Senate Fails to Vote on Iraq War Resolution

By VIC COX

While the UCEN's Harbor Room was almost full of people last Thursday, failure to achieve a quorum prevented the special session of the UCSB Faculty Legislature, called to discuss a resolution against war in Iraq, from conducting business.

At press time, no new meeting date had been set and consultations were underway on other possibilities, such as a divisional meeting that would allow all Academic Senate members a vote.

Twenty minutes after the special session convened, Academic Senate Chair Walter Yuen's call for a final count of the legislators present revealed 16 voting members and one nonvoting member. Under Senate rules, a quorum of the legislature consists of 18 voting members and two nonvoting members. The Faculty Legislature, a representative governing body elected by Senate members, has a total voting membership of 58.

Consequently, Yuen declared that the session would be a Town Hall meeting, allowing those present, including graduate and undergraduate students, to air their opinions. Originally brought to the Senate by the Campus Community Peace Group with a different text, the resolution under consideration was a copy of the petition crafted by Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn and signed by more than 40 Nobelists and some 2,000 other people.

The proposed resolution said, in its entirety: "The undersigned oppose a preventive war against Iraq without broad international support. Military operations against Iraq may indeed lead to a relatively swift victory in the short term. But war is characterized by surprise, human loss, and unintended consequences. Even with a victory, we believe that the medical, economic, environmental, moral, spiritual, political, and legal consequences of an American preventive attack on Iraq would undermine, not protect, U.S. security and standing in the world."

Though part of the Town Hall discussion alluded to the United States' march toward war in the Middle East, most of the debate swirled around the propriety of the Senate taking any stand at all. A counter resolution submitted by Leda Cosmides, professor of psychology, called for a blanket prohibition on taking "public policy position by the FL...regardless of the issue." It claimed endorsement by 12 faculty members in the psychology and anthropology departments.

No action could be taken on this resolution either, but Cosmides and a few others urged circulation of a petition for individual signature in lieu of an institutional stand by the legislature.