To the Members of the University Senate:

I can well appreciate the degree of importance that the Community Values resolution must possess in each of your minds, and I can further well appreciate that any decision that must be made in the following days will by no means be a light or transient one.

When examing the statement proposed to the University Senate, Resolution US9900-9, I encourage you to question whether the wording is either appropriate or correct in nature. The very section entitled "Purpose" seems to leap out in glaring defiance of logic and accepted principles of established freedom. I ask you all very candidly, what precisely are "common community standards"? Is it intimated by this that the standards dictated by the Resolution itself -- even if for the moment we were to assume that this is merely a statement and not an enforceable code -- are the only ones worthy of mention and dictum, and that any others that stray from them, or oppose them are unworthy of such mention? If we are to accept the general premise of John Stuart Mill that no one party or group holds an absolute monopoly in the arenas of truth, politics, discourse or opinion, then certainly we must also accept that indeed in such a community as diverse and complex as our own this statement of "Community Standards" could not possibly hope to represent the sacrosanct and protected values of each University of Oregon Community Member. If this is the case, then, I challenge what ethical grounds you have for making a statement meant to supposedly represent *every* member of this University. It is proclaimed in the Resolution itself that the University is dedicated to the notion of academic freedom and freedom of speech. If this be the case, and certainly I hope that it is, then you as a body must also recognize that included in this speech and in this academic freedom is the presence of intolerance and of speech that would on its face make most of us ill. Having established this much, then, it would seem, to say the least, illogical and counter to the very premise to presume to speak ill of that which is necessary in the first place.

Certainly you might say that this is the opinion of the University Senate, and certainly the ASUO Student Senate has the right to say that it is the opinion of that body, but to say that it represents the University Community as a whole is both arrogant and wholly presumptuous. If but one student, Faculty Member or Staff were to disagree with the statements laid out in US9900-9, then the presumption that this represents the Community as a whole is, as they say, shot to heck.

Please respect the right of every student and faculty member to dissent in thought, speech and expression, and please pay at least some tribute to the notion that each member of this Community is worthy of the right to dissent from the majority without being compelled to assign themselves by force to that which they object to. I am begging you both collectively and individually, as an undergraduate student at this University, to please vote no on Resolution US9900-9.

Respectfully Yours, Scott D. Austin Senior, Political Science