The Club that Almost Wasn't: The Rebel Allience

Jonathan Lavigne

News Editor

The Rebel Alliance Club will get their money to finance a campus wide “Teach-In” Towards the end of May after a long process of budgetary demands.

The Rebel Alliance is a politically active club on campus that describes itself as a club who seeks to promote peace.

“We want to get out the word to what’s going on in our country” says Heather Hansen Vice President of the club. In May the group wanted to hold a “Teach-In” on campus. The “Teach-In” was to be an all campus forum to help educate about the war our country is in and related issues. They were planning to have conferences in many different venues and events on campus. . But as the Rebel Alliance were preparing to start the plans for their activity they hit a wall within the Student Senate. Their status was not being recognized and their funds were unavailable.

New Name for Better Recognition

The Rebel Alliance is not a new club. Formerly known as “Shoreline Community Students for Peace & Justice,“ the club (members) decided to change its name in order to attract more people. It changed their name because they wanted to expand, and grow on campus. It also changed its constitution to better reflect the members and the times we are living in, with a war currently held in Iraq. The main ideology of the Rebel Alliance is to: “Fight oppression, imperialism and fascism.”

All seemed to be moving along well for the new coalition except for a few technicalities. According to Scott Saunders, Director of Student Programs, for a club to be recognized, it needs two crucial things: An approved constitution and an active club member list.

“Both of which we did not have for The Rebel Alliance,“ Saunders said. Since the Rebel Alliance had changed its constitution, it had to be re-approved by the Student Senate.

The problem here came in two forms. The word “fight” was used in the constitution, which some people in the senate took to be quite literally a call for violence and an overthrow of the government said members of the Alliance. But the Alliance denied this.

Ryn Strunk, a member of the Rebel Alliance said: “It’s laughable to have a peace group attached to violent intentions“. After discussion and explanation, the constitution was approved.

The next problem was due to an unfortunate series of accidents. Linda Warren, the faculty club advisor, who was in charge of submitting the active roster for the club, suffered severe back injuries that prevented her from delivering the necessary club forms. According to Warren, when she tried to explain herself to the Senate during a meeting: “ I felt the spirit of the meeting was not supportive of clubs.”

Diverse View Points

Having a political club on campus as diverse as this one, means that sometimes you will have diverse political views. One member of the Rebel Alliance, Kendra Brown, considers herself to be a communist. An issue that the Student Senate brought up during the discussions was that Brown was distributing Communist literature on campus which preached an overthrowing of the government.

Saunders claimed that it went against a state RCW regulation to call for a violent overthrowing of the government and that they (the Senate) couldn’t support a club that did that. But Warren, and even Brown, state that the distribution of “Revolution,” the literature in question, is her doing and her doing alone; it should not reflect upon the group. Just because one member has a certain view, doesn’t mean to implicate the view of the whole group, Brown said.

Recognition of the Club

After long-fought negotiations, the Rebel Alliance was allowed to be recognized, but its budget was pro-rated to 400$. The club then asked Student Senate for additional funds to create a “Teach-In” event for campus. The Rebel Alliance got $1,800 out of the $2,700 it asked for. Even if it wasn’t the full amount, Warren says: “ The students are happy with that because now they can move forward and work on the event.” The “Teach-In” will be held from May 25 to May 26. Details are still in the works but there will be announcements soon as to who will be the guest speaker and other surprises that have yet to be revealed.

But Questions Remain

Yet, even after having received the funds that they needed, Warren isn’t sure if the clubs woes are due to a simple need to follow rules and regulation. Warren believes that the reason the Rebel Alliance got so many problems to receive funding was politically based. When asked the question, Saunders responded by saying: “Three other clubs that didn’t turn in the roster list last spring of 2004 didn’t get their base-line budget either. They all had to go through the same process as the Rebel Alliance to be recognized again. That’s the way the Student Body constitution says it has to be done. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s students doing what the constitution tells them to do. it’s a system that was put into place to make sure that the clubs were active. If we didn’t do that we would have clubs who were non-existent in the middle of the year.”