WHEREAS, the University Affiliated Research Center is intended to improve "systems performance of Department of Defense weapons" according to Ronald M. Sega, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, in a July 8, 2004 memo; and

WHEREAS, the University Affiliated Research Center is very bad business for the University of Hawaii, requiring $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 in start-up funds from the University of Hawaii with no guarantee that the University Affiliated Research Center will last beyond the initial five years, a period during which University of Hawaii researchers and students working at the University Affiliated Research Center are prohibited from applying for certain other kinds of grants, thereby further limiting access to both public and private funds; and

WHEREAS, clandestine negotiations to develop the University Affiliated Research Center have been going on for over a year with no opportunity for faculty, student, and community input; and

WHEREAS, a certain portion of the research at the University Affiliated Research Center is classified, meaning that researchers cannot discuss it or disseminate their findings in papers and publications; and

WHEREAS, all universities maintain that the highest priority for their faculty is the right to publish their work as they see fit; and

WHEREAS, the Board of Regents gave provisional approval to the University Affiliated Research Center with the stipulation that "Full consultation is to take place"; and

WHEREAS, those consultations have not occurred; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii plans to sign a contract with the United States Navy to create the University Affiliated Research Center in the second quarter of 2005 without appropriate and full consultations; and

WHEREAS, a proposed site for University Affiliated Research Center activities is adjacent to Noelani Elementary School, a location that is totally inappropriate for conducting military research; and

WHEREAS, Native Hawaiian groups deeply resent the increasing militarization and desecration of their lands; and

WHEREAS, no Kanaka Maoli were consulted on the development of the University Affiliated Research Center and the placing of the University Affiliated Research Center in the community; and

WHEREAS, residents of the area where the University of Hawaii hopes to place the University Affiliated Research Center have never even been informed, let alone consulted; and

WHEREAS, there has been no apparent thought put into the ethics and morality of institutionalizing classified military research and weapons development at the University of Hawaii; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii considers the University Affiliated Research Center to be so unethical that it will not permit the University Affiliated Research Center on University of Hawaii lands; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii plans to foist off the University Affiliated Research Center onto the community, thereby ignoring the rights of the community to make such decisions for itself; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii had been complicit in developing Agent Orange for use in the Vietnam War resulting in massive permanent damage to the environment and human beings in Viet Nam, the researchers who worked on it left several sites in Hawaii contaminated and confirmed as the cause of death to at least three University of Hawaii workers; and

WHEREAS, Hawaii has a long history of militarism and secret research, including the testing of sarin gas in the rainforests of Puna, unleashing untold contaminants on the people and environment of the island of Hawaii; and

WHEREAS, work on the University Affiliated Research Center will severely decrease faculty rights to academic freedom and autonomy and limit the ability of faculty and students who work in the University Affiliated Research Center to share innovations with colleagues and the world; and

WHEREAS, even apparently innocuous military research such as research on sonar has had devastating effects on the environment, including the beaching and death of numerous marine mammals; and

WHEREAS, especially in the Pacific region, where tests of nuclear weapons of unparalleled yield have created enormous long-term human and environmental problems, the secrecy with which the United States government has shielded itself from negative publicity and legal liability has more often been unwarranted rather than in the service of genuine national security reasons; and

WHEREAS, under the Navy University Affiliated Research Center contract, only seven University of Hawaii administrators will be authorized to decide which secret research projects can be conducted both on and off campus; and

WHEREAS, none of these seven administrators are researchers, and all are men, which means that faculty, women, Native Hawaiians, and community members of ethnic, religious, and cultural persuasions have been excluded from being able to oversee the secret military research; and

WHEREAS, according to University of Hawaii policies that will govern the University Affiliated Research Center, even the University of Hawaii Board of Regents members "shall not require, nor shall have and can be effectively denied, access to classified information in possession of the University. They do not occupy positions that would enable them to affect adversely the University's policies or practices in the performance of classified contracts from the Department of Defense." Since representative oversight and accountability will not be allowed, local control will be eliminated over the secret military activities that is about to occur in secret enclaves in our islands; and

WHEREAS, over fifty-five per cent of the land now occupied by the military in Hawaii is ceded land, land that rightfully belongs to the Hawaiian people; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii is located on the Crown and Government lands of the formerly independent nation of Hawaii; and

WHEREAS, the use of these lands shall be for the public benefit and the welfare of Native Hawaiians, in accordance with Section 5 of the Admission Act; and

WHEREAS, classified military research contradicts the official values of the University of Hawaii as a "Hawaiian place of learning"; and

WHEREAS, the University of Hawaii Manoa Faculty Senate, citing "insuperable obstacles", has passed a resolution opposing the development of more classified research that does not allow faculty to publish the results in a timely fashion; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2005, that the University of Hawaii is urged to completely abandon all plans for University Affiliated Research Center activities and is requested to develop instead a policy for the State's public university that will completely prohibit any classified or other forms of military research that involves weapons or other systems that are harmful to humans, the environment, or any other living creatures; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Chairperson of the Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii and the President of the University of Hawaii.

Report Title:

University of Hawaii; University Affiliated Research Center