The USC student government held a meeting on Tuesday to consider three resolutions, one of which included calling on the university to make USC a “sanctuary campus” for illegal alien students, and to forbid the school’s Department of Public Safety from working with ICE.
The student government at USC held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss three resolutions, one of which would call on the university to become an official sanctuary campus, by adopting policies meant to protect illegal alien students, according to the school’s student newspaper,the Daily Trojan.
The first resolution, entitled, “Sanctuary University Resolution,” was proposed by student senator Michaela Murphy, and would demand that USC forbid its Department of Public Safety from working with ICE, as well as avoid collecting citizenship documents from students unless absolutely needed.
Murphy added that conversations and policies regarding the protection of illegal aliens cannot be informal. “It needs to be explicit, especially so that undocumented students and students with mixed immigrations[sic] status know for a fact, they know outright, that this university will protect them,” said the student senator.
The second resolution, titled, “VKC Flag Resolution,” was proposed by three members belonging to USC’s Students for Justice in Palestine student group, and would request for the university to increase the number of flags that hang in and around the Von KleinSmid Center Library (VKC), in order to better represent international students.
One of the resolution’s student authors, Yusuf Irshaad, said that he was inspired to write the VKC Flag Resolution partly due to the fact that there is no Palestinian flag among the 108 other flags that hang outside the library.
“When you go to VKC, you look around, there are open spaces that could definitely benefit from having those flags hung up,” said Irshaad, “There’s a lot of room to work with that.”
The third resolution, called, “Learning Experience Evaluations Resolution,” was proposed by student senator Jacquelyne Tan, which includes dissuading students from using the site “RateMyProfessors.com,” as the student senator believes it encompasses a “racial and gender bias.”
Tan wants to see USC students begin utilizing an alternative website.
“I want it to be a USC platform and [for it] to be moderated by qualified people,” said the student senator, “Some of the comments on ‘RateMyProfessors’ are extremely toxic and there is proven racial and gender bias.”
The three proposed resolutions will be voted on at a meeting next week, according to the student newspaper.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
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