My brother Nicholas, a soon-to-be graduate of Stanford, pointed me to this story about how Stanford students have voted to deny funding to the racist Chicano group MEChA.
Stanford University students have voted to stop funding the Chicano group MEChA after a series of articles in the conservative Stanford Review accused the organization of racism.Stephen Cohen, who my brother knows through his fraternity, Phi Psi, coordinated the effort.In what is believed to be the first such vote on any college campus, Stanford students voted 1,357 to 1,329 to withhold MEChA's special fees, which amount to more than $40,000. The students voted about five months after articles in the Review cited anti-white statements in MEChA documents and compared the group to the Ku Klux Klan.
Stephen Cohen, Stanford Review editor, said the articles were responsible for stirring opposition to the group, especially after campus MEChA leaders refused to renounce the founding documents. ...That's what the group could have demonstrated by renouncing the founding documents, but they refused to do so.However, campus MEChA leaders said the vote was based on "misinformation," insisting that the modern club no longer subscribes to all the views in the founding documents, according to the Stanford Daily, the school newspaper.
What's so offensive in the MEChA constitution?
The students voted as MEChA faces increasing criticism statewide for statements included in some of its original documents, particularly El Plan de Aztlan.Oh, that! It's nothing, really, just some words on paper. Don't worry about it!El Plan de Aztlan describes white people as "the brutal 'gringo' " and "the foreigner 'gabacho,' " saying they invade the Chicano territories, exploit their riches and destroy their culture. It calls for Chicanos to reclaim "the land of their birth" and "declare the independence of our mestizo nation."
The plan's motto, "Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada," means, "For the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing."
The vote doesn't mean the end of Stanford MEChA. With a total budget of about $100,000, the organization also receives funding from the academic departments, the Stanford Fund and El Centro Chicano, the school's Hispanic umbrella group, according to the Review.But hopefully these groups will start to feel some pressure, now that MEChA has been finally outed for what it is.
