In the last couple of weeks, my blog posts have explored the discrepancies between the city of Ann Arbor
and the University of Michigan's policies on undocumented immigrants
and cooperation with ICE officers. I discussed the potential
democratic injustices these discrepancies posed to the citizens of
Ann Arbor by the actions taken on by the University and its various
legislative bodies. I had suggested that specifically the actions of
the CSG in turning down a resolution that would have required CSG to
support the city's sanctuary status, reflected an active action
taken on by the legislative body to differ from the city's policy.
I had previously suggested that looking
closely at the CSG could point to the potential root cause, or the
democratic failure, behind the choices that led to the discrepancies
between the city and the University. In response to my second my blog
post, a classmate directed me to another series of blog posts thatexplores the democratic failures of CSG itself. In his series, John
Hickey discusses whether or not CSG accurately and effectively
reflects the student body they are intended to represent and the
democratic consequences this could have. His series offers an
insightful look into what I also considered to be a potential source
of the democratic failure I identified within the University's
legislative bodies by looking at the ongoing sanctuary status
situation.
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| The Michigan Union- where the CSG passed the resolution a few weeks ago |
However, in a huge and exciting
development to my series, the current CSG held their last general
assembly in which they voted on a new resolution (once again
introduced by BAMN) that attempted to once more to reconcile the
discrepancies between the city's sanctuary status and the
University's policies. This time- the resolution passed!
In this series, I won't be evaluating
why it passed this second time around and what this says about the
nature of CSG and its representative capabilities. Instead, I will
focus on what the passing of this resolution means in terms of the
sanctuary status of the city and what this shows us.
This resolution appears to have a
duality in the way it address the problem I've outlined in my blog
series. It shows us that the CSG, in passing this resolution, is no
longer actively making the choice (whether knowingly or unknowingly)
to enact an injustice onto the citizens of Ann Arbor. In fact, the
CSG, in passing this resolution, has shown solidarity with the city's
choice to maintain sanctuary status. In doing that, the University's
CSG not only aligned itself with the citizens' of Ann Arbor's
democratic choices, but also established the resolution as an
interest of its own constituency- the students on campus who elected
them.
However, what this resolution fails to
do is to actually effectively change the University's policy towards
immigrant students. Anushka Sarkar, the CSG's CPO and a co-sponsor of
the resolution, said, the resolution required the CSG to stand in
solidarity with Ann Arbor's sanctuary city policy and defend
sanctuary cities. As Sarkar explained, “the resolution really only
amounts to CSG issuing a statement, since we don't actually have the
authority to change the University's policies.”
This is where the duality I'd mentioned
earlier comes in, because although the resolution shows that the CSG
no longer plays a role in the problem (in enacting an injustice onto
the city's citizens), it points to a much larger problem, and a
different source.
Now, both the representatives voted in
by Ann Arbor's citizens and those voted in by the city's student
residents have voted in resolutions that defend the city's sanctuary
status, but the University's policy on undocumented immigrants and
cooperation with ICE officers continues to contradict these
resolutions. not only are the citizens of Ann Arbor now facing an
injustice- so are the students!
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| President Mark Schlissel with the Board of Regents |
What this shows is that the University
and its various governing bodies (most notably perhaps the Board of
Regents, discussed in my first blog post, who hold most of the
legislative authority within the University) are now effectively
causing the democratic injustice suffered by both groups of
constituencies.
This shows a clear democratic failure
in the way power structures were designed in the city- although
representative democracy seems to be incorporated into every level of
the legislative process, neither the students, nor the citizens of
Ann Arbor are getting what they voted for.
Now in his blog post on a potential solution to the failures
within CSG, Hickey turns to deliberative democracy and Habermas as a
solution and an alternative for CSG. Hickey proposes abolishing CSG
in favor of a deliberative democracy that could model Habermas'
“public sphere.” I agree with his reasoning, particularly that a
deliberative democracy would allow for a wider variety of voices to
be represented and heard, and as Habermas argued, would better
subject the government to both reason and the will of the people.
However, since I see the failure to be something that now both
affects the students and the citizens of Ann Arbor, I believe that
that the deliberative democracy established as a solution should
allow for both sets of voices to be heard. I believe that creating a
forum within which both citizens of Ann Arbor and students at the
University could inform the University's policy-making choices would
lead to more democratic outcomes- certainly in the case of the
discrepancies in sanctuary status policies, but in others as well.
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