The recent petition being circulated by some members of College Democrats and College Republicans, though not officially endorsed by either organization, to remove Pam Peters from her current position as the coordinator for Student Organizations and Leadership is deplorable.

We can't support such a document on several grounds. First, the petition accuses Peters of incompetence but offers only circumstantial evidence for her removal. What is more, the evidence presented for Peters' removal displays an incomprehension of how a bureaucracy actually works. The 1832 Web log, run by the petition's instigator, Ryan Alexander, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, lists his complaints with OSD at http://1832.blogspot.com. He voices indignation that materials circulated by student organizations would have to be pre-approved by some kind of authority or oversight. Since many student organizations receive funding for events and activities from the student body through the mechanism of the student activity fee, it is not unreasonable that the university should request a degree of oversight, in the form of a final veto power. But we hope that with that right comes the responsibility OSD has to ensure all voices are able to speak to the campus community and with as few restrictions as possible. This is not revolutionary thinking: we explained it in the Feb. 8 editorial concerning the Adopt a Sniper display, "Sniper display foiled by timing."

Given the rationale for the final veto, you might expect the Student Organization Handbook to be a list of ironclad restrictions on content for student events. However, there are no specific content guidelines, aside from general legal guidelines. The most cramping restriction on events held using university resources is the regulation requiring that events be scheduled two weeks in advance. It's a regulation that Peters says isn't often enforced because the number of events held on campus would suffer as a result, since most organizations don't meet the deadline.

Given the reasonable nature of the guidelines, what makes the university able to exercise this final veto power is the responsible iteration of when and how the university will exercise it, which you will not find in the university handbook. A listing of the rights of student organizations, or supplementary material explaining the guidelines considered to be appropriate could alleviate the tension between poltical groups that push the limits of the public discourse. This is an idea that Alexander is pushing for.

Many of the allegations thrown at Peters and the OSD stem from last semester, during which was the general election. Our campus is in the center of what turned out to be the one of the most closely contested state in the nation. Frequent Milwaukee visits by presidential candidates and their children and political activities on campus had to provide fodder for a busy time in the OSD office. If anything, maybe this situation can help improve OSD's policies and help the office prepare for other hot campus issues. A possible solution is instruction on OSD procedures, in the form of written materials, which ideally can be prepared by both the administration and members of campus political groups.Whatever solution is advanced should ideally be the product of negotiations between the concerned student groups, OSD and MUSG.

This editorial appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 28 2005.