We, the sponsors of the ASSU Senate resolution to ensure investment responsibility in Israel and Palestine, would like to take the opportunity to respond to Wednesday’s coverage of the bill (“ASSU rejects divestment,” 4/18/07) and clarify what really happened.

So, why didn’t it pass exactly? Outspoken opponents of the bill have claimed that efforts to pass this have been offensive to many students, strongly intimidating those who have considered this bill. However, most students who read the bill — including most senators — found it very difficult to understand the offensiveness of the final bill which, as one senator who ended up abstaining noted, “is so neutral and impartial and addresses concerns of ‘both sides.’” Indeed, most of the abstainees have told us that they didn’t disagree with the bill itself. But they chose to abstain for other reasons.

The primary reason, from what we’ve seen, is because a very strongly-mobilized advocacy group has used intimidation tactics and consistently claims that organizations such as the U.N. and Amnesty International are “one-sided.” These actions, unfortunately, only detract from the main point of our resolution, which is a human rights matter at its core. We don’t want to see our endowment — to which we, as current Stanford students, will probably be contributing to in a few years — being invested in companies that profit from severe human rights abuses and blatant violations of international law.

Another claim by opponents of the bill is that the discussion has done nothing but stifle dialogue on campus. We firmly disagree and point out that actions by these same critics, in fact, have stifled debate. When we contacted several student groups to organize a campus-wide town hall meeting — the least that the senators could agree upon — Stanford Israel Alliance’s president flat-out rejected our invitation for dialogue, noting that the whole idea of a town hall on divestment rests on false premises and that “it is a disservice to the students to begin a ‘dialogue’ on these terms.” We and several other senators strongly disagree and believe that such a town hall with representatives of varying perspectives would indeed be beneficial to students.

Moreover, the idea was called “an unfair and illegitimate premise for a conversation about the complexities of the Middle East.” By claiming that the issue is too complex for normal discourse, they are again trying to avoid considering the serious concerns about our endowment that have been raised.

Accepting this standstill from within the ASSU Senate, moreover, only exacerbates the situation. Even though we had received the green light from the Vice President Lauren Graham ‘07 to organize this town hall, Mondaire Jones ‘09, the campus advocacy chair, quashed the idea. When I brought it up at a general meeting, the Chair, Hershey Avula ‘08, was sympathetic towards the SIA’s rejection of our invitation. The ASSU Senate, as a representative body of the undergraduate population, should be held more accountable to fulfilling desires of the student body (such as a fair and open town hall), instead of playing to the wishes of an organization for presumably political gain.

Senators often decide to abstain when they feel like they don’t know enough about the context of the bill to make an informed decision. Nevertheless, the abstained votes are still included in the requisite 2/3 vote for the bill to pass. Observers really need to look at the intentions and context when considering the abstained vote. In this case, the resolution has been made out to be “too controversial” and deals with a topic “too complex” to really vote on clearly. In any other context, however, the aforementioned reason for abstention wouldn’t apply for a bill that’s been on the table for discussion for two-and-a-half months. The SIA’s attempts to detract conversation have combined with the Senate’s lethargy in organizing a town hall to create this context for abstention.

The title of the article last week covering this bill made it seem like a clear-cut majority voted against the bill. The end-vote, however, was more complicated than that. First of all, among the voting members themselves, there were a majority of yes votes. Five senators voted yes — only three voted no. The five other members who had the right to actively vote chose not to and abstained. So, in fact, the number of senators who actively opposed the bill was in the minority.

In spite of all this, we consider what happened last Tuesday to be a success. People forget that divestment from South Africa took 25 years. During those years, similar arguments were brought up against it, including that it would offend and divide student populations. Indeed, those activists deeply invested in that early movement would never have thought that it would have ever succeeded. But it did. And all great journeys require that first step.

Nabill Idrisi ‘09, Melissa Morales ‘09 and Lisa Llanos ‘09 are members of the Undergraduate Senate. Nabill can be reached at nabill@stanford.edu.