TO THE EDITOR:
Adam Clark, like Dennis Rogers, has it exactly backward. Clark's letter was captioned, "Discrimination Lies in Not Allowing Students To Choose Their Leaders." He might be pleased to learn that the Queer Network for Change and the 16 student organizations that are revising their charters to comply with the University's nondiscrimination policy all agree with that statement.
Adam Clark himself, however, does not, and neither does IVCF. Clark says, "InterVarsity needs leaders who are dedicated to the Christian mission."
Well, of course it does -- and it is perfectly welcome to elect such leaders if it wants to: No aspect of the nondiscrimination policy "forces" IVCF or any other group to do otherwise. The only thing that could "force" IVCF to have leaders other than the ones that a majority of the group itself supports is the very charter provision that Clark and IVCF themselves are championing.
It is Clark's position and presumably the national organization's as well -- not the nondiscrimination policy's -- that IVCF must force candidates off its ballot for leadership elections if they will not sign an eight-point pledge -- no matter how much support a non-signing candidate may have from the good Christian members of IVCF.
The (Raleigh) News & Observer columnist Dennis Rogers, who matriculated here after returning from Vietnam, made the same mistake in a misguided column he wrote about the student veterans' organization he belonged to. He wrote that it would've been ridiculous to forbid them from requiring their leaders to be honorably discharged veterans.
But this, again, simply misses the point. If having its leaders be honorably discharged veterans was that important to them, then it goes without saying that they would only want to elect honorably discharged veterans. The only way they could ever use the charter provision would be against themselves by preventing the election of a non-veteran that a majority wanted as a leader. That's all that clauses like this are good for. These clauses are what force an organization to have leaders other than the ones its members want. The University nondiscrimination policy does not have that effect.
George Greene
Graduate Student
