Organization sheds light on national security

Educating students about issues like national security in the United States is the goal of an IU student organization, the Student Alliance for National Security.

Junior Miles Taylor started the Student Alliance for National Security in 2006 with two main goals in mind: to educate people about national security issues and for students’ voices to be heard.

“IU is a school that puts students in high-level jobs,” Taylor said. “They need to know about these issues.”

He said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 had a huge impact on him. After that, Taylor said he thought people needed to be aware of what was going on. A lot of things have changed since the Cold War, he said.

One way Taylor said the alliance spreads the word is by bringing in prominent speakers to talk about the issues, such as when the alliance brought the United States ambassador to Afghanistan to speak about the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan.

These speakers sparked the interest of freshmen Therese Kennelly and Richard Stark.

“It was really interesting having a group that had no party partisans working for the same issues,” Kennelly said.

Stark said since he is a political analysis major with a focus in eastern languages, being in an organization that focused on those things sounded interesting.

Kennelly said she found she could get involved as much or as little as she wanted with the alliance, and that really appealed to her.

The alliance is promoting the Declaration of Oil Independence. Taylor said the goal is to get 100,000 signatures in the period of a year.

Once obtained, Taylor said they will send the signatures to Congress and policy makers to show that students care about these problems.

“If 100,000 people say something, Congress is more likely to listen,” Kennelly said.

The issue the alliance wants Congress to address, Taylor said, is the United States relies on purchasing oil from countries with whom it does not have the best relations.

He said the alliance also wants policy makers to focus on the environment, economic and national security issues that are raised when dealing with oil.

The Declaration of Oil Independence was formed, Taylor said, when the alliance pitched the idea to the Clinton Global Initiative, formed by the Clinton administration.

Taylor said the goal of the Clinton Global Initiative is to get young people around the country involved.

The alliance, along with the Clinton Global Initiative, also worked with 2020 Vision, Stark said. 2020 Vision, a nonprofit organization, works to help spread the word of the Declaration of Oil Independence, Taylor said.

Taylor also said they are always excited about new members and students getting involved.

Students who want to get involved can go online to OilDeclaration.org and sign the petition. Additionally, Stark said the alliance will have members at the Little 500 races with petitions for students to sign.

“We really encourage people to get involved,” Taylor said.