RED SQUARE — Tensions escalated yesterday in the ongoing conflict between the Chinese Student Alliance (CSA) and the Taiwanese Student Association (TSA). Belligerent posturing by the CSA as the two groups were tabling in Red Square prompted a university response when President DeGioia dispatched a squad of campus police as a deterrent force against any CSA moves on the TSA.
Both organizations have claimed the right to both tables in Red Square since 1950.
The CSA has long maintained that the TSA is rightfully a part of their club and actively seeks to “reabsorb” it into the CSA. On several occasions in the past, the CSA has gone so far as to exchange fire with the TSA, firing paper hornets across the narrow path separating their two tables.
The TSA stakes its own claim to the CSA and avows itself to be the rightful leadership of the club. Yet given its numerical inferiority, few expect that the TSA will ever make good on its pledges to “liberate” the CSA.
The university has so far succeeded in keeping a lid on the problem by treading a fine line between both parties. University authorities commit themselves to a “One-CSA Policy,” the basis of which is a line from the Healy Communiqué, “Georgetown University acknowledges that all students of Chinese descent maintain there is but one CSA and that the TSA is a part of the CSA. The university does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the TSA question by Chinese students themselves.”
In spite of this commitment to the reunification of the two clubs, the university serves as the guarantor of the TSA’s de facto independence through it use of campus police to prevent a hostile takeover by the CSA. The university’s sympathies generally lie with the TSA, which allows its ranking officers to be elected through a free vote of its membership, in marked contrast with the CSA, in which outgoing seniors select the next generation of leaders.
“There is certainly an element of realpolitik to it all,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson. “We cannot recognize the TSA’s legitimacy without fear of CSA reprisals. Any move towards independence and they have sworn to raise a stink the next time we try to screen Mulan on campus. Something about it grossly misrepresenting Chinese culture, I think. At any rate, it is too good a movie and students feel way too much Nineties-related nostalgia for us to let that happen. Besides, have you seen Mulan? Eddie Murphy is frickin’ hilarious!”
Though it continues to label the TSA as a “chapter in rebellion,” the CSA is willing to compromise if they willingly return to the fold, says spokeswoman Meiyu “Jade” Chen (SFS ’15).
“The TSA will be permitted to retain many elements of its current autonomy in place upon reunification,” Ms. Chen remarks. “Under our ‘one club, two systems’ policy, the TSA can keep its separate Facebook group and will also have an independent alcohol budget.”
Few TSA members are biting. Many see themselves as possessing an identity distinct from the CSA and would prefer to be an independent club.
Other student organizations are watching the CSA-TSA conflict as a bellwether for what they see as increasingly aggressive CSA designs. The CSA has already pressed claims against student organizations representing Vietnamese and Filipinos for rights to meeting spaces it considers its own. Additionally, the CSA and the Anime Club have nearly come to blows over a pair of desks located in the classroom where the latter of the two meets. According to the CSA, these desks have always belonged to the CSA and were wrongfully transferred to the Anime Club’s meeting room by custodial staff.
It falls to Vice President Olson to sort out of each of these disputes.
“Yeah, seems like not a day goes by that I don’t hear some new complaint about this group or that,” he sighs. “I swear I’ll get to it just as soon as I sort out this little tiff between the Jewish Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine.”
