The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Judiciary, after a public hearing Tuesday night, decided by a vote of 4-2 that the seven TCU senators that signed the Friends of Israel (FOI) advertisement in the Tufts Daily earlier this month did not violate any Senate bylaws in signing the advertisement.
The Controversy
The advertisement in question was published on the back page of the March 5 issue of the Tufts Daily. The top of the page reads "As a student leader at Tufts, I support the U.S.-Israel Relationship" followed by the names of forty student leaders, along with their titles and organizations. Of those, seven currently serve as TCU senators: Jon Danzig, a senior, Matt Roy, a freshman, Arielle Evans, a sophomore, Ali Silverstein, a sophomore, Tim Lesinski, a senior, Dan Katter, a freshman, and TCU Parliamentarian J.P. Kaytrosh, a senior.
After the list of names, there is a disclaimer that states "The views expressed are my own and do not represent the positions or opinions of my stated leadership role or organization."
After the advertisement was published, Jimmy Zuniga, a senior, filed a complaint against the senators to the Judiciary, as well as to the Office of Campus Life and the Committee on Student Life. In his complaint, he addressed Bylaw 2, Section 9 of the Senate bylaws, which states that "the passage of legislation shall be required before the official position, view, decision, or endorsement of Senate may be determined, advertised, or announced. To this end, no individual may use the Senate's name or logo in advocating on behalf of projects, ideas, or initiatives without a supporting piece of legislation unless it is clearly stated that Senate has come to an agreement upon the issue."
The Judiciary accepted the complaint and held the public hearing. Cory Faragon, a senior, and Matt Parsons, a junior, joined Zuniga as complaintants, in accordance with a clause in the TCU Constitution which states that at least three members of the TCU must submit the complaint. All three complaintants are current members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), but they submitted the complaint independently from the organization.
Prior to the hearing, Kaytrosh had submitted a motion that the Judiciary dismiss the complaint on the grounds that the Judiciary doesn't have the constitutional authority to hear the complaint, but the Judiciary dismissed the motion under the grounds that the accusations named in the complaint qualified as a reason for a Judiciary hearing, according to Judiciary Chair Greg Bodwin, a junior.
The Verdict
The Judiciary ruled on three central issues brought up at the hearing.
The first was with regards to the way in which the wording of the bylaw would be interpreted. The Judiciary by a 6-0-0 vote ruled that the "bylaw is to be interpreted by a reasonable interpretation of its wording."
"We have two reasons behind this: first, the standard of intent cannot always be applied, since its creators are not always as accessible as they were tonight," Bodwin said in an email to the attendees of the hearing. "Second, it's necessary to the functioning of student government that outsiders are able to understand its rules; if they are to be interpreted by intent, this is impossible."
The second issue was with regards to the ambiguity in the wording of the bylaw in question. The Judiciary in a 6-0-0 vote decided to mandate that the Senate change or clarify the wording of the bylaw in question to remove ambiguity.
The third issue was whether the senators in question violated the bylaw as it currently stands. The Judiciary in a 4-2 vote decided that the senators did not violate the bylaw in question.
Until the bylaw is clarified, the bylaw is going to be interpreted to "forbid the use of Senate's name as the subject in statements that are claiming to represent the body as a whole, such as 'The Senate supports/believes,'" according to Bodwin's email.
The Opening Statements
The hearing began with a five-minute opening statement from the complaintants and the defendants.
"On March 5th, in the middle of a two-week series of events for Israeli Apartheid Week and Israel Peace Week, Tufts Friends of Israel, along with Tufts American Israel Alliance ... published a full page ad on the back of the Tufts Daily," Zuniga said. "Given the timing of its publication, it's undeniable that the ad was supposed to send a message to the campus about which side of the line these students leaders stood on in recent political discourse."
"Senators, more than other student leaders, carry social capital with their titles and should not use it to influence others," he added.
Zuniga said that he does not believe that the disclaimer on the bottom of the advertisement does enough to erase any social capital generated from their titles.
"Senators are supposed to be representatives for the student body," he said. "They are not supposed to alienate their constituents or use the Senate name without Senate sanction to endorse political stances. ... The senators who signed the FOI ad thus failed to adhere to their own bylaws."
"If they really didn't mean to express the views of their organization, they shouldn't have so carelessly flashed the Senate name along with their titles," he added. "Their decision to endorse this statement without Senate consent represented not an exercise of free speech and public discourse, but rather an attempt to misuse their titles to hamper the very possibility of public discourse at Tufts."
Kaytrosh said that the bylaw has never previously been construed to stop members of the Senate from stating their beliefs.
"Simply making a statement, 'I am on Senate,' does not constitute using Senate's name," he said. "This ad does not constitute advocacy. It constituted a simple statement [of] belief on the part of the signers."
Kaytrosh used the example of senators including their Senate title in the signature of their emails to say that, under the complaintants' interpretation of the bylaw, senators would not be permitted to include their political beliefs in any emails without the approval of the Senate.
Additionally, he said that under this interpretation of the bylaw, senators would not be permitted to include their Senate titles when writing letters to the editor or op-eds in the Tufts Daily, yet this has never been considered a violation of Senate bylaws.
Kaytrosh also said that while the disclaimer was not even necessary, it made clear the intent of the advertisement.
"Words have meaning. Firstly, the disclaimer, strictly speaking, was not necessary considering how this bylaw has always been construed," he said. "Are we to believe that senators affixing their names to a statement written in the first person singular with their titles, with a disclaimer clearly appearing at the bottom of said statement, injures the integrity of student government? Are we to believe that students being aware of their senators' political beliefs injures the integrity of student government? The reasonable answer is clearly no."
The Judiciary's Questioning
After the opening statements, members of the Judiciary asked both sides questions.
Kaytrosh explained that the bylaw is recent and was intended to prevent senators from making endorsements using the Senate name without approval by the Senate, which had been a problem in recent years.
Judiciary Vice Chair Danielle Cotter, a senior, asked the complaintants why their complaint was against the senators that signed the advertisement rather than the other student leaders.
"The reason that we didn't address [other groups] was that we didn't feel it was in violation of the groups' code of conduct," Faragon said.
"I think [the Senate's] social capital in particular is very wide-reaching," Zuniga said. "When a [sports team's] captain signs a statement like the FOI ad it's irrelevant to me, but senators are representatives for all students, and I thought it was highly inappropriate."
Bodwin asked whether they should find senators submitting op-eds to the Daily to also be against the bylaw, to which Faragon said that the complaintants believe the senators should be able to state what they wish as long as it is within the confines of the bylaws.
"When a senator expresses an opinion in the Daily, it's a point of information when you say that this person is a senator," Faragon said. "The Daily does not say this person is a senator, let's look at this person as a student leader and therefore assign a greater authenticity or validity. It's not meant to persuade. The difference here is that this piece was not meant to foster public discourse but to impede it under the banner of a vague and quite right-wing message. The two rows of names bearing the Senate name would appear to uninformed observers as the Senate's seal of approval."
Danzig said he encouraged the complaintants to use their same interpretation to senators writing op-eds and apply it consistently.
"The unobserved observer would have seen the disclaimer," Kaytrosh said. "This is turning on a very specific interpretation [of the bylaw] which cannot possibly seriously injure the integrity of the student government, and it can't be a gross or malicious violation of anything."
The Audience's Response
After the question and answer session, members of the audience who were granted permission to speak were allotted time to share their thoughts.
TCU President Tomas Garcia stated his belief that he did not believe the senators to have broken any bylaws.
"I wouldn't be here today speaking on behalf of these seven members if I thought for a single second that they had violated the constitution," Garcia, a senior, said. "Instead, I'm here today speaking on behalf of them because I don't think that the rules in this case, as we wrote them and as I interpret them today, have been broken at all."
Dan Pasternack (LA '11), who was the TCU Parliamentarian last year and helped to author the bylaw in question, explained the reasoning behind the bylaw.
"Before this bylaw, someone actually could just submit a resolution with the Senate's name on it to anyone, even though they didn't actually approve it, and Senate had no course of action against that person," he said. "Last year, we did not enforce this to prevent people from using their title, TCU senator or member of the TCU Senate. We thought that that was acceptable."
ShawyounShaidani, a junior senator who refused to sign the advertisement because he opposes the U.S.-Israel relationship, said that although he criticizes the advertisement and the senators who signed it, he does not support punishment for the senators.
"Criticism and punishment are two very different prescriptions," he said.
The Closing Statements
Faragon reiterated once more the points made by the complainants throughout the proceedings.
"[The hearing] is not about trying to limit the rights of senators once they assume office," he said. "It is not about a chilling attempt to limit public discourse at Tufts. It is not about making a baseless claim against these senators, because we feel 'offended' or 'injured.' It is about holding these senators to the very codes of conduct that they agree upon while taking office."
"Again, if a senator endorses a position in an article in the Daily, then an inclusion of their role on Senate is informative," he said. "What we are dealing with here is a deployment of the Senate name that was, by the very nature of the political ad in question, meant to persuade, not to inform."
Faragon also brought up the point that Roy signed the advertisement but is in charge of SJP's budget, which he said may pose a bias.
"We would ask that the [Judiciary] remove Matt Roy from any further [Allocations Board] or budgetary relationship with Students for Justice in Palestine, as he has demonstrated an inability to allocate that budget without bias," he said.
Bodwin said that although there was no formal complaint specifically against Roy, if the Judiciary found it fit, they would readjust budgeting, but there would be no formal action against Roy himself.
Zuniga reaffirmed that the complaint, however, is not about any sort of conflict between FOI or SJP, and although he is now a member of SJP, he decided to submit the complaint prior to joining the group.
Kaytrosh reiterated that the senators did not expect controversy surrounding the advertisement.
"Do you think that we would be so brazen to just go out and violate our bylaws and think that we could get away with it?" he said.
