In one breath, Martin Barna castigates Joshua Jean-Baptiste for failing to show proper respect to "the student government of an elite university." Fair enough. In his next breath, however, Barna downplays the importance of student government by criticizing Yousuf Al-Bulushi's disruption of the Duke Student Government meeting on the grounds that the DSG has no role in the war debate.
If the student government of any university - "elite" or otherwise - is to be relevant, shouldn't it devote more than half an hour to the most pressing political issues of the moment? And, unless Duke's students are looking to exist in a vacuum, shouldn't their DSG representatives be promoting discussion of those issues rather than shutting discussion down?
Those are the questions that Al-Bulushi and the other protesters wanted answers to. Not everyone in the Duke community felt embarrassed by the interruption of the meeting. Rather, we found it inspiring that the group so effectively drew attention to DSG's unwillingness to address students' legitimate concerns. DSG's own attorney general could only respond with childish remarks about sending the protesters to France. Isn't that slightly more embarrassing?
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