Editorial: A bad resolution

Duke Student Government has a clear role: To serve as a liaison between the students and administration on issues that affect the campus or are directly related to students. Unfortunately, DSG often oversteps this role by meddling in residential life--the province of Campus Council--or programming--the Duke University Union's job. But today, DSG is totally disregarding its role by considering a resolution condemning the war in Iraq.

Although the war on Iraq is certainly an important issue that deserves to be discussed and debated on campus, DSG should not be providing its opinion on this international conflict. For starters, DSG is not elected to serve as the student voice on every conceivable issue. It is only elected to serve as the student voice on campus or student-related issues, and it has not made a convincing argument that the war on Iraq is an issue with a direct campus impact.

The reason that DSG can serve as the voice of students on campus issues is because DSG members are more interested in campus issues, as evinced by the very fact that they serve on DSG, and are better informed on campus issues, both because they deal with these issues on a more regular basis than most other students and because DSG has access to information about many student-related issues that the general populace at Duke lacks.

With regard to Iraq, however, there is no reason to believe that the DSG Legislature is better informed than a random group of 50 students. Moreover, DSG does not have any special access to information on Iraq. Thus, DSG does not have any special standing to serve as the student voice on issues about Iraq.

DSG should remain focused and on issue. There are serious problems within the organization and elsewhere at Duke that DSG could and should address rather than wasting time on a resolution on Iraq.

Rather than ignoring its purpose and coming down definitively against or for the war in Iraq, DSG should work to encourage and foster campus discussion and debate about the issue. DSG should work constructively to let other campus groups and individuals on all sides of the issue express their views.

DSG legislators should clearly vote against this resolution because DSG does not exist to give opinions on national issues on which it is uninformed. If the resolution somehow passes, DSG President Joshua Jean-Baptiste should veto it.