PJP lobbies for support on gay marriage

A week after the USG voted to authorize a student referendum on whether it should sign-on to an amicus brief supporting gay marriage, a campus debate has emerged about the proper jurisdiction of the University's student government and whether it should take a stand on divisive political issues.

The brief's on-campus advocates are campaigning for support by leveraging personal contacts and arguing that the outcome of Lewis v. Harris will affect students. The case, currently before the state supreme court, involves seven gay couples applying for marriage licenses.

But since the breadth of the USG's role is not specified in its rules, others — including several USG members — question the appropriateness of the Senate signing onto the amicus brief and whether the USG should support an opinion held only by part of its constituency.

USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 said he will send an email to the student body with the text of the brief and the minutes of last week's Senate meeting. He declined to comment further on the vote.

The brief was brought before the USG by the Princeton Justice Project (PJP), which has a subgroup focusing on gay rights.

"We believe Princeton students are very reasonable people," PJP president Thomas Bohnett '07 said in an interview Sunday. "When presented with the fact that LGBT students are denied equal protection under New Jersey state law, we think [other students] will respond very strongly that this is wrong and we need to change it as soon as we can."

With a week until the scheduled vote, which will run from Sunday through Tuesday, Bohnett and Chris Lloyd '06, leader of PJP's Gay Rights Family Project (GRFP), are working to recruit students to campaign in favor of the USG's support of the amicus brief.

"A lot of people want to understand the case and the issues that are being discussed," Lloyd said, noting that more than 100 students have joined an email list to help campaign to pass the referendum. "Not everyone's sure of what the two sides of Lewis v. Harris are, so we're trying to educate students about the case and why they should support it."

Editorials in support of the referendum will run this week in two publications, Princeton Progressive Nation and the Nassau Weekly, and plans are in the works for a Whig-Clio debate on the issue, Lloyd said. "We want to make it really clear to students that the outcome of this case does actually affect Princeton students," he said.

But, Lloyd added, the campaign will mostly depend on person-to-person contact — "personal appeals by people in Princeton's LGBT community to their friends."

Bohnett, who is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian, said the PJP has about 500 students involved in its various projects but "wanted to go even broader in getting support for the brief because we believe the manifest injustice of the state law is something the USG and students should fight against."

When the issue was brought before a Senate meeting on Nov. 20, the referendum was approved by a vote of 11 to 10 following 90 minutes of discussion.

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The text of the referendum reads: "Shall the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) be directed to sign on to the amicus brief submitted by the Princeton Justice Project on behalf of the plaintiffs in Lewis v. Harris, same-sex couples seeking to marry in New Jersey?"

The USG members who voted against the referendum resolution were seniors Karis Gong, Michael Murray, Brandon Parry, Chris Willis and Robert Wai Wong, as well as juniors Dara Deshe, Liz Gough and Carol Wang, and sophomores Hannibal Person and Sunshine Yin.

The next USG Senate meeting will be held on Dec. 4, after the online polls will have opened for the referendum vote.

In a letter printed in the Nov. 22 issue of the 'Prince,' six members of the USG proposed canceling the referendum vote because of reservations about the role that student government should play in political issues that reach beyond the University and questions on precisely how the referendum was drafted and discussed by the Senate.

Gong, who signed the letter, acknowledged that student government has become increasingly politicized — USG president Joseph discussed issues of race and class in his campaign — but said: "I think that the large majority of students haven't elected the current people on the USG based on political beliefs."

Gong said the Lewis amicus brief and PJP's campaign to have it approved by the USG indicate a desire on the part of involved students to force the USG to support the opinions of a certain group of students, though not all, on campus.

"The USG's role is not to take a stand on issues that only certain groups of students are in support of," she said. "It's to facilitate the student groups ... not to pick and choose only some to endorse."