Rally rouses campus debate

By Ron Felten - Columnist

The Society of Conservative Students, led by President Michael Tosh, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the UIS community recently, as was illustrated by the capacity crowd on hand for the group's Support Traditional Marriage Rally last Tuesday in the LRH Great Room.

The SCS posted several fliers around campus advertising the event, one of which said the rally would offer "information about what the Bible says [...] on homosexuality," but also noting that there would be "absolutely no homosexual bashing allowed."

In addition, the group chalked messages onto sidewalks around campus, some of which made references to Bible passages such as Leviticus 18:22 (which reads, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination").

News of the planned rally sparked a flurry of electronic correspondences between campus leaders and university officials. SGA President Samantha Drews sent out an e-mail entitled "We must learn respect" to various students and administrators, and Chancellor Ringeisen sent a message of his own articulating his commitment to free speech. "This is their constitutional right as long as it does not cross over into hate speech," Ringeisen said in reference to campus groups expressing their views, "even if the message is considered offensive to some other people."

The SCS has also received attention for fliers they've posted regarding their "Pie the Conservative" fund-raising campaign. These fliers included statements such as "Feminism is the radical notion that feminists are women," "My idea of compassion is giving a homeless person a shopping cart for Christmas" and "The South will rise again - Lincoln was a tyrant." Tosh said in an interview with The Journal that the fund-raiser "is completely separate from the Support Traditional Marriage Rally." Even so, some campus leaders have questioned Tosh's intent and judgment in regards to his recent comments.

Pat Langley, faculty advisor of Students Against Sexual Stereotypes and Inequality, said she thinks the SCS' views, specifically those on traditional and same-sex marriages, are "not informed by the facts [and] by history." Langley cites the acceptance of same-sex marriages in other cultures and throughout history as evidence of differing notions of what is traditional. "The idea that people are quote 'homosexual' doesn't even emerge until the late 1800s in Europe ," she said.

Langley also questioned the SCS's references to select Bible passages. "The Bible also supports slavery," she said. "I don't know where they stand on that." In response to the SCS' claim that they support the confederacy, Langley asked, "Is 'confederacy' a code word for the institution of slavery?"

"Clearly this is creating controversy," Langley added. "And that seems to be [the SCS'] intent." In fact, Tosh readily admits to trying to "get a 'rise' out of students" with some of his group's statements.

"When I came to this school, which was known for its political science program," Tosh said, "people seemed afraid to debate the big issues." He added, "Controversy is better than apathy as apathy is the death of democracy."

Tensions seemed to increase Tuesday, the day of the rally, when students who opposed the SCS' message chalked slogans of their own, sometimes in direct response to existing ones. "God made me gay," read one comment. "I am straight and Christian and I support gay rights," said another.

Under the watch of a Springfield police officer, a News Channel 20 cameraman, Vice Chancellor Christopher Miller and Director of Student Life Cynthia Thompson, the SCS' rally began late Tuesday evening with a speech by Jennifer Tosh, Michael Tosh's sister-in-law and director of communications for Morgan County Right to Life, who spoke about what she perceives as the benefits of raising children in what she called a "traditional" marriage arrangement.

"Our culture is sick," Jennifer Tosh said. "Our whole system of living is diseased. I propose we look at families from 200 years ago [as models]." She also expressed her desire to "restore fault divorce laws," which would require a couple to show "fault" in order to legally dissolve a marriage.

Peter LaBarbera, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, also delivered a speech. Unlike Jennifer Tosh's, however, LaBarbera's statements incited comments from audience members, who engaged the speaker in several heated debates.

LaBarbera said he "doesn't see [gay rights] as a civil rights issue" because "people can go in and out of homosexual behavior," which, he says, separates it from race. "The attempt is made," he added, "to equate the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, which is opposed to homosexual activism, to racism."

"The ex-gay movement is out there," LaBarbera added, also saying that he believes all people can select their sexual preference. He later held up a book entitled "Gay Sex" and, after referencing disease statistics offered in the text, said that homosexual "behavior is not natural." In response, Daniel McCarthy, SASSI chairperson, said from his seat, "When I get an erection, it feels pretty natural to me," which drew applause from much of the crowd.

LaBarbera also called the gay-rights movement "a threat to freedom" and a "sin," and encouraged audience members to sign a petition urging the Illinois government to put the issue of same-sex marriage up for a public vote. "Eighteen other states have passed ballot measures defining marriage as between a man and a woman," he said, "and we're trying to do that here."

After a brief question and answer period, Michael Tosh concluded the rally by thanking everyone in attendance for coming, and emphasized his desire to continue facilitating a discussion on campus about same-sex marriage. Some student leaders, such as Sankofa Vice President Shannon Carter, however, question Tosh's willingness to work with other groups on this and other issues.

"I'm a total believer in first amendment rights," Carter said. "However, I believe a lot of the ideas [discussed by the SCS] are dated. America is progressive; we change and make strides forward. Do we want to progress or do we want to digress? I think [the SCS] are taking us towards inequality."

Students share their volunteering stories

By Heather Shaffer - Editor in Chief

While volunteering for hurricane relief efforts in Ocean Springs , Miss. , UIS student Stacie Wofford said she was struck by a sign placed in front of a wind-battered house that read, "Katrina broke windows, not our spirit." She saw another sign, "Katrina won the battle, not the war."

She said, "These signs were some of the neatest things I saw. They showed me human spirit."

Wofford, along with fellow social work major Jeff Hensel and UIS alumna Michelle Boonaerts, shared her experiences about volunteering in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina during a presentation on Thursday title, "Katrina, Rita and their Aftermath-Human Service Disaster-What can we Learn?"

The purpose of the forum, according to UIS Associate Professor Emeritus of Social Work Mike Townsend, was to discuss what can be learned from the experiences of those who traveled to assist with hurricane relief efforts and also to honor those individuals for what they have done.

Wofford traveled to Mississippi with fellow members of the Calvary United Methodist Church in Bloomington through the organization CORE, Christian Organization Relief Effort. She stayed at a volunteer base camp along with other volunteers from across the world.

Wofford said that every situation has good news and bad news. The good news in the wake of the hurricane disaster was the outpouring of human spirit and a will to survive, as she said she saw depicted in the signs.

She said she also saw a lot of patriotism, as many hurricane survivors flew flags in front of their homes.

The bad news, she said, is that there were some organizational issues. "I have always been a huge supporter of the American Red Cross, but I was very disappointed with the organization of things down there," she said.

She explained that the Red Cross had trucks that drove down neighborhoods struck by Hurricane Katrina to deliver hot food and cold water. The problem is that the trucks drove down the streets at 23 miles per hour, making it hard for certain individuals to catch up and get supplies, she said.

"If you were disabled, you weren't getting hot food unless someone got it for you," she said.

Wofford said she saw other examples of organization problems with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She said the organization was supposed to provide certain families with trailers to live in while their homes were being remodeled.

She gave an example of one family that got a FEMA trailer set up for them, but FEMA forgot to give them the keys so the family had to wait another two weeks before they would live in the trailer. "They were living at their shamble-flooded, mold-infected house looking at their FEMA trailer," said.

According to Wofford, another area of concern was that donated clothing items were just put in plastic bags and thrown in parking lots because there was nowhere else to put them. "They got rained on and they molded and people were digging through the wet clothes so that they could take them to the laundry mat and clean them so that they would have clothes to wear," Wofford said.

Hensel, a senior at UIS, joined 12 other students who traveled to a suburb of Louisiana for a week of hurricane relief effort. The group's main responsibility was the distribution of food to hurricane survivors living in a camp area.

"We would wake up in the morning at about 7 o'clock and serve breakfast for a couple hours. Then we would do clean up and set up for lunch. We would serve lunch for a few hours and clean up. Then, we would set up for dinner and serve dinner for a few hours," he said.

Though the group was working nonstop for most of the day, Hensel said he did have the opportunity to socially interact with some of the hurricane survivors. He said a discussion with a woman who had just lost her home and most of her possessions stuck out in his mind.

"She looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You know, the great thing is that I still have my life,'" he said.

Hensel said that each night around 8 p.m., he would play his drum, along with a few others who would play their guitars, to put on a show for the people in the camp. "This one lady came up to me and said, "Just thank you. It's been a while since I have heard entertainment,'" he said.

Hensel said the hurricane survivors were very appreciative of all the help the UIS students were able to provide and he encouraged others to lend a helping hand.

Boonaerts, who Townsend described as a "brave soul," also helped with relief efforts when she traveled from her current home in Granite City to Houston to assist the hurricane survivors living in the Houston Astrodome.

While there, Boonaerts said she worked as a sort of rogue social worker. "I decided not the point a finger but to lend a hand," she said.

Describing her feelings about her first visit to the Astrodome, Boonaerts said, "Was I scared? Yes. Was it necessary? Sure. Were my fears over-sensationalized? Yes." She explained that after spending five days with the people in the Astrodome, she felt like one of them.

She described the atmosphere in the Astrodome as calm. "A lot of people knew that if everyone started reacting, it would have been chaos," she said.

While in the Astrodome, Boonaerts said that though the people's basic needs were met, but there were some difficulties. She explained that after a medical assessment, housing became a priority for the people. "It was difficult to place the mentally ill and borderlines. There were not many services for them because there wasn't a huge mental health response," she said.

She also mentioned that it was difficult for the elderly to get where they needed to go. "There were not enough wheelchairs and not enough people to push the wheelchairs," she said.

Also, Boonaerts said communication was awful in the Astrodome. No one could use their cell phones for about a week and the main sources of information were bulletin boards and information announced over a loudspeaker, she said.

"After listening to the loudspeakers every minute, people began to tune them out," she said.

However, Boonaerts said she was uplifted by the reactions of some of the individuals that were placed in homes and moved out the Astrodome. She described one family that was not homeless before the hurricane, but ended up with better living conditions than they had previously and the family was very grateful.

She was also inspired by the words of a Muslim man from Pakistan who said to her after a long, frustrating day that the type of work she was doing is part of our fundamental purpose on earth.

Rally rouses camous debate

Students share their volunteering stories