The Badger Herald

NEWS

Anti-war group talks with Wiley

by Pedro Oliveira Jr.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley and members of the Campus Antiwar Network discussed Monday the possibility of having a campuswide referendum to decide whether Halliburton should be included in future graduate recruiting fairs.

The meeting with the chancellor comes in light of a recent demonstration in which nearly 200 students protested the inclusion of Halliburton in a College of Engineering recruiting fair last month, accusing the company of making billions of dollars off the Iraq war.

The group requested a campuswide referendum in hopes of prohibiting the company from visiting campus with the intent to recruit UW graduates.

But Wiley said UW, as a state agency, does not take into account officials' positions on political or social issues, and therefore cannot ban Halliburton from university grounds.

"We do not have a foreign policy, we don't have political affiliation, we don't have a preference … for capitalism over socialism, or any other economic model; we don't have a view on which is the best novel ever written," Wiley said, according to a recording of the meeting provided by CAN. "The university simply doesn't have positions on most things that aren't right in our main line of mission, which are education and research."

The chancellor said organizations like Halliburton have a constitutional right to meet with students and try to recruit them, and a referendum on whether to deny a company those rights has no force of law or weight, and is "an immoral thing to do."

"If there's one student on campus who would like the right of free association with recruiters from Halliburton and would like the opportunity to interview for a job with Halliburton, we cannot deny that student that right," Wiley added.

UW junior and CAN member Rob Lewis, who was present at the meeting, said CAN will still attempt a campuswide referendum in the future.

"We're going to put it off until spring because we missed the cutoff [for a referendum] by a week," Lewis said.

According to Lewis, the chancellor commended CAN's activism and said he would look at the referendum's wording, once the organization has it ready.

"He supported our actions, but the university has to be neutral," Lewis said.

UW senior Zach Heise, who was also at the meeting, said in an e-mail that CAN will persist in its efforts to protest Halliburton's presence on campus, and will make another appearance at a company's informational session today.

"The Campus Anti-War Network is planning to be there in force, as well with a small group, ‘infiltrating' to ask Halliburton the hard questions, and to make sure the students that are there have all the facts," Heise wrote in the e-mail.

Halliburton will hold its informational recruiting session at 1025 Engineering Hall at 6 p.m., according to Heise.