Following a lengthy debate last night, the Undergraduate Assembly came out against the Division of Public Safety's proposed voluntary ID policy, which would ask students, faculty and staff to wear PennCards to enter campus buildings.
Last night's vote came after the UA chose to postpone issuing a statement at its Sept. 30 meeting in order to spend more time gathering facts about the proposal.
Ultimately, last night, the members chose between two proposals -- one flatly opposing the policy and one accepting a modified version of the policy. The group opted to come out against the policy because they felt this opinion best represented the student body's sentiment.
"The Undergraduate Assembly is against any extension to the current ID policy. Any proposal to recommend that IDs be worn visibly infringes on one's privacy, grants the police force a lower hurdle for probable cause and damages community relationships," the statement read.
The statement will be submitted to the task force that Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush is currently assembling to examine the proposal, which she says will help lower on-campus theft.
UA Chairwoman Dana Hork will serve as the UA's representative on the committee, and members hope the proposal will influence the administrators decision to listen to students concerns before they make a final decision.
"The goal is to articulate the sentiment of the UA and the student body, and we feel the statement adequately reflects that sentiment," Hork said.
"As the UA, it is our responsibility to speak on behalf of the students," Hork added. "This was an important issue where the student body felt very strongly. It's an important issue that could potentially affect every student on this campus. We have a responsibility to assess the student body's sentiment and advocate that to the administration."
Although some UA members voiced concern that voting against the policy might threaten their relationship with the administration, in the end, the UA voted to work from the first statement, believing it better reflected the opinion of the student body.
"We shouldn't take the administration's feelings into consideration at all when making a decision," College senior Papa Wassa Nduom said. "It should be based on statistical evidence and the student body's sentiment. Our responsibility is to represent the students, not to protect the administration."
The meeting was filled with the jargon of parliamentary procedure, which at times, only lengthened the meeting. The rest of the discussion focused on perfecting the language of the statement.
Several UA members pointed out that because Rush failed to give them a written proposal, they still needed clarification on some of the policy's facts. However, the UA decided to proceed with the vote because they felt confident in students' sentiment regardless of certain statistics.
Among other issues, the UA was concerned that by wearing their Penn ID cards, students would put themselves at risk for stalking and racial profiling.
The UA heard from representatives of the Penn chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and members of the United Minorities Council and Latino Coalition.
Instead of a visible ID policy, the UA believes the way to curb on-campus theft is to encourage students to exercise common sense and avoid leaving personal belongings unattended.
Some UA members said they believed the real reason behind the ID policy was not to curb on-campus theft, since the policy would be ineffective and unenforceable, but rather was an excuse for campus police to conduct random searches and would thus only increase racial profiling -- a concern shared by the ACLU and the minority groups who came to the UA meeting.
The visible ID policy "allows the University Police to question anyone without any cause," said UA member Michael Krouse, a Wharton and College senior.
