4,000 contributions would be in next year’s budget.

“I had the impression, the indication, that it was highly unlikely they would be gifting that money to the centers this year,” she said.

...[Women's Center Coordinator] said ... [the President] indicated the money simply might not exist in the budget. Nonetheless, she said the president expressed his support for the groups. ...[the President] recalled telling ...[the Women's Center Coordinator] he would do his best to include the contributions in his budget. Additionally, ...[the Women's Center Coordinator] expressed an apology over the incident.

“Maybe initially when I went to see ... [the President] I was too interested in that money. It’s not my role to be interested in that money, it’s the students role. If the ASBSU and all the students they represent really want this gift to go there, then we will accept it graciously. But I apologize publicly if I overstepped any boundary by even being interested in it,” she said.

...[the Women's Center Coordinator] said she understands the dilemma involved with being fiscally responsible, but also noted another factor that compounded the issue. ...[the Women's Center Coordinator] and coordinators for other diversity groups received an email from ... [the President] administration requesting budget information about how the gift has been used in the past. ... [the Women's Center Coordinator] noted the impact of the request.

“If there’s more barriers put up, more buracracy, it not only sends a distinct feeling of lack of trust for that gift. It isn’t a gift anymore, it’s got strings attached,” she said.

... [the President] said the request was intended to better budget for the gift and held no ill intentions.

... [a professor of ] sociology professor and president of the Cultural and Ethnic Diversity Board, raised other doubts during the budget reading. In his gallery comment, [the professor] asked ... [the President] if the contributions would be handled in the same manner as other administrations had. ... [the President] responded by saying: “That should be self-evident.” However, ... [the professor] pressed ... [the President] on the issue for a yes or no answer, citing George Bush’s recent press conference, which often included veiled responses. ... [the President] assured him the practices would remain the same, simply answering “yes” to the question. Later, ... [the professor] provided a reason for his presence at the senate meeting.

“I believe that the ASBSU administration intended to cut from their budget their contribution to the Women’s Center, the Cultural Center, and the International Students programs. These are critical university efforts worthy of ASBSU support, and I wanted to support these programs and the students they serve,” he said.

Orr said he was able to confirm to his own satisfaction that there was a possibility of the cuts by inquiring with a university official.

Criticisms from the crowd later culminated in a scathing gallery comment by one of ... [the President's] opponents in the recent presidential election, ... [a student opponent]. ... [the student opponent] said the administration’s actions were nothing more than politics, contending their methods were used to gauge the response to cutting the contributions. However, [the President] said the gifts to the groups were never taken off of the budget. ... [the student opponent] later vowed to be “a watchdog to the administration” and hinted at a possible recall election. After the hearing, ... [the President] commented on [the student opponent’s] charges.

“I think ... [the student opponent] is doing a very fine job in trying to bring me down… I look at it as a tick or a leech, you can try to cut it off, but there’s not much you can do, he’s going to try and suck some blood,” he said.

“If he wants to keep us in check, that’s fine, we’re going to keep ourselves in check.”

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Senator's email to professor sparks conflict

By ... Editor-in-chief
April 19, 2004

Tension generated by Thursday’s ASBSU Senate meeting spilled over into cyberspace when ASBSU Senator ... sent a vaguely worded email to English professor Marcy Newman accusing Newman of racism and pledged to seek an unstated form of justice.

The dispute began when Newman addressed ASBSU President... at Thursday’s meeting. Newman raised concerns that the current ASBSU administration was insensitive to issues faced by under-represented students. During the heated exchange, ... [the President] said that Newman had previously stated that a white speaker was inappropriate during Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Week earlier in the semester, statements quickly confirmed by Newman.

Later that night, Antchekov sent an email intended for Newman to ... [another president], BSU art professor, who then forwarded the email to Marcy. Newman determined the letter was of a threatening nature and contacted the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, initiating an investigation.

Antchekov said she wants Newman to apologize for her comments, characterizing them as racist towards whites.

“A faculty member who represents Boise State should not be saying this type of stuff,”... [the senator] said. “She’s a teacher, she has a responsibility to not be racist … She really ought to make a public statement apologizing for that.”

Newman defended her comments during the senate meeting, reiterating that she felt a white speaker was inappropriate during a celebration commemorating the accomplishments of Dr. King. “A white person is not an appropriate MLK speaker,” Newman said. “All year long, we have white speakers on campus every month, every week. This is one opportunity to have someone who is not from the dominant culture speak on campus. And I think that’s asking for very little.

Newman also dismissed ...[the President's] accusations that she was racist.

“I think that she obviously been not been getting a very good education from Boise State if that’s her understanding of racism,” Newman said. “Racism is fundamentally about institutional structures that create a climate in which people not of the dominant culture are oppressed. It’s an ill-informed and an ahistorical understanding of racism.”

... [the President] said that “justice” meant Boise State President ...would be notified and was unapologetic for the tone used in the email: “She should feel threatened because she did the wrong thing.” However, ... [the senator] said nothing sinister was implied.

“Come on, I’m not that type of person,” ... [the senator] said.

Newman said the letter crossed the line between discourse and intimidation and called ...[the senator's] judgment into question.

“Making that kind of threat to another human being is unconscionable,” Newman said. “And I think it’s really absurd considering what I said at that meeting … I think that’s really not the way an elected official should be acting.”

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And, finally, my editorial, was printed that same day too:

http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/19/4083a6510126c

Institutional racism

By Dr. Marcy Newman
Special to the Arbiter
April 19, 2004

On Friday an ASBSU senator sent me an email calling me a “racist” because I stated publicly that I believe it is inappropriate for white people to be invited as keynote speakers for the Martin Luther King, Jr. events at this institution. At Boise State, scholars, writers, and artists are paid to speak all year round; and, the speakers who come to campus and who are sponsored by the dominant culture within the institution are predominantly white. It is only when the Cultural and Ethnic Diversity Board or student organizations like OELA or INC bring people to campus that this community gets to hear a different perspective from people of color. If I were a professor at another university, I might not advocate this perspective if speakers invited by all sectors of the institution represented non-white and non-western perspectives; at such institutions Michael Moore, for instance, might be entirely appropriate to speak at a Martin Luther King keynote event. However, this is not the case at Boise State.

In light of this institutional history, I would strongly encourage all people bringing speakers to campus to only invite people of color in order to redress this history. Why not invite Arundhati Roy and Toni Morrison to speak in next year’s Distinguished Lecture Series? I single out this series because it represents the dominant culture at Boise State when compared to the King celebration. For one thing, the Distinguished Lecture Series receives more financial support than the King planning committee. That economic imbalance is indicative of the power imbalance inherent in these programs and this institution more generally. Perhaps this analogy may shed some light on the specific category of racism and its meaning.

Racism is a form of oppression that cannot be understood without comprehending the systematic, institutional forces that uphold it. Like the word “nigger” that linguistically signifies the violence of racism, one cannot use either term without conjuring up an entire history of both words. Racism in this country is deeply tied to the history of enslaving and torturing an entire group of people who were forcibly removed from Africa and enslaved by white colonists in the Americas. This racism led to the genocide of over 60 million people of African descent as well as the Holocaust that exterminated over 100 million indigenous peoples whom we now consider Native American and Latin American. Consequently, the word racism is reserved to refer to a collective phenomenon in which the dominant power (read: white) oppresses marginalized groups (read: brown). For me it is a form of violence to use the word “racism” to describe a white woman’s individualistic experience as this senator did.

Indeed, this young woman’s email to me was violent and threatening. I find it troubling and ironic given that racism has everything to do with violence—with a history and, yes, a present systemic form of violence. By plugging into this rhetoric she simultaneously plugs into the enabling force behind racism itself in the way she instantly reverts to aggression in her response to my comment.

This reduction reminds me of the way in which people often reduce King to two sanitized lines from his “I Have a Dream” speech. But King was a radical who also stated in this same speech: “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.” Given that my attendance at this senate meeting where I reiterated my comment about the MLK celebration was to ensure that funding would not be drawn away from the most marginalized students on campus—students who use the Cultural Center, Women’s Center, and the International Programs Office—I think it is worth recalling the way in which King fought for economic equality and racial justice. In this respect, King’s words, when examined in their context, reveal his tireless dedication to removing the imbalance of power that is inextricably tied to race in this country. In the U.S., and at Boise State, white people remain in positions of power and people of color, generally speaking, do not. While white people may experience prejudice in isolated instances, this is not the same as the form of racism and its connection to a specific history of genocide and inequality. This is what Boise State needs to remedy.