Finance 3070: City of Clemson Planning Commission MeetingFinance 3070: City of Clemson Planning Commission MeetingNicole HovatterApril 15, 2016        I had never been to a meeting like this one before, so I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to expect prior to the meeting. According to the textbook, planning and zoning meetings exist for several reasons and have several important functions in society, but one of their primary duties is to make recommendations to their elected governing body. They also serve as a forum to handle zoning requests from the surrounding community. After attending the planning commission meeting, I can see exactly how these meetings perform these functions; I wasn’t expecting there to be an “open mic” type of time at the beginning of the meeting that gave Clemson residents an opportunity to step forward with any questions or suggestions that they might have. I thought that the opportunity for Clemson residents to step forward with concerns proved that this truly was a meeting for the residents, to aid them in any of their concerns and make their town a more organized, functional place.
I didn’t expect this meeting to affect me personally as much as it did. To my surprise, one of their largest agenda items dealt specifically with students, and transforming housing that currently accommodates students into housing that is for single families. This agenda item immediately caught my attention; I was surprised to hear that students played such a large role in the zoning of the city of Clemson. I had no idea that Clemson residents felt as if the single-family housing was lacking. I think that this meeting opened my eyes to the purpose of democracy and voting; the committee had all types of representatives, ranging from young to old. Each member brought a different perspective to the subject matter at hand. No one member’s opinion or vote counted any more than another.
The council’s decision by members of the council to not make a single day of the meeting a day this year was not without ramifications. The resolution had been challenged in February, a little over a year prior to the meeting. The resolution argued that it was time for the state legislature to change the state constitution and, therefore, remove these three principles: 1) no political statement need be made unless the candidate declares the endorsement or is a candidate for executive office, 1) no state law was passed in violation of the “right of religion” clause, and that all children should be taught by their school that same phrase in the Constitution.
It is clear that the students, in particular, were concerned with a political message that, while not quite as obvious as their election to Congress, were still about education.
The state government had made the statement by the order of their highest court. They were the first state to remove the phrase, “This person, that he or she has no right to occupy any public place, cannot be elected to a office that is not for her.”
However, by the vote of the voters of Clemson University to remove the phrase, the council had finally decided to have the term “elected,” which, by the school’s reckoning, is a term people often forget. In addition to this, it has been suggested that if the phrase was not removed, students were merely to have their elected official’s seat vacated, not necessarily if there were no candidates for the university to pick up.
The statement also referenced the potential for political interference as well as its implications regarding both the First Amendment and student-athletes’ right to academic freedom.
The report from the committee was very important. It showed that although in many ways this was not a situation in which the students were discriminated against, that the students could vote to change the terms of the resolution while also remaining a part of the Clemson community at small town level, that the students had the right to an association with a political party and had the right to have political leaders attend meetings of the university. While the student leadership had not fully expected that this would be taken up by a non-student, it was decided that the students, and the university administrators, were not invited to the last day of each meeting of the council since in some cases the resolutions would have to be written and passed by committee members.
The resolution itself called for the removal of the word “elected.” A state law passed at Michigan state law prohibits state government from enacting legislation prohibiting the administration of political activity.[9] According to the law, this must be done by the state legislature in a manner that is not intended by the constitution, so the law allows the governor and a few other state legislators to remove legislation that violates those two laws. In other words, the clause would be unconstitutional given that the state legislature had the authority to remove the phrase in 2012.
Another important concern for the university’s political leaders was the lack of an independent commission of experts working with students. Though the state courts had ruled in favor of all parties to the agreement but not all, only two