Student Association’s co-chair of the Diversity Affairs Committee Quincy Nolan resigned during an Assembly meeting on Monday after criticizing an upcoming university event as “queerphobic.”

Nolan read a statement explaining the upcoming event “Cuse Can! It Starts With Us” as the reason for his resignation. The event is intended to facilitate conversation about community dynamics and social change. Nolan said some songs by Pusha T, who is scheduled to perform at Syracuse University in April, are offensive to LGBTQ+ people.

“It takes about 45 seconds in a Google search to see why a queer person would be displeased to have Pusha T come to this campus, especially when the event has been marketed as a diversity event,” Nolan said.

SA President Ghufran Salih and Vice President Kyle Rosenblum collaborated with University Union and SU’s National Pan-Hellenic Council to organize the event, which will be held on April 6 in the Goldstein Auditorium. Comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish and rapper Flipp Dinero will also perform in the event.

Nolan said the event is budgeted to cost about $242,000, and only about 10 percent of the student body can attend. The appointed cabinet and elected Assembly were not consulted during collaboration for this expensive event, Nolan said.

Iris Guzman, co-chair of SA’s Community Engagement Committee, criticized the cost and line-up of “Cuse Can!” in a Thursday letter to the editor in The Daily Orange.

“With a price tag of above $200,000, a community event with this purpose should have world-renowned leaders in community development, engagement and social change,” Guzman said in the letter. “Instead of thought-provoking community leaders, SA paid for Flipp Dinero, Tiffany Haddish and Pusha T.”

Nolan and Diversity Affairs Co-Chair Eden Afework proposed making the “Cuse Can!” diversity panel about why there are two “frat rows” and why both are white. Fraternity rows exist on Comstock Avenue and Walnut Avenue. Nolan and Afework wanted to have an open dialogue about the lack of space for marginalized students on campus. Instead, the event organizers decided to focus more generally on campus diversity despite Nolan’s disagreement, Nolan said.

“Being the only trans person in the cabinet and SA period, I’m now being forced to either stay in this position and support an overtly queerphobic event or resign as my role as co-chair for Diversity Affairs,” Nolan said.

Academic Affairs Chair Ryan Golden and Assembly Representative Kailee Vick publicly denounced the “Cuse Can!” event in a Facebook post on Thursday. Golden and Vick are running for SA president and vice president, respectively.

In the Facebook post, Golden and Vick said they felt many cultural organizations and students from marginalized identities should have been consulted during the event planning.

“It is disheartening to our campaign that $250,000 was spent on an event without consulting campus leaders who represent students of these marginalized identities and many more,” the post said.

Golden suggested at Monday’s meeting that SA should have included an LGBTQ+ organization in the planning of “Cuse Can!” Salih said that SA was already in the contracting phase when the idea was suggested to her.

Speaker of the Assembly Will Pritchett criticized the number of SA members involved in the planning of the event. Out of the 16 people involved, four people were representatives of SA. Pritchett said more SA members should have been included because the Assembly voted to fund the event.

Representative Stacy Omosa and several other representatives recommended more open communication with the Assembly and more diverse representation in the people planning the event. Omosa, who is running for comptroller, also said that the amount of money spent on “Cuse Can!” was unfair to other campus organizations because the event took up a large portion of SA’s budget.

“A lot of organizations needed money for their events that were more representative of the student body,” Omosa told The Daily Orange after the meeting. “They weren’t able to get that because of Finance Board rules.”

Other business

• The Assembly approved a bill allowing University College students to run for Assembly seats.
• SA’s constitution was amended so that the Assembly session will begin in the spring.
• Rosenblum presented a bill that will amend SA bylaws so the president, vice president and comptroller can take their oaths of office in the spring. Section two was amended and this bill was approved.

Published on March 26, 2019 at 2:13 am

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21