It’s argued that North Dakota’s state Constitution opposes two amendments in the U.S. Constitution. Photo courtesy of thecastcarollton.org

The U.S. Constitution and its Amendments are supposedly guardians of our individual freedoms against the threat of bureaucratic tyranny because it delegates the power of government to its people.

Most Americans have bought into this idea and have been incessantly reminded of it ever since we were chubby faced and toothless. The power and individual freedom of the people is a beautiful ideology that has saturated the American mind since its birth.

The charming federal and state documents are fancifully drenched in promises of individual freedoms.

We take pride in it, we seek refuge in it and we are pacified by it.

We forget that it is only an ideal and that we’ve been lied to since childhood. All the evidence we need is in our own political systems.

Take for instance the oath required of state university faculty members within North Dakota. All North Dakota citizens are compelled by the law to practice their duty of allegiance to the state, as written in the 54th chapter of the North Dakota Century Code. The code mandates that faculty must support the U.S. and state constitutions as a condition of their employment contract.

It’s suspicious that an oath would be necessary for faculty when we’re all bound by allegiance already. However, oaths have special functions that are not intended for educators and should not be required of them. Oaths were originally intended for elected officials before entering their elected office.

Early in the country’s history, states often included these oath requirements within their individual state constitutions, in addition to the federal constitution, which explicitly requires a presidential oath of office. Oaths would limit the power of elected officials because we give them power to govern over us.

It serves as a limitation because it is perjury to break an oath and perjury is punishable in all sorts of creative ways. If oaths are for officials of  government office, they are meant to protect the people’s rights.

These oaths favor the governed people. It would make sense how oaths for non-elected officials do not favor the people but those in power already.

Requiring an oath for faculty members is a gross inversion of what oaths were meant for in the first place. They show how little we  are protected by the government and how absurdly exploitative the powers of government can be.

Many people have questioned if this challenges academic freedom. I believe it certainly does – — it throws that freedom out the window. At the drop of a hat, some individual could be fired or not hired for not supporting these contradictory, often ambiguous documents.

It could be argued that the North Dakota State Constitution is unconstitutional because it’s in opposition with the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and arguably the First Amendment as well.

Some might say that those passages are nullified by the supremacy of the federal constitution, which is not guaranteed.

Others could argue that it doesn’t matter because it’s not enforced. Even if it’s not currently enforced, it could be at any        moment.

The oath could be contested in court, but there’s no guarantee that it would be ruled constitutional. Even if it was, what would those faculty members, your professors, lose in the process? Their jobs? Their livelihood? Their reputations?

I’m unsure how one should respond to this injustice, but it matters, if for no other reason than that these oaths turn the power of the people into the power of the few.

Katie Preszler is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]