While I am not opposed to diversity and inclusion efforts, I do have opposition to the Student Government Association’s Oath of Inclusion.

It has been my biggest fear since the inception of the Oath, and it still is, that this will be nothing more than a set of organized words to the student body.

The Oath of Inclusion has the potential to be either something miraculous for the entire campus or, like the We Are All Billikens Campaign, become a “fad” or just another addition to the University’s countless handbooks and subliminal public relations attempts.

The Great Issues Committee started the We Are All Billikens Campaign during the 2009-2010 academic school year. Its efforts consisted of giving students a free blue wristband after they signed a commitment statement acknowledging their devotion to the Saint Louis University community and acceptance of “All Billikens regardless of race, religion, gender, age, ability, political affiliation, sexual orientation and culture.” GIC thought that handing out a blue wristband and having students sign a piece of paper would change the diverse atmosphere that surrounded, and continues to comprise the SLU campus.

First, in an email sent on March 8, 2010, it was requested that people send their picture to be part of the campaign, but it was stated in that same email that “[sending in a picture] does not necessarily mean it will be part of the campaign, depending on the number of submissions we get.”

This shows that the We Are All Billikens campaign was doomed from the start, because, I have to ask, how would they cut students out of the campaign?

Would it be based on sex, color of their skin, their age, sexual orientation – what? Although it is understandable that there needed to be a limit, why couldn’t it be more like the All of Us Campaign, which allows anyone who wants their picture to be part of the campaign to be a part of it. When comparing the two, it looks like the We Are All Billikens Campaign discriminated against students.

Then GIC sent another email four days later and stated that “in order for [the campaign] to be impactful, we realize that it must be a campus-wide initiative and would like your collaboration in our campaign.”

They did get a lot of student involvement in the campaign, as was seen in the Student Government Town Hall meeting held on March 25, 2010, where dozens of students, who called themselves “Students for Social Justice,” stormed the meeting and seized control of it.

“Many students are worried because there is supremacy, and that there is still slavery that exists. We are enslaved here at Saint Louis University,” the current Black Student Alliance Senator Kale Kponee, said at the Town Hall meeting.

Many other students then shared a series of dates and incidents of discrimination that occurred from October 2009 through February 2010.  All of these events are what pressured the school to unite behind the We Are All Billikens Campaign.

By the end of the 2010 academic school year, the campaign was dead in the water, partly due to the storming of the Town Hall meeting and lack of effort to incorporate it into student life.

SGA then came up with the idea to create the Student Creed, now known as the Oath of Inclusion.

If you look back at the original We Are All Billikens line, the only difference between the two is that sex, class and ideology are all added, while political affiliation is taken out.

Does this mean that it is now acceptable to discriminate against someone who is of a different political affiliation than myself? According to the new Oath, it is.

Another problem is that SGA is going about promoting the Oath in almost the same exact way as GIC did the old campaign.

In their latest effort in the Quad, the “Live the Oath” festival only consisted of student groups that people already consider “diverse.” They did not bring in any new groups, thereby not expanding inclusion on campus.

By handing out buttons instead of wristbands and creating “togetherness” videos, SGA thinks it can do what GIC couldn not: Create a diverse and inclusive campus.

SGA Vice President of Social Justice and Diversity Kripa Sreepada has been involved with the Oath since it was just a rough draft. Although her efforts to promote inclusion have and continue to be unmatched by anyone else, unless new efforts are brought about to incorporate the Oath in a different way than the last campaign, it, too will soon sink to the bottom of everyone’s memory as just another “fad.”

Dustin Paluch is a junior in the John Cook School of Business.