The Brown Contemporary - Winter 2008

the brown contemporary

Vying for Obama’s Attention • Democrats in 2009 will tackle the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan, healthcare, energy and more. But Obama shouldn’t forget about implementing some lower profile, but nonetheless important, policies. •

CONTENTS 4

FOOD FOR THOUGHT andrew antar

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DEAR OBAMA, DON’T FORGET ABOUT... matthew corritore

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NATO: AMERICA’S EXPANSIONIST FACADE anthony badami

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REFORM! ...THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE ben struhl

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MOVING TOWARD LIFE SENTENCES matthew corritore

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WHY BAILOUTS SUCK reed frye

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: SNITCHPOWERGOD tor tarantola ‘08

winter 2008 • volume II, issue 2

bc editor-in-chief Matthew Corritore editors Anthony Badami Reed Frye Brynn McNally Michael Ramos-Lynch contributors Andrew Antar Ben Struhl Tor Tarantola ‘08

Thanks for reading the Contemporary.

cover art & illustrations Sara Martin sara@saraillustrates.com

We live in trying yet exciting times; let’s challenge ourselves to think a little deeper about the events unfolding around us.

Poignant, I know.

We hope you find our content interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. enjoy, matt

Submit comments, questions, and letters to the editor: browncontemporary@gmail.com The Brown Contemporary is a student production. The content herein represents the views of the individual contributors, of which Brown University is not responsible.

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“One must look at Africa holistically and diagnose the root problem.

Hunger curses Africa.”

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FOr FOOD thOUGHT O

n September 19, 2008, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, accepted an honorary degree from Brown University. In 2005, Sirleaf was elected the first woman president of an African nation, serving as a shining example and beacon of hope for Africa and future woman leaders. Her personal story of being jailed, exiled in her own country, and subsequently educating herself with a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard, is only the beginning for the nation she inherited and was determined to fix. President Sirleaf started by working to eliminate an over $3 billion debt thus freeing Liberia from its economic chains to open a new frontier for change and economic development.

She named four pillars of necessary infrastructure for the nation: electricity, roads, water, and education. One of the first things she did was mandate primary education for all children. Setting an incredible precedent also requires a lot of infrastructure and development to support it. African nations run the gamut in their levels of development: some fully democratic, some just beginning democratic progress, some with corrupt leaders, and some strife with war and genocide. Many nations like Liberia are achieving progress, but far too many are still stagnant. Without the help and influence from global sources, some nations might take centuries to break from their stagnation naturally.

As the interconnected nature of our planet extends every day, we all inherit a certain responsibility. We inherit the responsibility to recognize the disparities that exist in our world and act on behalf of them. Every day, we increasingly become world citizens.

In a world penetrated by globalization, this generation faces a new frontier. The fact that people can hold computers in their hands is connect-

by andrew antar

ing the world economy in an instantaneous fashion that will change the way we do business and ultimately change the landscape of our world. The Internet has connected people, places, cultures, and ideas into one emerging global force. As prices and products can be derived from any corner of the earth, there will be a great equating economic force that will disperse the wealth of the world’s superpowers among the lesser countries of the world. Free trade will eventually equate the world’s economies onto a massive global playing field at an exponentially faster rate. There is a push to think globally and invest globally as this is the only way to acquire a fresh set of prices and resources. However, the threat that billions of people might be left behind because of broken or nonexistent economies hastens the need for countries to integrate themselves into the world economy by utilizing their full economic potential.

Our world, though, is still broken.

Great disparity and hypocrisy exists across the globe whether it is by flawed government, corruption, crime, hunger, genocide, or disease. Africa is a continent plagued by all of these. Though vibrant in diverse culture, Africa has many sick and broken nations among its successes. Though one may see Africa as an ocean of trouble and irreparable wasteland, I see it as the new frontier.

The sheer scale of its natural resources and immensity of its manpower that remains untapped and underutilized as an economic force is incomprehensible. Geographically, Africa is one of the largest continents of the world, made up of 85 countries, 20 democracies, and filled with millions of miles of unused fertile land and abundant natural resources. When people think of the Sahara desert when they think of Africa, they fail to realize the rest is green. They also fail to realize that the

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entire area of the United States (Alaska and Hawaii included) can fit into Africa three and a half times. Most importantly, though, the population of the continent is vast, capable, and overlooked.

Most of Africa is dominated by disconnected villages that resemble the simplicity of ancient times. This might not be the case for everywhere, but it is certain that there is a gaping void of infrastructure and an interconnected economy in Africa. Hunger controls the population and disease plagues it. Aggression causes conflict, conflict causes war, and war causes genocide. To us Americans, it is hard to comprehend the gravity of Africa’s circumstance from the frame of our complex capitalist society. We try to give them toilets, but there is no plumbing to connect them to. We then give them plumbing and there is no source of clean water to connect it to or a sewer system to drain it. We try to send them computers, but there is no electricity to charge them. The people need proper education to learn how to use them, and the information that they might get from the Internet, which they can’t access, has no use to them as they worry about how to find their next meal. Though it seems that the whole continent of Africa has fallen off the back of the world economic train, it is a place of epic proportions that we cannot ignore, nor can we ignore the progress that has already been made by some African nations as a beacon of hope.

The basis of an economy is the capacity to do work and use natural resources or the capacity to create ideas to be more efficient in doing work. As Americans, we have mastered the latter. When all of the population is working, we can rely on making that work more productive and efficient through technology or trade. Trade is what determines the allocation of our resources, or the allocation of the work that has been done. When people can work, they can produce food, products, ideas, technology, or fulfill human needs. All of these things have an

economic trading value. This is measured in currency. Currency allows us to trade these values with one another so that we can all have everything that we need because we can do everything at once. Tradable currency also allows us to specialize in what brings us the most economic trading value so we can get more of the things that we actually want and need. Trade is the reason we all live together in communities because it enables us to benefit from each other. The opposite would be everyone for his/herself, where each person is responsible for his or her own survival.

Benefitting and prospering from each other frees us from using our capacities for survival needs and lets us utilize our minds and capabilities to think about and do what we wish. The concept of free-market capitalism creates a system where the most possible trade can be conducted between peoples.

The introduction of stock markets and

my and industry that drove the US from a weak upstart nation to a world superpower over the next two hundred years.

Take a first hand look at our world using Google Earth. Zoom into America and pan across; you will see infinite squares and circles that expand almost indefinitely. Almost every inch of our country that is not a city, preserve, or mountainous ravine is squared off, cultivated, and driving the engine of our thriving (well not lately) economy.

Zoom out, rotate the globe, and zoom into Africa and look around. Practically the entire continent is flat, fertile, green, un-irrigated, unused, uninhabited land.

One must look at Africa holistically and diagnose the root problem.

Hunger curses Africa. From hunger comes poor health and weak immune systems. Weak immune systems and malnutrition cause sickness and the easy spread of pandemic disease. It is statistically proven that hunger causes aggression. Aggression is the cause of corruption, conflict, and war. The proliferation of war causes genocide.

There is hunger in Africa because there is not sufficient agriculture. There is not sufficient agriculture because there is no infrastructure for food. The agricultural needs of Africa are unimaginably vast and the means to satisfy it are limited. Hunger has put Africa in stagnation. The tragic irony is that there is no shortage of people and no shortage of fertile, cultivatable land, yet there is a vast shortage of food.

The agricultural economy across Africa must be cultivated in a step-bystep fashion. To achieve such a feat, irrigation must come first. The Egyptians mastered irrigation with ancient techniques; the same is possible today.

Then land must be partitioned, organized, and distributed with proper incentive to cultivate it. The land must then be cultivated and worked with proper machines. An agricultural system and stable food commodity would then provide a tradable incentive for the development of roads and transportation, which is needed for distribu-

This presents itself as one of the greatest investment opportunities the world has ever seen: to invest in cultivating the untapped resources of an entire continent to create a vital and desperately needed commodity.

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the internet has enabled exponentially more trade to be possible between peoples within any given amount of time.

We must look back to the pioneers of the American West who inhabited and created the center of America that would have otherwise remained a barren wasteland. The land was partitioned and cultivated acre by acre. The Land Ordinance of 1785 and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 divided the American Frontier into countless checkerboards of 640 acre squares of land. The two ordinances subsidized the occupation and development of the unsettled northern regions of the United States. The government proclaimed that there was free land out there as long as one claimed and cultivated it: thus the iconic American Homestead. Step by step America was populated and cultivated and this emergence of people and products let surface the emerging American econo-

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tion of goods and growth of the agricultural industry as a whole.

Food would ultimately become a stable economic commodity that would require and promote a stable currency. A stronger currency backed by agriculture makes possible economic trade in all varieties services.

Economic trade prompts the need and development of crude infrastructure. Infrastructure like energy production, transportation, electricity, clean running water, and communications enables all people to incorporate themselves into the economy to specialize in what they can do best. Once there is electricity, communications, internet, and stable currency, the nation has successfully become part of a global economy that can trade and benefit even more from other nations.

Do not be thrown by the simplicity and seeming unfeasibility of this logic. This is merely the skeletal structure of how economies can be grown from a point of complete inexistence. Implementing such a task would be one of the grandest the world has seen, and never before in the history of the world has anything of this nature been done; but who says it can’t be done. What is needed to set the plan in motion is proper investment. Venture capitalists allocate billions of dollars daily into small companies as well as mere ideas which do not yet exist. Just a couple months ago, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB), one of the largest venture capital firms in the world announced it would invest $100 million into anyone’s potential ideas for possible applications using Apple’s iPhone, calling it “iFund.” Nothing like this had ever been done before.

The virtual application store did not even yet exist, and no applications had been made for sale. The fact that $100 million can be invested by one company into an idea whose dis-

tribution system did even exist is the root concept of venture capitalism. This concept can be applied to make a similar investment in massive African agricultural development.

The US has spent trillions on the Iraq war these past couple years, and Bill Gates allocated $40 billion for healthcare in Africa. Amidst our own financial crisis, investors are looking for new markets and new ways to invest their funds. The US does not know what to do with its money and Bill Gates is treating the symptoms, not the root cause of the problems. If hundreds of billions were invested into irrigating a specific region in Africa with modern techniques as well as the purchase of basic farming equipment like tractors and seeders, something extremely significant, both economically and socially, could be accomplished. Food is the only thing that can make people healthier, happier, and give them the ability to work together. A vital salable commodity-food-could be created through this type of investment.

This presents itself as one of the greatest investment opportunities the world has ever seen: to invest in cultivating the untapped resources of an entire continent to create a vital and desperately needed commodity.

The creation and stimulation of an economy is the only way to provide the basic needs that can improve the quality of many people’s lives, and I believe that it can be done. It would be an epic initiative combining charity, organization, and investment. An initiative such as this holds such potential economic weight that Africa as a whole could be put on the same economic playing field as the rest of the world’s economies. More importantly, an initiative such as this directly targets the desperate health and humanitarian needs of a deeply deprived continent. bc

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Dear Obama, Don’t Forget About... by matthew corritore

Sure, everyone knows about Obama’s major planned initiatives. But the president-elect needs to address many important issues that have received only scant attention.

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arack Obama has plenty on his plate. His electoral mandate is very much conditioned on his ability to respond effectively to the major issues of the day: the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, healthcare reform, green energy, etc. The good news is that the president-elect is already amassing personnel and drawing up plans at a seemingly record pace to hit the ground running in January.

But, realistically speaking, Obama is in a tough position. He campaigned on a platform of broad change, seemingly requiring sweeping action on a variety of fronts to correct for the country’s atrophy under G.W. Bush’s watch. Yet the current economic crisis will tempt Obama to be anything but sweeping; he may feel the urge to be narrowlyfocused first on the economy and save other campaign pledges for another day.

Now Obama’s challenging position certainly doesn’t mean that he will ignore mainstay concerns like energy and healthcare reform. Indeed, the creation of green jobs will likely be a fundamental part of Obama’s economic recovery initiative. But spending significant amounts of political capital on the economy means that many important issues, such as education and social security, may be placed on the backburner. Such topics have received only scant attention during the campaign and so far the presidential transition, and for that reason it is tempting to relegate them to the level of “second-tier” priorities. But while Obama may have relatively bigger fish to fry in the short-term, it is crucial these issues are quickly addressed.

Here is a summary of the policy goals about which Obama should not forget: End “don’t ask, don’t tell” immediately Proposition 8’s passage in California this November, which affirmed voters’ desire for a gay marriage ban, was a huge setback for the gay rights movement. A popular Obama administration countering with a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which would effectively end the ban on gays openly serving in the military, would be a meaningful display of support for equal rights.

Obama has pledged to take on “don’t ask, don’t tell” as soon as he secures the military’s support. But the Obama team has in recent months sent mixed signals regarding when it might back efforts to push a repeal of the law through Congress. Anonymous sources from the transition team initially indicated that that might not be until 2010; another anonymous source refuted that claim, saying that the presidentelect was simply waiting for the full national security team to be in place. In any case, Obama should immediately upon taking office end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Now couldn’t be a better time to bolster the gay rights movement.

Continue unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan While this policy might only marginally fit into the framework of “a list of policy goals Obama shouldn’t forget about” (hopefully military operations always take some sort of temporal precedence), Obama should nevertheless continue the Bush administration’s robotic violations of sovereignty to attack bad guys in Pakistan.

Sometime in the past, U.S. unmanned aerial drones began entering Pakistani airspace, hovering around, and performing targeting missile strikes on insurgent targets. Six al-Qaida leaders have thus far been killed by the attacks.

Yes, these drone attacks reek of G.W. Bush’s lack of concern for national sovereignty and bilateral cooperation. But the attacks have been surprisingly effective both in terms of killing targets and reducing civilian casualties, especially compared with traditional ground assaults.

Opponents of the attacks have pointed to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s vocal denouncements of the policy as evidence that these types of operations are not conducive to the international cooperation required to sustain a global war on terror. But recent reports have concluded that these denouncements are simply the product of a tacit deal between the U.S. and Pakistan; according to DeYoung and Warrick of the Washington Post, Pakistan agreed to allow the attacks as long as it could loudly complain to appease its population. Deceptive? Sure. But

an inventive, narrowly-tailored, and effective policy? Yes. Obama should continue these strikes, which may represent the terror-fighting future.

Foster a culture of national service I’m a devout follower of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, who has devoted much of the last twenty years to documenting the decline of civic engagement in the U.S. His 2000 masterwork Bowling Alone is a comprehensive piece showing how Americans, with the rise of suburbs, commutes, and prime-time television, have become more insular and civically disengaged.

Putnam’s research, I’d venture, goes a long way to explaining the eroding of confidence in American political institutions and our society’s relative unconcern for marginalized groups in urban and rural areas. We need a more civically-minded, less material, and more responsible culture, an argument too often solely associated with conservative thought but towards which Obama appears receptive.

The president-elect’s national service plan includes the formation of a green job corps, expansion of the Peace Corps, and tax credits for college students who volunteer 100+ hours per year. He will make good on these promises, but program expansion is the easy part. Obama’s real challenge will be to foster the culture of national service required to sustain these programs, something only a gifted leader can do through leadership.

G.W. Bush pledged in his 2002 State of the Union address to create “a culture of responsibility” through the creation of the USA Freedom Corp. and expansion of both the AmeriCorps and Peace Corps programs. While he enjoyed modest success on the programmatic side, Bush failed to provide the moral leadership needed to change the culture, in part due to his administration’s myriad catastrophes.

Obama, on the other hand, can talk and has walked national service. In his commencement address at Wesleyan in May, Obama said, “Because our individual salvation depends on collective sal-

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vation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.”

Hopefully Obama will provide that missing ingredient, leadership, that can jumpstart the service culture.

Hold teachers accountable and fund charter schools The two main teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, are infamous for their opposition to educational reforms that could benefit students. They are unions after all; their primary purpose is to protect and grow their ranks, not increase student outcomes. As a globalized economy puts more pressure on schools to produce competitive students, school officials need the ability to treat teachers like the professionals they are, not the laborers union leaders wished they still were. This means that teachers should be required to undergo extensive professional development, receive fewer job perks, and be rewarded with merit pay when successful. In addition, teachers of all stripes will benefit from the competition created by the emergence of high-performing charter schools fueled by federal dollars.

Obama should follow through with his commitment to supporting teacher pay plans that reward successful teachers, in which raises are tied to a number of performance indicators, among them student test scores. The president-elect was booed on numerous occasions in 2007 when he announced his plan at union meetings.

But both the NEA and the AFT leadership have thus far remained open to this type of limited accountability system. Obama needs to offer vigorous support for the voluntary implementation of these plans, as well as follow through with his promise to double federal funding to charter schools.

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Turn social security reform into an aging strategy Nobody wants to be told that their getting old, including the American people. But that’s exactly what Obama needs to do as president.

Social security reform will not be enough; America has to learn how to age gracefully. Obama should use social security reform to develop a longterm, comprehensive aging strategy, a plan that has not yet been proposed.

As retirees live longer, social security will not remain solvent if it functions as supplementary retirement income for twenty or thirty years of the average American’s life. Obama has thus far been vague about his social security plan. He has proposed eliminating the social security tax cap, which would make the program much more redistributive in character, but he hasn’t indicated what the tax rate might be, what types of income should be taxed, and how current benefits would be affected.

Perhaps more importantly, however, Obama has rejected calls to consider raising the retirement age for social security benefits, a commonsense response to greater longevity that Hillary Clinton embraced during her candidacy.

And beyond social security reform, Obama needs to help better prepare the public for aging. A comprehensive aging strategy would include enhanced funding for medical research to lower medical spending, as well as healthy lifestyle and retirement savings education.

End the war on drugs The war on drugs is brilliant political marketing (kudos to Ronald Reagan). What president is going to stand in front of the American people and announce, “we are ending the war on drugs?” Such a statement would be political death because most Americans see little controversy or ambiguity surrounding the crackdown on illegal drugs. Illegal drug usage is a problem, so why shouldn’t we marshal all available law enforcement resources to bring down those involved?

The problem is that the war on drugs disproportionately affects urban minority communities, driving them into further disrepair, and offers little in the way of drug rehabilitation.

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Tough-on-crime drug penalties rarely affect the scores of white middle-class users holed up in suburban basements; instead they circumstantially target the small-time dealers or recreational pot smokers hanging out on urban street corners. These policies are partly responsible for the incarceration of approximately 1 in 10 African American males aged 25-29. Urban revitalization, not to mention social justice, will not be achieved unless such externality-laden policies are reformed.

The jury is out on whether Obama will be the president with the fortitude to end, or at least temper, the war on drugs. The rumor mill has suggested that he will pick Jim Ramstad, a Republican congressman from Minnesota, as his drug czar. While Ramstad has extolled the virtues of treating drug abuse as a medical condition rather than a moral failing (Ramstad is a recovering alcoholic), he suggested in the past that he doesn’t support clean needle exchange programs. Indeed, in 1999 he voted against allowing Washington D.C. from funding its own needle exchange. And then of course there’s vice-president-elect Joe Biden, who touts his career achievements passing blunt tough-on-crime legislation.

Still, Obama has signaled a need for more common sense drug policies, including more money for treatment programs, and broader reforms such as an end to racial profiling. But it’s highly unlikely Obama will spend the political capital to outright end the war on drugs. The president-elect hinted at a possible strategy in an August 2007 news conference. There, while discussing a theoretical plan to correct the racially-tinged sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine possession, Obama questioned whether “we want to spend all our political capital on a very difficult issue [the sentencing disparities] that doesn’t get at some of the underlying issues” instead of investing in education programs that might prevent drug usage to begin with.

While in theory a holistic plan is ideal, it has the potential to falter under the weight of its ambition. Take short-term baby steps or focus on root causes? We shall see. bc

NATO

America’s Expansionist Facade by anthony badami

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igned into being in April of 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was held to the task of acting as a stalwart buffer to perceived Soviet aggression. Six years later, the communist states of Europe would respond, forming their own coalition in the way of a geopolitical alliance dubbed the Warsaw Pact.

These two behemoths would define the next several decades of the Cold War. But, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent dissolution of its Warsaw Pact, a contentious period in Western history had concluded.

Allied nations cheered on this hard-fought finale and world leaders breathed a heavy sigh. U.S. leadership, however, looked on with insouciance.

Faced with harsh reality, American political elites slowly accepted the fact that their heralded enterprise had become moot. Or so it seemed.

In the post-Soviet era, NATO should remain as nothing but a relic of the Cold War. But the United States, instead, has seized upon the ‘Western Alliance’ as an important tool, reinvigorating the alliance with new purpose and fervent rhetoric. Unfortunately, this purpose is ignoble and self-serving.

NATO functions in our current world as a “tool” for “American foreign policy intervention.” As Professor Rodrigue Tremblay of the New American Empire remarked, U.S.controlled NATO provides an expedient “substitute” to the United Nations.

NATO provides a “legal front” for “illegal offensive military undertakings” in regions of the world designated

as meddlesome by U.S. leadership.

What should be done then? To be forthright, NATO should be disbanded. Its member-nations should work towards it demolition, no longer allowing it to function as a greedy, obtrusive arm of U.S. foreign power.

The consequences of NATO were best exemplified in the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia. This occasion marked the first time that NATO had become directly involved with European conflict. James Petras of the Economic and Political Weekly wrote in June 1999 (shortly after the offensive) that this kind of intervention was not unlike Nazi Germany’s justification for “intervention in Czechoslovakia and Austria on the basis of ‘self-determination.’”

Though apologists will undoubtedly condemn this observation as

supportive of U.S. economic interests.

U.S.-NATO bombing had little to do with “ensuring stability” or preventing “ethnic cleansing,” as the Comprehensive Political Guidance enshrines.

Rather, Milosevic was a hindrance.

This false pretense has been a lauded justification for U.S. hegemony across the globe. Regime-change in Guatemala, brutal overthrow in Nicaragua, and Indonesian support for the massacre of East Timor stand as a few prime examples of U.S.backed military operations under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’

One may quibble over the details, but the motivation behind these acts has been articulated clearly by the state itself. When asked whether U.S. would skirt international code in intervening in civil wars, Samuel Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, answered, “it depends upon whether America’s national interests are involved as well as our values.”

As is usually the case, U.S. officials have made their intentions clear. And as usually follows, objection failed to appear.

Rather, modern-day imperialism ensued. But, international law was not the only standard averted. A March 1999 Gallup poll put American support of the bombings at 46 percent. But then, public opinion has never mattered.

In his book A New Generation Draws the Line, Noam Chomsky provides a well-grounded perspective on this issue. As he reveals, the South Summit of the G-77, which accounts for 80 percent of the world’s population, wholly condemned in April of 2000 the “right

To be forthright, NATO should be disbanded. Its member-nations should work towards it demolition, no longer allowing it to function as a greedy, obtrusive arm of U.S. foreign power. ‘moral equivalence,’ a convenient bit of state-propaganda used to eschew blame, it is essential to analyze the pretenses of this intervention and its extensive consequences.

As Mr. Petras continues, the “key issue” in this case is the “general expansion of U.S. power,” and the “subordination of the eastern European regimes.”

It was a move to “consolidate the arc of empire from central Europe to the west Asia,” along the way developing “ministates” and “financed free-marketeers”

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of humanitarian intervention.” It stated that U.S. actions in Yugoslavia could be reduced to “traditional imperialism.”

Moreover, the evidence for military action on the behalf of Serbians is misleading. As Mr. Chomsky asserts: “One fact is unquestioned: the NATO bombing was followed by a rapid escalation of atrocities and ethnic cleansing.” So, the bombardment has scant legitimacy upon which to rest.

Professor Chomsky contends further that it took “considerable discipline

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at the NATO anniversary” to ignore the atrocities of the 1990s taking place in its member-nations. Furthermore, that these atrocities relied heavily on “huge flows of arms from the West.” For over a decade, the Turkish government waged a military campaign against its “miserably oppressed” Kurdish population. If NATO cannot ensure stability within its ranks, how could one reasonably expect it to uphold that standard in the international community?

Answer: It doesn’t. When an in-

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ternational tribunal attempted to hold NATO accountable for its illegal bombing of Serbia, the U.S. government claimed what is called an RUD, or “reservation, understanding, and declaration.” In other words, the United States reinterpreted international statutes to forestall justice. According to American lawyers, a clause in the Genocide Convention called the “selfexclusion” principle gave immunity to certain nations. Essentially, the convention could not be applied to the U.S.

But the mendacity of U.S.-NATO need not be limited by the unjust bombing of Yugoslavia. Today, it extends to NATO-controlled Afghanistan.

Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since 2001. According to Sebastian Junger, a well-respected journalist covering the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, suicide bombings have increased eight-fold, contributing to the more than 6,200 Afghan deaths of that year. John McCreary, former senior intelligence analyst for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff explains: “This is the first year they have managed to sustain over 100 attacks per month for a whole year since they started to climb back. One hundred attacks per month used to be a surge figure. Now it is the new norm.”

The U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan is yet another instance of Western opportunism and expansionism in the region. Political stability is irrelevant. The goal is complete economic dominance. And this does not bode well for the international community.

Already member-nations are starting to come to their senses. The Netherlands plans to remove troops by 2010 while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has indicated his desire to remove French troops as soon as possible, a wise choice for both nations.

Conn Hallinan in a March issue of Foreign Policy in Focus points out that Bush and his advisors harbor worries about the possible “avalanche” these withdrawals could cause. Further-

more, many U.S. allies have started “to question the Bush administration’s one-dimensional portrayal of the Taliban as a tightly disciplined, international terrorist organization.”

The United Nations on August 26th weighed in with “convincing evidence” that an air strike in Herat, located in western Afghanistan, killed 90 civilians, 60 of which were children. An article in the September 5th issue of The Economist cites this U.N. investigation, upholding as more reliable than the official Washington account that “only five civilians had died.” U.N. senior officials commented that they were “most confident” in their findings.

Another problem, indicated by Afghani President Hamid Karzai, is America’s rogue counter-insurgency forces. These troops lack accountability to any international organization, even NATO. It demonstrates a frightful notion: when U.S. puppets can’t get the job done, the U.S. will do it itself, at any cost.

And further expansion is ceaseless.

After recent hostilities between Georgia and Russia, American leadership was quick to offer Georgia NATO membership in exchange for strategic bases.

This offer received slight media attention. Do not forget that Georgian inclusion would mean a probable NATOmilitary response to Russia, something the Bush administration would invite.

Predictably, the presidential candidates warmly endorsed the potential addition. Sarah Palin condemned the Russian “invasion” as “unpro-

voked,” which is obviously untrue.

Mr. Obama insists on “going forward.” He says, “The United States and Europe must support the people of Georgia. Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, we must provide economic assistance (read arms sales) as well.” Parenthesis added.

NATO must be tossed into the international wastebasket as a remnant of tumult. As a function of U.S. expansionism, its effects have been devastating and far-reaching. Casualties in Afghanistan and the destruction of Serbian society should be an unambiguous signal to the rest of the world.

Just six years after the creation of the North Atlantic Alliance, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell released a prescient statement concerning global warfare and the responsibility of Western nations.

In this Russell-Einstein Manifesto, they set forth a vociferous charge: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

Let us embrace their vision by terminating a modern day war machine.

In its place, let us build an international community that abides by some kind of moral standard. NATO must be disbanded. bc

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Reform! ...the Electoral College

by ben struhl

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s we fully enter the 21st century political landscape in America it has come time to assess some of our nation’s institutions originally conceived in our constitution of 1786, and determine whether they are still serving our interests as a nation. Naturally, no document could stay completely relevant over such a long period of time, and the founders, realizing this, included provisions to amend our constitution when we saw the need. At the forefront of constitutional issues in need of major reformation is the Electoral College, which is tasked with actually selecting our president. A number of political experts and commentators argue that this single institution is the greatest threat to democracy in America, and

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needs to be quickly and wisely reformed in order to avoid another election disaster like the one we had in 2000.

Many people are familiar with the basic premise of the Electoral College— instead of directly tallying the vote of every person in America to elect the President, each state tallies its own voting totals, and then is given a number of electors based on population, who are then in theory supposed to vote for the person who won their state. In this arguably anti-democratic setup, the candidate who gets the most electors—not necessarily the most votes—wins the presidency. Though the two usually go together there are some very notable exceptions to this rule. Certainly it’s hard to forget the latest debacle in 2000, but

contemporary • winter 2008

the system had similar misfires in 1824, 1876, and 1888, and almost failed in 1968 and 1976. As a system actually designed to subvert popular democracy, it’s somewhat of a wonder that we haven’t had even more problems with it.

When first founded in 1789, the Electoral College was conceived as an elitist society that would provide a bulwark against unwise decisions of the voting public (at the time a limited number of white males), which the Constitutional Convention deemed unfit to directly select America’s commanderin-chief. Convention delegate George Mason put it this way: “…it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of

colours to a blind man. The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have a requisite capacity to judge.” This attitude is quite contrary, of course, to our current beliefs about the power and effectiveness of popular democracy, and clearly doesn’t meet the standards of our nation. While it is a system designed by people living in a far different country and world, for some reason we continue to allow ourselves to be plagued by its myriad defects.

Beyond the potential for state electors to ignore the national popular vote, there are so many other problems with the system that it likely cannot be saved. For one thing, as the system stands, the people who are voted to be presidential electors can generally vote for whomever they chose, despite how the state they represent may have voted, and regardless of whether the person they select was actually even on the ballot. Granted, this problem has rarely reared its head and would be easy enough to fix, but there is the further problem that not all states have the same ratio of electors to citizens. Each elector in California represents about

is then decided by state congressional delegations, which means that the 53 representatives of California get as many votes as the one representative from Alaska, and if a state has equal representatives of each party they get no vote. This event has occurred twice in selecting our president, and in one of those instances (1824) collusion and political dealings decided the outcome, contrary to the popular vote, in the infamous “corrupt bargain.” Even using our best efforts to make the Electoral College fair, finding a way for it to never contradict the popular will is difficult.

Some commentators don’t find it problematic that the Electoral College is anti-democratic. Others say the few benefits that it incurs are worth keeping, despite the shortfalls of the system.

Proponents of the Electoral College often insist that the system ensures that smaller states also get attention, rather than all the attention going to big states such as California. Unfortunately, the current system fails on this front as well, with its focus on “battleground states” and consequential neglect of most big states (California, New York,

Consider this—the Electoral College (among other election mishaps) gave us the Bush administration in 2000 and ushered in an era of preemptive war, economic recession, environmental destruction, undermined civil rights, governmental inefficiency, and massive spending deficits and cuts to valuable social programs.

650,000 residents, while each elector in Wyoming represents about 170,000 residents, meaning a vote in Wyoming counts about 3.8 times more. In a country where we claim to value the principle of “one person one vote,” this system hardly seems tenable. Again, this could be easily fixed by reallocating electors more fairly, but the problem that still remains is what happens if one candidate wins their states by wide margins, and the other wins more states by narrow margins. Another problem concerning the Electoral College is that if no majority is reached in the electors’ vote, the election of the presidency

Texas, etc.) and small states (Rhode Island, Idaho, Alaska, etc.) considered already decided. Other proponents of the Electoral College believe that the principle of states’ rights displayed in the system makes it important enough to keep. However, a vast majority of Americans when polled disagree with this sentiment, and want the winner of the popular vote to be elected president. While Americans have never expressed approval of the Electoral College, disapproval has been especially high after George W. Bush’s controversial electoral win in 2000. If we are to consider ourselves a govern-

ment by and for the people, it is incumbent upon us to change the way we select our president to reflect the democratic principles we most value.

A number of innovative proposals have been put forward that would address the problem, varying in method of implementation and scope of reform.

One possible state-level reform involves individual legislatures passing laws requiring their electors vote for the winner of the popular vote. This remedy has the added benefit of not requiring the passage of a constitutional amendment. If a majority of elector-rich states passed such a law, the Electoral College would be rendered irrelevant and the popular vote would determine the president. While this would be an easy way to deal with the problem, no states have passed such a proposal thus far, making the likelihood of this method being effective any time in the near future very small unless the public starts paying more attention to the issue.

The problems with the Electoral College will most likely have to be addressed through a constitutional amendment, perhaps as part of a broader push to reevaluate anachronisms in our founding document. The constitutional amendment could range from simply striking the whole notion of the college from our election system and relying solely on popular will, to awarding a large number of additional electors to the winner of the popular vote, assuring that person won the electoral college every time, while preserving an element of the traditional, federally-based system that once existed.

This is an issue that gets remarkably little attention, but is enormously important in scope, and needs rapid attention before it again distorts an American election. Consider this—the Electoral College (among other election mishaps) gave us the Bush administration in 2000 and ushered in an era of preemptive war, economic recession, environmental destruction, undermined civil rights, governmental inefficiency, and massive spending deficits and cuts to valuable social programs. The Electoral College system is due for an immediate overhaul. bc

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15

The death penalty has become less frequently imposed in the United Moving States, but that doesn’t mean it will be abolished any time soon.

Toward by matthew corritore Life Sentences

CAMPUS PROGRESS

L

ast year, New Jersey became the first state to outright abolish its death penalty since 1965. And despite upholding the constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure in April of this year, in June the Supreme Court concluded the execution of child rapists is illegal.

By all outward appearances, the death penalty in the United States faces an uncertain future. Ever since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976’s Gregg v. Georgia, its use has been gradually restricted. In 2007, 42 inmates were executed, down from a post-Gregg high of 98 in 1999. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia don’t have death penalty statutes; 3 more (Excel doc) haven’t executed anyone in four decades. Meanwhile, Illinois granted clemency to all 167 of its death row inmates in 2003 citing a flawed sentencing process. The emergence of reliable DNA evidence has led to the exoneration nationwide of more than 200 wrongly convicted people.

Courts have limited who can be put to death and outlawed some execution procedures, while New York’s court of appeals even ruled the state death penalty law unconstitutional.

There’s debate among some scholars and death penalty opponents whether the restrictions placed on capital punishment post-Gregg have really put abolition within reach.

THE POPULAR OPINION FACTOR The most emphatic way that executions could be stopped is if the Supreme Court found death an inherently unconstitutional punishment—that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s pro-

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hibition of “cruel and unusual” punishments. A court precedent can be undone, but that occurs with far less frequency than does the reversal of state and federal laws by legislators. But just because a Court ruling is the key to abolition doesn’t mean litigation is the sole mean to this end. The Court’s 1958 Trop v. Dulles decision established the standard justices would use in Gregg and henceforth to assess death penalty challenges: A punishment is cruel and unusual if it is at odds with the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

This standard made public opinion directly relevant to legal challenges against capital punishment. Death penalty opponents gained a new avenue through which to attempt to overturn capital punishment’s constitutionality.

So they shifted resources from lawsuits to educating the public and state legislatures about purported problems with capital punishment. “The whole forum changed from the courts to the legislature,” said Renny Cushing, executive director of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, an anti-death penalty group. “Gradually there’s been recognition that the battle has been taking place on a state-to-state basis.”

CHIPPING AWAY AT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT? As anti-death penalty groups began more grassroots education and lobbying efforts, the Supreme Court kept a foot in the door by placing limitations on the use of the death penalty. 1977’s Coker v. Georgia made death for rape of an adult woman unconstitutional. 1986’s Ford v. Wainwright banned the execu-

contemporary • winter 2008

tion of the insane. In 2002, the Court ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded was cruel and unusual, and in 2005 it ended the execution of juveniles. Despite upholding Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure in Baze v.

Rees in April 2008, the Court just a few months later deemed that punishing child rape with death is unlawful.

Emboldened by these legal victories and some success delaying executions in states, reformers are generally optimistic about the prospect of abolition.

“Abolition is inevitable,” said Cushing, seeing “the development of a broad political movement that is based in states that has supported legal developments.”

This optimistic viewpoint holds that courts are gradually “chipping away” at capital punishment in response to evolving societal views, first banning its more egregious manifestations on its way to striking down the death penalty itself. Justice John Paul Stevens articulated this view in his Baze opinion, writing, “Instead of ending the controversy, I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug [lethal injection] protocol…but also about the justification for the death penalty itself.”

THE DEATH PENALTY’S REAL STATUS In contrast, some commentators challenge the notion that the restrictions placed on capital punishment foretell a steady march towards abolition. Journalist Dahlia Lithwick coined the term “Happy Death Box” to describe the widely-accepted execution procedure that may result from reformers’ demands for painless, sterilized lethal

injections. “Tender and loving” executions could be detrimental to abolition, she argues, because the Happy Death Box could “mitigate the outrageousness of the state taking a human life.”

Nicholas Levi applies the same logic, arguing that capital punishment was on the verge of abolition in the early 1800s, just before private execution laws were enacted that have since prevented the public from realizing the brutality of capital punishment.

In the same way, limiting who can be executed to the opinions of those the public perceives as most “culpable” could fuel beliefs that only the worst of the worst criminals are put to death (think about the popular execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh), masking other purported flaws in the process that opponents say produce arbitrary, sometimes racist death sentences.

Some in the anti-death penalty movement, like Executive Director of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty Esther Brown, think there is this slim risk. “There is of course that danger,” she said referring to the possibility a restricted but popular application of the death penalty will develop. But she stresses reform “does save lives,” leaving her and others few options. Ultimately though, Brown is still confident her organization can persuade state legislators that a moratorium on executions is necessary to study problems with the death penalty (albeit that effort, in Alabama, was unsuccessful this year).

Perhaps the key question is whether campaigns to restrict how the death penalty is used also educate the public about its other alleged flaws. Most death penalty opponents think they do.

“The Supreme Court helped just to start dialogue that the practice was going on,” said Hooman Hedayati, president of Students Against the Death Penalty (SADP) and a Campus Progress representative, speaking about the Court’s ruling against death for child rape.

“Even as courts have tried to make it more humane, it still is the same barbaric and cruel practice,” he said, emphasizing that the public is more concerned than ever about its flaws.

Abe Bonowitz, spokesperson for

the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, agrees. “Anything that limits the death penalty is a good thing. It gets more people talking about it and paying attention to it.”

THE OBSTACLES TO ABOLITION The effect of death penalty restrictions aside, other roadblocks may disrupt the drive towards abolition in the long run. For one, it seems unlikely the Supreme Court will soon reverse the 1976 precedent that reasserted the death penalty’s constitutionality.

And barring an influx of progressive new justices, the Roberts Court is not soon expected to agree to hear a direct challenge of the death penalty itself.

But perhaps the biggest barrier is the Fifth Amendment. It specifically mentions “capital” crime, giving judges license to claim the founding fathers expected death sentences would long be part of American society. A creative ruling that reconciles the Fifth and Eighth Amendments would be decidedly outof-character for the Roberts court.

Optimists point to a 2006 Gallup poll that showed for the first time respondents were statistically tied about whether life imprisonment without parole was preferable to a death sentence. But the Court’s lackluster record interpreting the Eighth Amendment is enough to raise doubts that the Court would take new change into account.

Benjamin Wittes, fellow and research director at the Brookings Institution, argues that the Court has failed to even consistently define the Eighth Amendment’s meaning; these are hardly fertile conditions for a momentous judicial consensus against capital punishment.

But some death penalty opponents think the Court’s erratic jurisprudence could work in their favor if there was irrefutable evidence of popular opposition to capital punishment. Hedayati argues that “often justices just go by public opinion” when deciding death penalty cases. “When the Supreme Court rules against the death penalty, most American people tend to be against [that application of] the death penalty,” he said.

BUILDING GRASSROOTS OPPOSITION

But even if substantial popular opposition to the death penalty would satisfy the Court’s “evolving standards of decency” qualifier, there may still be serious impediments to amassing high support for abolition. As Wittes points out, current signs of growing public disenchantment with capital punishment may just be a reflection of declines in the national crime rate since 1990. If crime rises again, so could support for executions.

Also, several states are responsible for the vast majority of executions annually. In 2007, Texas alone was responsible for 62 percent of executions; the top six executing states made up 90 percent of the annual total. It is difficult to envision executives or legislatures halting executions in these states. In fact, legislation to abolish the death penalty or enact moratoriums on executions was introduced in a handful of states this year, including Maryland, Connecticut, Nebraska, Virginia, and Alabama. None of the bills passed.

Challenges withstanding, opponents are nevertheless adamant that abolition is coming. “People are concerned about unfairness and protection of an innocent person,” said Abe Bonowitz. “We always will have arbitrary facts deciding who ends up with the death penalty and not the worst of the worst.”

And to the surprise of some, opponents are making some headway even in what Brown describes as “southern, blood-thirsty states.” Last year, antideath penalty groups in Texas convinced Governor Rick Perry to commute Kenneth Foster’s controversial death sentence to life-in-prison with chance for parole just hours before his scheduled execution. Describing SADP’s involvement—along with the support of others—in the effort, Hedayati said that “we showed last year it is possible to come and stop the death penalty in Texas.” In light of such efforts, the future of the death penalty is uncertain. Unless grassroots activists can sway the public, they may come to accept a restricted form of death, making the death penalty an enduring national institution. But only time will tell. bc

contemporary • winter 2008

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why bailouts by reed frye W

ith Henry Paulson’s emergency bailout plan signed into law in October and lawmakers now considering a bailout of domestic automakers, the sole claim sharing a bipartisan fanbase is that these bailouts suck. Badly. The far right sees them for the federal shopping spree that they are, the left decries such outright concessions to the business class, and everyone in between just really doesn’t want to pay those taxes.

Even the conga-line of politicians backing the Paulson plan have admitted to the bailout’s eventual but necessary “suckiness.”

This misery being perhaps the sole point of widespread agreement, one would expect political discourse to focus almost exclusively on the cause of our country’s chronic financial crises, how our government has shed protective legislature and $700 billion like Christmas pounds, and how to prevent the gluttons from shedding so many pounds next time around. I personally find it extremely difficult to ponder the wisdom of any of the past year’s bailouts when they sit in the shadow of our government’s grievous incompetence that led to them in the first place. $700 billion or no, we’re still bent over the knee of bank speculation and unaccountability with our pants around our ankles.

And yet, it is this very sentiment which our president-elect, Washington as a whole, and even the average American refuses to adequately address. Why is Congress still tak-

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SUCK

Reject bailouts at all costs. History has shown us where this path leads, and it sucks. ing advice from Henry “Whoopsadaisy” Paulson and Ben “Bupkis” Bernanke?

How can we have faith in Obama’s pledge to end “an era in Washington where… oversight has been overlooked, and your tax dollars have been turned over to wealthy CEOs” if he’s not even willing to accuse any “wealthy CEOs” or “overlookers” in the first place?

Whether this consensual blind spot results from an all-time low in the reliability of US democratic representation, or from America’s implicit agreement to the bailout as cure to the recession (and by extension a “recyclable band-aid” for all future recessions), it seems to me that the public does not comprehend just how much bailouts suck. Perhaps American voters are not aware of the degree to which America has already suffered from its long history of bailouts that suck— because if they were, Paulson and his recyclable band-aid would be seen for the filthy toerags they are.

Certainly the first comprehensive US bailout enjoyed some degree of success in 1933 with President Roosevelt’s creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, having saved more than 1 million homes from foreclosure. Yet today, faith in the success of a bailout is not iron, and with good reason. 1984 saw the inability of a $4.5 billion bailout, at the time of our nation’s largest bank failure ever, to return the country’s eighth-largest bank, Continental Illinois, to the private sector as it too was absorbed by Bank of America. The Resolution Trust Corporation, created to liquidate the assets of savings and loans associations during the Savings and Loans Crisis of 1989, had to euthanize a total of 747 banks before the crisis was over, along with the thou-

sands of jobs they represented. It is reasonable to expect Paulson’s plan to follow in this same vein: most of the past year’s bailouts, such as those of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, have been similar FDIC-sponsored purchases of failing companies by more solvent banks, resulting in layoffs for both companies. WaMu alone, having taken Continental’s trophy for the new largest US bank failure ever, previously employed 43,000 people.

Paulson’s recyclable band-aid shows similar risks in terms of inconsistent returns on taxpayer investment.

Those who have done their research remember the 1974 bailout of Franklin National Bank amid accusations of Mafia involvement and general executive deception, the bank’s last assets finally being sold 7 years later at a $185.3 million loss to taxpayers. This is not to say that bailouts don’t have a history of profiting their reluctant investors – on the contrary, I’d even say that more than half of US bailouts have produced a profit, albeit less than the usual returns on government investment. In cases like the 1979 bailout of Chrysler Corp., $1.5 billion in loans produced a more stable Chrysler as well as $350 million in government profits. Unfortunately, one can hardly start to consider potential profits of the Paulson plan when nobody is being realistic about the prices. While Paulson’s bill calls for $700 billion in government funds, the original bill also strangely provided for a total $1.3 billion raise on the national debt ceiling.

What’s more, many estimate the average cost of a bailout of the US at about 13% of our GDP— $2 trillion, or three times the value proposed by Paulson.

Payroll and profits aside, we see the worst consequence of America’s perpetual bailout in the exorbitant growth rate of bailouts over time. After Roosevelt’s national bailout of home mortgages in 1933 at a cost of $3.2 billion (2008 dollars) in loans, a period of some 40 “bailout-less” years occurred. Following less demanding bailouts of the early seventies, the Franklin National bailout of 1974 weighs in at $7.7 billion (2008 USD), the Continental bailout of 1984 at $ 9.5 billion (2008 USD), and the more recent airline industry bailout of 2001 at $18.6 billion (2008 USD). If one examines only the comprehensive bailouts, we see the 1989 Savings and Loan Crisis bailout at $293.8 billion (2008 USD), followed by everyone’s favorite $700 billion bill. American’s bailouts exhibit not only a growth in bailout size over time, but also in frequency— the two recessions of the fifties brought no bailouts whatsoever, while the last two large-scale bailouts took place within 20 years of each other, a signal that our band-aid may cause more harm than help in the long run.

While much of this analysis of bailouts is certainly open to argument, the fact remains that bailouts cannot be our final solution, the spotlight of our news, and the centerpiece of our dinner discussions. In spite of the bailout’s awful resumé, it may very well be that we’ve arrived at a fork in the road between it and deeper recession. Regardless, the incompetence of the legislation and committees that got us here only pales in comparison to the sin of the voters and politicians who refuse to examine them. Reject bailouts at all costs. History has shown us where this path leads, and it sucks. bc

contemporary • winter 2008

19

FROM THE ARCHIVES

2007

SnitchPowerGod Our exclusive interview with the person who invited Bill O’Reilly to SPG

O

n Saturday night, November 12, 2005, Brown’s Queer Alliance hosted its annual SexPowerGod party in Sayles Hall. The event, which has become a fixture of campus nightlife, is famous for its skimpy dress code.

Most attendees wear little more than their underwear, if they wear anything at all. In 2005, the event garnered an unwelcome level of attention and notoriety. Unbeknownst to the party’s attendees, Jesse Watters, a producer with The O’Reilly Factor at Fox News, attended the event and videotaped a number of scantily clad students dancing, some of them visibly intoxicated.

That following Monday, The O’Reilly Factor broadcast a segment dedicated to the party, featuring an interview with Watters and showing portions of his footage without blurring anyone’s face.

During the interview, Watters claimed to have observed a number of students “making out,” some engaging in public sex. O’Reilly also speculated that students at the party had been using illegal drugs like ecstasy and criticized the party for resulting in a record number of emergency medical calls. According to the Providence Journal, more than 30 students required medical attention, about 20 of whom were hospitalized – a record number for a Brown social event. This caused university officials to initiate a review of its alcohol and event management policies. In an email sent to all undergraduates the evening following SexPowerGod, David Greene, then Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services, expressed concern regarding the record number of EMS calls following the party.

“That these problems occurred at events where alcohol was not served,” Greene wrote, “suggests the need to examine the climate for social events,

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by tor tarantola under-

their means of promotion, the practices regarding admission to them, and the culture of ‘pre-parties,’ which can lead to serious health consequences.”

O’Reilly also criticized the university for supposedly allowing the party to be funded with a portion of the student activities fee, an amount charged each undergraduate and allocated to the Undergraduate Finance Board for distribution to student groups. According to the Brown Daily Herald, Swathi Bojedla ’07, the UFB chair at the time, claimed that the party was in fact funded exclusively by raised money and ticket sales.

The Factor broadcast caused embarrassment for a number of students who attended the event. No effort was made to shield the identity of those caught on camera, and many attendees were clearly identifiable. The broadcast itself, besides raising issues of alcohol and event management policy, caused a great amount of concern regarding expectations of privacy.

The Herald reported in April 2006 that, according to Josh Teitelbaum ’08, QA co-president at the time, both the university and QA were aware before the party that a student had informed The O’Reilly Factor of the event and that a producer was planning to videotape it. Teitelbaum also claimed to have been informed by the Brown News Service that it had convinced the Factor not to go forward with the segment.

During the Factor segment, Watters reported that he had purchased a ticket to SexPowerGod on the Internet for $80. The person who sold him the ticket was not the same person who had initially contacted the show’s producers.

The Contemporary was able to interview the person who originally contacted the Factor about SexPowerGod. That person, who was a Brown

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graduate at the time, spoke on the condition of anonymity. The following is a transcript of the conversation between the Contemporary (BC) and the O’Reilly informant (OI): BC: Can you describe your part in Bill O’Reilly’s report on SexPowerGod? OI: I called The O’Reilly Factor and told them about the party. They then researched the party on their own and found out that Playboy had ranked it the #2 best college party in the country or something. They then asked me more about the party and I told them what I knew. They then asked me if I could get them a ticket. I said no. I still have no idea how they got a ticket.

BC: Who did you talk to at the Factor?

OI: I don’t remember. It wasn’t Jesse Watters .

BC: Was it a producer?

OI: Yes, I think so. He told me after the phone call that they would research the party and discuss it with Bill and the other producers. He said that they had done a similar report at Harvard

before.

BC: You mentioned that they asked you more about the party. Did they call you back?

OI: Yes. I only made one phone call to them.

BC: How long after this initial call did they call you back?

OI: I think a day or two. The thing is, they never told me outright that they were going to run a story on it. But after he called back, I knew it was very likely.

advances their cause in any sense.

BC: What’s your definition of “actively supporting?”

OI: I remember after the whole thing erupted, Swathi Bojedla and others were nitpicking about whether or not the student activities fee was being used for the event. These people completely missed the point. The QA is a recognized student group that receives a significant amount of money from the university. They use this money

O’Reilly Informant: These are students who have no shame about dressing like fools and having sex with random people in front of their peers. They are a disgrace; I have no sympathy for them.

BC: You said you told them what you knew about the party. What exactly did they ask you, and what did you tell them?

OI: I told them I had never been to the party myself but that I had heard about the things that happen there: all the sexual activity, excessive drinking, emergency room trips, etc. While the behavior there is certainly unacceptable, I thought that the worst part about it was the fact that the university not only tolerated it, but actively supported it by letting them use one of the most historic buildings at Brown and supplying security and such for it.

BC: So give me an idea of the timeline. How soon before SPG did you contact the Factor?

OI: Right around when tickets began going on sale...so probably a week?

BC: What motivated you to call the Factor?

OI: The idea that the university was actively supporting such debauchery just wasn’t right to me. My other problem was the double standard. Brown’s policies on fraternities and sororities are actually quite strict. Yet because the [Queer Alliance] hosts the event, the university seems entirely afraid to criticize anything they do. I fail to see how throwing this kind of a party

to recruit members, hold meetings, advertise, etc. In order to have this party, they need the active consent of the university. The university allowed the QA to use Sayles Hall, and provides security and medical assistance to the party. Brown knew exactly what was happening at the party. Forget about trying to stop it, they enabled it.

BC: What’s the nature of your objection? What should the university have tried to stop?

OI: It’s not good university practice to support a party where students are having sex on the floor of one of the most historic buildings on campus and being taken to the emergency room in astonishing numbers. I don’t think this is an unreasonable objection.

BC: How do you know that this went on there? I thought you’d never been to SPG. OI: I had heard it from enough people to believe it.

BC: Enough people who had actually been?

OI: Yes. BC: OK let’s talk about the consequences of the report. As you know, one of the producers was able to bring a video camera into the party and later broadcast his footage. Did you expect that this would happen when you talked with the Factor?

OI: They didn’t tell me, but yes, I thought it was likely.

BC: The footage featured a number of students dancing in their underwear (or who were otherwise very scantily clad), and the Factor did not blur anyone’s face. This caused a great deal of embarrassment for a number of these students. How do you feel about this? Do you regret your decision to contact the Factor?

OI: These are students who have no shame about dressing like fools and having sex with random people in front of their peers. They are a disgrace; I have no sympathy for them. In fact, I think it’s a good thing that their parents know what they are spending $40,000 on.

BC: But surely only a small number of them engaged in public sex, if this is in fact true. What about those who were just enjoying themselves? Do they deserve to be embarrassed on national television? Isn’t there some presumption of privacy that should be respected?

OI: People show up to the party with an expectation of random hooking up to say the least. I don’t know that they deserve to be embarrassed per se, but I can’t say that I feel particularly bad that they were caught on camera.

BC: So you feel no guilt for the trouble you caused the people who were unwittingly caught on camera?

OI: No. If they were that concerned about their sexual privacy, they wouldn’t have gone to begin with. And they wouldn’t have gotten so drunk.

BC: But surely the privacy abdicated at a party doesn’t include the expectation of being videotaped and broadcast on national TV in front of a million people...

OI: The QA themselves stated that their goal was to bring sex out into the open. I helped them accomplish their mission. They should thank me for that.

BC: But surely that mission also includes the creation of a safe space for sexual expression - isn’t national embarrassment inimical to that goal?

OI: How exactly does random hooking up and excessive drinking create a “safe space for sexual expression?”

BC: I think you’re over-generalizing - I doubt everyone who attended hooked up randomly or drank excessively.

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OI: It may be true that not every single person who attended the party got drunk or hooked up randomly. But the purpose of the party was very clearly to promote this kind of behavior. That’s why the party had become so famous.

BC: Does the fact that the Queer Alliance sponsors SPG play any part in your objection?

OI: Yes. I have two objections.

First, reasonable people can disagree on the issue of gay rights. The problem with the QA is that they don’t actually try to focus on these tough issues. Instead, they sponsor out-of-control parties. If anything, they actually confirm the conservative critique of gay rights.

Second, I don’t like the double standard from the university. Brown gives the QA a free pass because they are too politically correct to criticize queers.

BC: Are you saying the university wouldn’t have allowed such a party if it were sponsored by another group?

OI: I would hope the university would ban all parties of that nature.

BC: Does that include parties where any drinking takes place?

OI: The legal drinking age is 21.

Whether or not you think that law is right, Brown certainly has an obligation to enforce it.

BC: So your issue is with underage drinking?

OI: My issue is with underage drinking, sexual debauchery and the QA’s conduct on campus.

BC: How do you feel about the supposed inaccuracies and unverified assertions in O’Reilly’s coverage of the event? I’m talking specifically about his speculation about drug use, and the false assertion that student activity fee money was spent on the party.

OI: Student activity fees were indirectly used. Any journalistic inaccuracies should be condemned.

BC: How were they used indirectly?

OI: The QA is a Brown-recognized student group that receives university money and uses university facilities to recruit members and hold meetings.

Rather than using their resources responsibly, they spend time facilitating debauchery.

BC: But the student activities fee goes directly to the Undergraduate

22

Finance Board (UFB), and according to the UFB chair at the time, SPG was funded entirely by ticket sales.

How does this substantiate your (and O’Reilly’s) claim that student activity fee money was spent on the event?

OI: The QA gets UFB money. The QA organizes SPG. BC: How do you feel about any damage done to the university’s reputation as a result? As you might remember, O’Reilly called President Simmons a “pinhead.”

OI: I leaked the story to the Factor because I care about Brown. It is just wrong for Brown to be allowing this kind of thing on its campus. I remember seeing Wikipedia, blogs and other things mention SPG as being a part of Brown. University administrators knew for several years what was happening at SPG and still refused to do anything about it. The negative attention they received after the O’Reilly report forced them to start cleaning up their act.

BC: What would you say to those who would argue that it’s not the university’s place to control the behavior of its students, most of whom are adults?

OI: My argument is simply that the university should not be enabling this kind of behavior.

pen at Sayles, it still happens in a university building. The proper response would have been to ban the party completely and cut off any university support or recognition to the QA unless they started acting responsibly.

BC: Is it really the university’s place to regulate its students’ sex lives?

OI: They should not enable random hooking up in university buildings.

BC: Even in dorms?

OI: I obviously don’t think Brown should have cameras monitoring students at all times. But no, Brown should not encourage students to randomly have sex with each other. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial argument.

BC: Aren’t students going to do what they do anyway? You could argue that any party could lead to random hooking up. Should the university ban all parties?

OI: The reason SPG had become so popular is because of its reputation for over-the-top sexual activity. As a general rule, the university has an obligation to respect the law and should try to enforce certain basic standards of decency.

BC: Now that you’ve seen the consequences of the Factor broadcast, are you glad that you tipped them off?

OI: Yes. SPG is nowhere near as bad as it once was and the university’s

O’Reilly Informant: I leaked the story to the Factor because I care about Brown. It is just wrong for Brown to be allowing this kind of thing on its campus.

BC: Let’s talk about the university’s response to the story. What do you think about the changes they implemented as a result?

OI: They certainly took steps in the right direction. The interesting thing about the university’s response, though, was that it focused almost entirely on the alcohol problem at SPG and student safety. I’m glad that they confronted that issue. However, they completely ignored the nature of the party. I did not see a single administrator condemn random hooking up at SPG or criticize the QA for hosting the party. And while they stopped allowing the party to hap-

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alcohol policies are much improved.

While the Contemporary’s source alleges that the university enforces stricter standards for fraternity and sorority parties than it does for SPG, the source was unable to point out any specific policies or instances where this has been the case.

Katie Lamb ’10 is the current head chair of the Queer Alliance. She also served as an event coordinator for the QA’s dances, including SexPowerGod, in 2006 and 2007. In offering comment for this story, she made it clear that her views did not necessarily represent those of the Queer Alliance.

Joshua Teitelbaum ’08, who co-

ordinated and staffed SPG 2005 while serving as Queer Alliance copresident, declined to be interviewed.

Lamb acknowledged that there were problems with SPG in 2005. “I would agree that the statistics (concerning the number of students requiring emergency medical attention at the dance) are obviously a problem,” she said, “but it’s a problem that’s bigger than SPG... I knew there had been controversy and problems and I saw SPG as something really important. And I wanted to make SPG a safer place.”

As a result of the problems surrounding SexPowerGod 2005, the university placed the Queer Alliance on probation following a disciplinary hearing. According to Lamb, the QA was forbidden from holding its annual spring dance, StarF*ck, and the coordinators of SPG ’05 were prohibited from planning the dance in the future.

The university allowed SexPowerGod to continue in the fall of 2006, contingent upon a number of requirements being met. According to Lamb, these included hosting emergency medical personnel on site, hiring security guards to manage each entrance and exit, and requiring each student party manager to complete a 90-minute training with Health Education and the Student Activities Office in order to ensure that intoxicated students were not admitted. The Queer Alliance was also required to notify the Office of Public Affairs and University Relations before proceeding with the dance.

In response to the O’Reilly Factor ++broadcast, SexPowerGod event coordinators now keep a guest list instead of selling tickets, and only Brown ID holders and their guests are admitted. Cameras are no longer allowed inside the dance; yearbook photographers were denied permission to take pictures, though they had been allowed to in the past.

By all objective measures, the precautions taken by SPG coordinators since 2005 have been successful in addressing the health problems that plagued that year’s event.

The Herald reported that 14 students required emergency medical attention at SPG 2006, and that only five EMS calls were made the night of SPG 2007 (only one of which, according to Lamb, occurred at the dance).

But health concerns were not the only issues raised by the Factor broadcast in 2005. The reputation that SPG has garnered over the years has raised issues about how it reflects upon gay rights groups like the QA. When asked about the consequences of the broadcast, Lamb said, “The light that was put on SPG was not a kind one. And, you know, they pulled on national issues that kind of weren’t the point.

They said this gay rights group was throwing a giant orgy and students were shit-hammered and blah blah blah. But that’s so not the point. It dragged in a lot of controversy. SPG is not about gay rights. And to bring it to that level – it’s not fair to the event.”

The QA comprises a number of smaller committees that focus on different issues and projects, many of them political. But, according to Lamb, SPG is different. “There isn’t really a very political side to it,” she said. “If SPG had a vote, it probably wouldn’t.

It’s beyond all of that. It’s not about the political controversies of the time or about what one person thinks is right. It transforms itself as it’s going on, and it continues to do so. And that’s the beautiful thing about it.”

Lamb denies that SPG encourages a stereotype of gays and lesbians as being hypersexual. “When you’re at the dance,” she said, “it’s not about ‘I’m straight’ or ‘I’m gay.’ It’s about learning more about yourself and questioning what it means to be attracted to somebody and what it means for them to be attracted to you...The thing is, the majority of people who go to SPG do not identify as gay or lesbian.”

While she believes Jesse Watters, the O’Reilly producer who snuck into the dance with a video camera, is a voyeur, she does not harbor resentment toward the person who tipped off the Factor. “I don’t necessarily think it’s an entirely bad thing that that happened.

To some extent, I would be curious to know why they did it. I wouldn’t be angry or anything,” she said. “Maybe in the long run it helped. I’m sure it sucked at the time. I’m glad I wasn’t around in ’05. I’ve been more than happy to pick up the rubble and reconstruct something.”

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the brown contemporary winter 2008