Kenyon Observer the
September 12, 2012
Pussy Riot and the Fate of Putin’s Russia James Neimeister|page 6
Kenyon’s Oldest Undergraduate Political and Cultural Magazine
Kenyon Observer the
September 12, 2012
The Kenyon Observer September 12, 2012
Editors-in-Chief Gabriel Rom and Sarah Kahwash
5 From the Editors
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Managing Editor Yoni Wilkenfeld
Cover Story james neimeister
Pussy Riot and the Fate of Putin’s Russia “Sovereign Democracy” and the Politics of Protest ryan baker
6 Remembrance
A Personal Account of 9/11
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yoni wilkenfeld
Tyranny on the Temple Mount Religious Discrimination in Jerusalem megan shaw
Further Complicating a Sensitive Issue An Evaluation of the New Sexual Misconduct Policy matt hershey
14 Obama’s Medicaid Debacle
The Argument Against the PPACA tommy brown
Your Guide to Voting on the (Other) Hill
Featured Contributors Ryan Baker, Matt Hershey, James Neimeister, Megan Shaw and Yoni Wilkenfeld Contributors Tommy Brown, Jacob Fass, Richard Pera and Tess Waggoner Layout/Design Will Ahrens Sofia Mandel Illustrator Nick Nazmi Faculty Advisor Professor Fred Baumann The Kenyon Observer is a student-run publication that is distributed biweekly on the campus of Kenyon College. The opinions expressed within this publication belong only to the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Observer staff or that of Kenyon College. The Kenyon Observer will accept submissions and lettersto- the-editor, but reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. All submissions must be received at least a week prior to publication. Submit to Sarah Kahwash (kahwashs@kenyon.edu) or Gabriel Rom (romg@kenyon. edu).
Cover Art and Illustrations by Nick Nazmi
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FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Prospective Reader, We at the Kenyon Observer are excited to welcome a new academic year with this opening issue. We plan not only to discuss events that have unfolded in the past few months, but also to embrace the political discourse that will come with ongoing developments on campus and worldwide. Our first issue of the semester begins with a personal account as Ryan Baker takes a look back to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Addressing global issues, James Neimeister dissects the recent Pussy Riot protest in Russia and Yoni Wilkenfeld shares his experience as a Jewish visitor to the Dome of The Rock. On the domestic front, Matt Hershey scrutinizes President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, while here on campus, Megan Shaw explores the implications of Kenyon’s new nonverbal consent policy. We invite our readers to consider the views expressed here—both those with which they agree and those they would like to challenge. It is our hope that our contributors’ commentary will provoke thought and conversation away from these pages. As always, we invite letters and full-length submissions, both in response to content in this issue and on other topics of interest. Your Editors, Gabriel Rom and Sarah Kahwash Editors-in-Chief, The Kenyon Observer
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RYAN BAKER
Remembrance A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF 9/11
I will always remember when I was nine years old and Mr. Gardella quietly announced to my fourth grade class that a plane had been flown into the World Trade Center. I remember watching the news and seeing ash and debris engulfing the people who were struggling to make it down the street. I remember seeing the same smoke and ash from a mountain road on my mother’s drive to work. I remember fear and confusion as my mother sat me down to explain, in halting words, that my uncle Michael, her brother and a firefighter in the FDNY, had been in the South Tower when it collapsed. I remember her exact words as “he’s just missing. We don’t know for sure what’s happened.” I remember thinking, as only a child can, that this meant Michael was alive. I held on to that belief for four months before his body was recovered from the rubble. I remember reading the names of the dead next to Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sept. 11, 2003, as a relative of a victim. I remember in high school feeling a brief moment
of kinship, and then shame for that feeling, when the names of the dead included the father of one of my friends. Another had lost a brother. I remember a decade of my life during which my family and I grew up shaped by an event that likewise shaped the course of my country’s political and social landscape, maybe permanently. But most of all, I remember anger. Uncontrolled, uncomprehending and utterly consuming anger. I was not alone in this. I had lost a piece of my family to something I could not understand. It was not an act of war but of terrorism, a now commonplace word that at the time was totally new. I memorized the name Osama bin Laden and imagined myself as the American who killed him. I grew up wanting to be a Navy SEAL. In the course of my near decade-long rage, I saw the pain that my family went through. My grandparents’ home in the Bronx had become an open house, not just for my absurdly large Irish-Catholic
7 family, but also for the families of other victims who needed support. In my naïveté, I used this to fuel my anger. What I failed to recognize was the futility of this anger. My family grieved, but they did not dream of revenge as I did, and instead attempted to heal. But I never wanted to heal. My family founded an organization dedicated to donating scholarships to the children of beneficiaries who had died in 9/11, while I printed out military workouts and got into fights. As I grew older, my anger did not fade. It did, however, give birth to curiosity; I needed to understand 9/11 and I needed to know why it had happened. I needed to know about the people who did it and understand their reasoning. I began to question not only my anger, but also my country. My investigations yielded results I was neither expecting nor comfortable with. In the spring of my freshman year, months after choosing Kenyon over the Air Force Academy, I had a quiet conversation with my mother over the phone the night the President announced the death of Osama bin Laden. My mom softly asked me what I felt. I remember hesitating a moment, then saying equally softly, “nothing.” The line was silent for a few seconds. Somewhere outside McBride, I heard a drunken “’Murica!” cry. After a deep breath, my mother responded, “good.” It took me 10 years to fully comprehend that my anger behind 9/11 was neither righteous, patriotic nor healthy. Most importantly, it would not bring back my uncle Michael. In allowing myself to be consumed by what I considered to be a righteous rage, I not only embraced the same essential emotion that motivated the men who flew those planes, but I let them accomplish their mission. It was about far more than the death of individuals: it was an attack on America’s population. Cowards who hide in caves and plot the ills of others do not have the ability to wage conventional warfare on sovereign nations. Therefore, their attack was of a much more insidious nature; it was an attack on the spirit of the American people. And they succeeded. We rallied behind a flag. We showed our unity in the face of adversity. We began to rebuild. Yet this was a mask for the same anger that dominated my adolescence, a mask for the same fear and confusion that I felt at age nine. We allowed ourselves to be persuaded by fear. We lashed out at a section of the
world that a majority of us did not fully understand. We allowed the government to sign over many basic rights because, ‘hey, if they call it the Patriot Act then you have to agree with it, right?’ Do not misunderstand me. I like the defense budget right where it is, and the idea of reducing it terrifies me. The realities of America’s international position right now do not afford us the luxury of defense cuts. Yet America’s foreign policy has become shaped by this one event that has caused us to look out at the world across our borders as the enemy. In an era of volatile power shifts and rapid globalization, we looked to our leaders for some form of order, of sense, of a general continuation of our “manifest destiny” as the shining, free city on the hill. Our leaders gave it to us at the expense of a large portion of the very vision our country was built upon. After last year’s Michael Lynch Memorial Foundation dinner, I spoke with my grandfather about the organization and its rapid growth over the past decade. We spoke about the people that it has helped, the futures that it promoted. I asked him where he and the rest of my family found the time and the energy to keep it growing. Finally I asked him if he still felt angry. Without hesitation, he told me that his grief has outweighed his anger. While he still felt angry, he no longer focused on it. He, and everyone else in my family, got their energy from something more than anger: the realization that true strength is to make something of adversity. To take that which will never leave you, accept that it has become a part of your life and make something positive come of it. My grandfather lost a son. My mother lost a brother. And their response was to ensure the education of as many more sons, daughters, brothers and sisters as they could. I am still angry, that anger has never gone away. It has become a part of me now, and I doubt that I will ever be rid of it. I will not, however, spend Sept. 11, 2012, angry. I will spend it thinking about my uncle, one of the funniest, bravest, and most heroic men I ever had the pleasure of knowing. I will remember all of the things that made him this way, and try to embody them myself. I will fail. But most of all, I will remember. 9/11/01. Never forget. TKO
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JAMES NEIMEISTER
Pussy Riot and the Fate of Putin’s Russia “SOVEREIGN DEMOCRACY” AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST
Since becoming president of the Russian Federation in ments setting up a system of “managed democracy.” His 2000, Vladimir Putin has struggled with the task of bringing policies allow superficial freedoms, permitting the various the country out of the ashes left by the fall of the Soviet regions to keep their religious traditions and to maintain Union and the wildly corrupt, anarchic days of Boris Yelt- their own laws and language in exchange for their loyalty to sin’s presidency. Putin’s approach is embodied in the concept the State. Nationalism and religion have become pillars of of “sovereign democracy.” Used in the sense of popular state power as populist tactics are used to neutralize disconsovereignty, sovereign democtent and dissent. racy is a somewhat redundant This is precisely where Pussy hrough their protest term conveying the idea that, Riot enters the equation, as they though Russia has adopted ussy iot has provided a were accused of offending the the tenets of formal democOrthodox Church as part of racy and the market economy, limit case to the idea of their protest. The Orthodox it has not done so in capitula- popular sovereignty Church has long been a symbol tion and will instead assert its of the Russian state, but since distinct national identity. FurGorbachev’s restructuring of ther embedded in this notion is the Soviet state in the 1980’s, also an implicit sensitivity to outside influence. Much of this religion has become a means of affirming national identihas to do with the all-pervading fear that Russia might fall ties situated within the realm of politics and power. The apart again at any time. Composed as it is as a federation of Pussy Riot affair represents a challenge to the alliance of “oblasts,” “krais” and autonomous republics representing the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state, as well hundreds of ethnicities and numerous religious groups, con- as its connection to Putin’s managed, sovereign democracy. temporary Russia lacks the unifying element once provided Through their protest, Pussy Riot has provided a limit case by Soviet ideology. Some territories, such as Chechnya, have to the idea of popular sovereignty. Their trial and impristried to secede and have been brutally suppressed, providing onment should prompt one to ask precisely who are “the an especially revealing example of the Russian Federation’s people” from whom a state claims legitimacy. Pussy Riot’s fragile nature. act of protest highlighted the weakness of sovereign democIn response to domestic uprisings and popular dissent racy, the idea that the Russian government can act in the Putin has established what is referred to as the “vertical of name of the people and simultaneously wield its power to power,” eliminating much of the power of regional govern- coerce them.
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Members of the ruling United Russia party formulated the idea of “sovereign democracy”. With the country in chaos, Yeltsin named his successor Vladimir Putin in 1999. Once in power, Putin quickly went to work, dispensing with his foes in perhaps the only way he knew, with the absolute ruthlessness of a former KGB officer. Putin stamped out the authority of unruly regional governments, completely reorganizing the Federation Council. This is the upper chamber of parliament that had previously been composed of the executive and legislative head of each federal subject. This arrangement had been an enormous headache for the government in Moscow in the previous decade, as it gave regional governors enormous national presence that competed with the power of the president. Putin’s reforms ended the direct election of governors and stripped them of there to power to sit in the Federation Council. Afterwards, Moscow was to submit candidates for executive office, shifting the weight of decision making from the regions to the center. This has since been known as the vertical of power, the fundamental policy behind United Russia’s “sovereign democracy.” Though Putin’s toughness seemed to be bending the nation toward stability, there was a certain level of weakness apparent in failures such as the Nord-Ost hostage crisis. During the Nord-Ost crisis, the army used experimental chemical weapons that killed both civilians and terrorists who could have been saved if a proper emergency response had been organized. This raised many doubts about the way the war in Chechnya was being pursued, and whether that war might be backfiring, gravely hurting the very people it was meant to defend. With such apparent weaknesses, there was ultimately a need to go even further to solidify control; in order to do so Putin needed to carefully control public opinion so as to solidify his power base. United Russia has had to carefully manage public opinion by manipulating peoples’ sense of identity. As the USSR began to collapse, people looked to revive national traditions, and religion played an especially important role in that revival. Traditional religions such as Orthodox Christianity and Islam seemingly flourished. Religious practices represented a kind of double heresy inasmuch as it was an affirmation of both national and religious identities, both of which conflicted with the official Soviet ideology emphasizing worker’s solidarity. It is important to note that while many Russians self-identify as Orthodox, relatively few are actually practicing believers. The Orthodox revival was in many ways brought about by peoples’ desire to reassert their distinct national character in opposition to the deteriorating Soviet state. Under Putin, the phenomenon of fusing religious and national identities has intensified in its political significance. Ever the pragmatist, Putin realized that given just enough self-rule such as the right to keep their language and religious traditions, the loyalty of semi-autonomous regions could be preserved. An extreme example would be the only Buddhist
state in Europe, Kalmykia, ruled by the same autocratic president since the fall of the USSR. It was this co-option of religion by the state against which Pussy Riot protested first and foremost. Pussy Riot’s act of protest symbolically undermines the manipulation of religious, and in conjunction, ethnic, identities that the party uses to justify “sovereign democracy.” The choice of the Church of Christ the Savior as the site of their protest was no accident. The church’s reconstruction began during the mid 1990’s when the country was in an economic morass, unable to pay government workers their salaries or the elderly their pensions. Its reconstruction drew controversy, as some demanded the money be spent on other purposes. The premises of the church are not even managed Church but by the Foundation of the Church of Christ the Savior, which administers paid tours, gift shops, and a parking garage there. Though Pussy Riot’s performance may have been perceived as blasphemous, and indeed they were tried as such, the members of Pussy Riot intended their act to be a kind of expulsion of the moneylenders from the temple. In her closing statements before trial, Pussy Riot member Natalya Tolokonnikova made reference to the “holy fools.” Analogous to the Old Testament prophets, the holy fools are saints and holy men of the Orthodox faith who decried the evil doings of earthly leaders: princes, tsars, and emperors alike. Clearly stating that their intentions were not to attack religion itself, Tolokonnikova decried that “the state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours,” explaining that “this is what made us go into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.” It is fitting, then, for Pussy Riot to challenge Putin’s “sovereign democracy” by protesting the alliance between the church and state. Putin and United Russia’s approach to keeping the Russian state together has relied on a ruthless exercise of violence, an almost overcompensating show of strength, as well as a manipulative populism. In juxtaposition, Pussy Riot’s tactics and words, influenced as much by feminism as by their interpretation of scripture, highlight what is lacking in contemporary Russia. “We are angered by the appalling weakness of horizontal relationships within society,” declared Pussy Riot member Natalya Tolokonnikova from a cage before the courtroom. Putin’s policy of sovereign democracy may have achieved relative stability in the short term, but it is a stability based on the ever-present threat of violence. As the protest movement in Russia grows, it is yet unknown whether such a stability can be maintained. For that reason, simply calling for Pussy Riot to be freed or deposing of Vladimir Putin will not be enough. What remains to be seen is if growing discontent will give rise to a movement that can maintain order and meet the peoples’ demands effectively, or whether it will disrupt the established order, fracturing and rupturing the country once again. TKO
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YONI WILKENFELD
Tyranny on the Temple Mount RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION IN JERUSALEM
This summer, I visited the most contested plot of land in human history. Known to Muslims as al-Haram ash-Sharif and to Jews as Har Habayit, the Temple Mount has been considered for nearly 3,000 years to be among the holiest places in the world, by at least three religions. It was there, according to Biblical and Talmudic tradition, that God created the Garden of Eden and all of humanity. King Solomon constructed a temple there in 970 BC as a literal house of God; over the next millennium, it was destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt by the Persians, and destroyed again by the Romans in 70 AD. Since that time, pious Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem, waiting for a third temple to be rebuilt. Upon Roman conquest of Jerusalem, the Emperor Hadrian placed a pagan altar of his own likeness on the site; in the fourth century, the Byzantine emperor Constantine commissioned a Christian church. The Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 691 brought the construction of the Dome of the Rock, a magnificent shrine to the location where Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven. In 1967, Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided to keep the Temple Mount in the hands of an Islamic custodial trust known as the waqf, as a measure of conciliation to the defeated Jordanian army. Despite this turbulent history, I was surprised and
troubled by what I found when trying to visit Temple Mount last July. Accompanied by my father, our first attempt to enter was denied by an Israeli security guard who informed us that the entrance we had chosen was “for Muslims only—go away.” We hurried to the proper tourist entrance, the single gate out of eleven that is accessible to Jews or Christians. This particular gate leads to the Mugrahbi Bridge, which overlooks the Wailing Wall on the left and the ruins of a Roman colony on the right. By the Wall, hundreds of Jews were gathered to worship, beg and literally weep at the closest place to the site of Solomon’s temple that is open to Jewish prayer. At the entrance to the bridge, a large sign advised visitors that non-Muslim ritual objects are prohibited; an American nearby had her Christian bible confiscated before entering. We emerged from the bridge onto an immaculately landscaped plaza and began to walk along the perimeter of the plateau. Five minutes passed before a bystander demanded we move away from a nearby mosque. We deliberated whether to wear our ritual skullcaps in plain sight of the waqf or of Israeli police, since a month before our visit, a tourist from London was told to remove his skullcap or leave the area (he left). Open prayer was out of the question—Jews are routinely arrested or escorted off the Temple Mount for worshipping out loud. The previ-
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ous Israeli administration made this bizarre prohibition explicit in January 2008 when Public Security Minister Avi Dichter announced the official government policy: “Jews may pray on their holiest site— but only in their heart; no lip-moving allowed.” To my surprise, lying on the eastern plaza was a massive pile of waste, construction debris and torn clothing. It was puzzling that the waqf could tolerate the presence of a garbage dump mere steps from the sacred Dome of the Rock, but not that of Jewish prayer. In Jerusalem: A Biography, Simon Montefiore tells us that upon the Byzantine conquest of Jerusalem, the Empress Helena “ordered filth thrown [on the Temple Mount] to ‘show the failure of the Jewish God.’” Perhaps Helena’s policy has made an ugly reappearance. The Dome itself was barred to access by nonMuslims, but regardless we had move quickly towards the exit; non-Muslim access to the Mount is limited to four hours a day, Sunday through Thursday, to allow for the five daily prayers of Islam. As we neared a full circle around the site, a bystander barked that we were not allowed out of that particular gate. He directed us away from an incoming stream of worshippers and toward the exit designated for tourists and heretics. Ordinarily, this kind of discrimination would require no further comment. Unabashed, de jure persecution of targeted religious groups routinely draws condemnation from human rights groups and news media when it takes place throughout the world. Unfortunately, Jerusalem remains an exception. The ostensible reason given for the toleration of antiJewish policies on the Temple Mount is “security.” In the interest of not upsetting the local community with the presence of non-Muslim worship on Islam’s third holiest site, Israeli police and the waqf enforce laws prohibiting potentially inflammatory behavior—like moving ones lips in Jewish prayer. Sadly, fears of triggering violence on the Temple Mount are well-founded. Last February, Muslim worshippers threw stones and Molotov cocktails at security guards on the Mount, wounding twenty six people in the ensuing riots. On the evening of Yom Kippur 2009, dozens of Muslims gathered around a group of tourists and police escorts and threw stones at them; the clashes that followed wounded thirty five people. After a week of further riots, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Palestinian Authority “publicly decried ‘Israel’s attempts to conduct Jewish prayer services in the Aksa [sic] compound’
and urged the world ‘to force Israel to halt is efforts to Judaize the city.’” Occurrences such as these are often too commonplace to make the news. More infamously, the Second Intifada was sparked when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and a group of government and police escorts visited the Temple Mount. The Second Intifada, after five years, claimed the lives of over 5,000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis. The sensitivity of Palestinian Muslims to a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount is, according to PA President Mahmoud Abbas last August, a reasonable response to the “black goals” of the Israeli government: “destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, building the ‘alleged Temple,’ taking over the Muslim and Christian holy sites…and [continuing Jerusalem’s] occupation and Judaization.” All politics aside, an honest reading of history cannot deny the importance of Jerusalem or the Temple Mount to the Jewish tradition. Rabbi David Golinkin, a member of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, estimates that “Jerusalem” or “Zion” is mentioned in the Bible over eight hundred times and on nearly every page of the centuries-old Jewish prayer book. This reverence alone does not itself justify Israeli control of Jerusalem. At a minimum, however, it justifies the basic right of peaceful tourists and worshippers to visit and pray at Judaism’s holiest site. Under any other circumstances, this situation would be considered a hostage crisis: a captor threatens violence against innocent civilians and demands, in exchange for their safety, an unreasonable reward. Yet when those captors are throwing stones and their hostages are Jewish pilgrims, the world is silent. It is time for the international community to call anti-Jewish policies on the Temple Mount exactly what they are. Given the propensity of violent riots to erupt after even small showings of non-Muslim prayer, it is unlikely that the Israeli government, the waqf, or the international community will push for freedom of expression on the Temple Mount. Still, the political leaders of the world should take notice at the quiet, daily injustices against civil rights in the lone section of Jerusalem that has been under Muslim control since Israeli independence. Politicians frequently declare the end-goal of the peace process to be the establishment of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. If the Temple Mount is any model, we already have some idea of how such a capital might treat its Jewish neighbors. TKO
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MEGAN SHAW
Further Complicating a Sensitive Issue AN EVALUATION OF THE NEW SEXUAL MISCONDUCT POLICY
Much of my first-year orientation remains a blur most—Kenyon’s sexual misconduct policy. We were of awkward social interactions, a desperate struggle told that at Kenyon any sexual act—whether holdto remember names and to recognize my classmates. ing hands or intercourse—required verbal consent One thing in particular, however, sticks out in my from their partner. They needed an audible “yes,” mind: the night we were rounded up as a class and preferably an enthusiastic “yes” and definitely not led to Rosse Hall to watch “Real World: Gambier.” one that was coerced, forced, unsure or said while No one knew what to incapacitated. This was, we expect, but our Commu- W e were told that at K en - were told, the only way to nity Advisors insisted it ensure that every sexual act was extremely important yon any sexual act required that occurred on campus that we go and that we atwas between consenting, verbal consent : an audible cognizant, adults. tend the discussion session after the show. We all piled “ yes ,” preferably an enthu As a sophomore, I did into the crowded rows in not attend this year’s “Real Rosse and watched various siastic “ yes .” World: Gambier,” but I can college situations unfold only imagine that the first on stage, especially those years saw scenes somewhat featuring examples of Kenyon’s party and hookup different from those I saw, because beginning this culture. school year, Kenyon’s sexual misconduct policy no Soon, we were all familiar with things like the longer requires the audible verbal consent. It now Good Samaritan Policy, what to expect at Old Ke- allows “other forms of consent, including non-vernyon parties and, perhaps, what was stressed the bal consent such as initiating or actively participat-
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ing in sexual activity.” Perhaps the required verbal consent policy implemented prior to this year was somewhat idealistic. Surely, there were instances in the past where verbal consent was not expressly given, but neither of the two parties involved felt that sexual misconduct had taken place. This new policy, however, creates opportunities for misunderstanding and miscommunication that the old policy did not allow—particularly in the case of interpreting what constitutes as “nonverbal consent.” Maybe if two people have been in a relationship for an extended period of time, they would be able to read each other’s body language well enough to recognize mutual consent. But on a college campus where casual hookups are commonplace, the situation becomes much more complicated. Most pressing of all: what if the initiator misinterprets their partner’s actions as consent? The policy answers by stating that “a greater burden falls on the initiator of the sexual activity
T his
new policy creates op -
portunities standing
for
and
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cation that the old policy did not allow . to ensure that consent has been granted by the responding student.” Since the initiator is responsible for their partner’s consent, in this case, the initiator could be charged with sexual misconduct, even though they may have not realized that their partner was not consenting. With the new policy, two people are negatively impacted: the initiator, who has (perhaps unknowingly) committed sexual misconduct, and, of course, the respondent, who has been the subject of unwanted and non-consensual sexual contact— a situation which might have been avoided entirely had the initiator asked for verbal consent instead of relying solely on their ability to interpret body language. Additionally, non-verbal consent contradicts the
policy’s stipulation that “both people need to be specific about the sexual activities to which they are consenting.” How is this possible in lieu of verbal communication? How can both people be “specific” when they, presumably, are not speaking at all?
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confusion . The policy adds that “anything but clear, knowing, and voluntary consent is equivalent to lack of consent,” even though earlier it states that “other forms of consent, including non-verbal consent… may not be as clear.” The only way to be absolutely, one hundred percent sure of someone’s consent is to ask them and to hear his or her answer, verbally, in the affirmative. Otherwise, it is implied consent, and a policy cannot be centered around implied consent. As demonstrated, it is a detriment to both the initiator and the responder, and allows an unacceptable amount of room for misinterpretation and confusion. It takes just a couple of seconds to ask if someone is comfortable, if they consent and if they are sure that they want to continue. While the old policy may have been sometimes pushed aside, at least it encouraged people to take this step and to communicate openly with their partners about what they did and did not want. The sexual misconduct policy will not be up for review again until the 2015-2016 academic year, but comfortable social interactions are a priority at all times. Open communication and understanding are traits which the Kenyon community values in all of its forms, including those in the context of sexual relationships. Students should therefore think carefully about this change and its role in our culture, and perhaps consider re-introducing the clause that requires verbal consent. TKO
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MATT HERSHEY
Obama’s Medicaid Debacle THE ARGUMENT AGAINST THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act some 60 million Americans. There are currently (PPACA) is perhaps the most polarizing issue in 12 million Americans who are technically eligible politics today, and for good reason. The law is both but not on Medicaid’s rolls, some 70 million people vilified by conservatives and lauded by liberals. To who ought to be on the program. Apart from these the former, it embodies a individuals, the PPACA will vast expansion of the entiadd about 16 million others he most compelling argu tlement state. To the latter, to Medicaid and fully init represents a long awaited ment against the s tends to pay for these costs move to rectify inherent inthrough federal taxes. Howof edicaid ever, the other 12 million equalities which dispropor- expansion tionally affect the poor and people who are currently however is that it provides sick. One way the PPACA eligible but not enrolled will seeks to meet this goal is inadequate care for those be mandated to join Medby dramatically expanding icaid. These costs will not Medicaid. This increase has who use it be matched by the PPACA. sparked criticism by many Rather, they will remain the conservatives, whose issue is not that it expands a responsibility of the states, costing them billions crucial safety net, but rather that it builds upon a of dollars. Bankrupt California will be liable for system that accomplishes the opposite of what it is billions of additional dollars annually; Florida will intended to do. spend $1.2 billion on coverage by 2019; Texas will Medicaid’s fiscal issues are ample and worrisome. face an increase in costs to the tune of $27 billion To understand why, one must first understand whom by 2023. It will also cost the federal government the PPACA will add to Medicaid’s rolls—already $452 million over the next decade. By 2016, one in
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four Americans will be a recipient of Medicaid. The most compelling argument against the PPACA’s expansion of Medicaid, however, is that it provides inadequate care for those who use it. Under the current system, Medicaid offers a uniform entitlement package to all states and reimburses doctors who see Medicaid patients, a hardly generous 50 cents on the dollar. Tragically, reimbursements are so low that most Medicaid patients are either frequently denied care or receive vastly substandard treatment. The Center for Studying Health System Change found that internists were 8.5 times more likely to turn down patients who relied on Medicaid, The New England Journal found that twothirds of children on Medicaid were denied doctor’s appointments, and Health Affairs found that over 30 percent of the Nation’s doctors are unwilling to accept Medicaid patients, all patently due to low reimbursement rates. To be fair, the PPACA does temporarily increase reimbursements for doctors who accept Medicaid—about 80 cents on the dollar—but this is ephemeral at best, as it only lasts from 2014 through 2015. Ironically, it is even less expensive for doctors to treat the uninsured than those on Medicaid. A study by MIT Economists Nathan Gruber and David Rodriguez reported that for 60 percent of the physicians surveyed, Medicaid fees were two-thirds less than those paid by the uninsured. Interestingly enough, Gruber and Rodriguez also found that uninsured Americans pay more than their privately insured counterparts for care—receiving price discounts less than .8% of practical revenues. Medicaid users also suffer from even worse care than their uninsured counterparts. A study in the Annals of Surgery followed 863,658 individuals under going surgical operations between 2003 and 2007 found that Medicaid patients were 13 percent more likely to die than the uninsured. They also stayed in the hospital 50 percent longer and cost 20 percent more than those without any insurance. For clarification, length of hospital stay is another indicator used by experts to measure quality of care. This study is hardly an outlier. The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia-Cornell, and the American Journal of Cardiology have come to similar conclusions. The PPACA is reckless in that its increase in cov-
erage is a ruse. It offers a solution that is hardly desirable or feasible. For millions of Americans, Medicaid is healthcare only by name. Even the New York Times laments this fact in an April 2011 article, quoting a Medicaid patient who refers to her Medicaid card as a “useless piece of plastic.” Complicating matters further, Medicaid is also responsible for crowding out private insurance. A 2012
T he PPACA
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that its increase in cov erage is a ruse . it offers a solution that is hardly de sirable or feasible .
study in the Health Services Research found an inverse correlation between an increase in Medicaid and a decrease in private insurance. The numbers are compelling as the ratio is almost 2 to 1. So what is there to do? One possible solution is restructuring the program similar to how congress restructured the AFDC (American Families with Dependent Children) in 1996, giving states block grants and allowing them flexibility in implementation of Medicaid programs. Block grants could at least provide states with an incentive to control Medicaid costs, because as it stands now, the dollarmatch guarantee ensures the opposite. Some people even estimate that fraud and waste comprise up to 40 percent of the program. A voucher system is another possibility, where states could be given lump sum Medicaid grants and doll vouchers accordingly. Alternatively, Medicaid recipients could also partake in subsidized exchanges similar to those that the PPACA will put into effect, but this solution is hardly cost effective. It is irresponsible for the PPACA to use Medicaid as a crutch to get more people health insurance. Instead of expanding the program and kicking the can down the road, the president ought to make some tough choices and help those he claims to be helping. TKO
TOMMY BROWN
Your Guide to Voting on the (Other) Hill Every four years our country comes together to decide the next president of the United States. Given our silly election system, Ohio is arguably the single most important state to win in this election. For that and other reasons, the Observer strongly encourages every student at Kenyon to vote this November, whether in Ohio or at home. But in case you plan to register in the middle of nowhere, we’re here to help you out.
Important Dates
Oct. 2 Oct. 9 Nov. 2 Nov. 6
First day of early voting Last day to register Last day to vote early Election Day
Registering to Vote Things to know: • You must register 30 days prior to the election. • You must update your registration status each time you move. • You are eligible to register in Ohio, even if you have already registered elsewhere. How to do it: • Google “Ohio voter registration form.” The first link is the Secretary of State’s form to register. • Print it out, obviously. • Fill out the form with all required info. • To find your dorm’s address, go to http:// tinyurl.com/4fmm3k6 and put this under “House Number and Street” on the form. • Put your PO box in the “Additional Mailing Address.” • Don’t forget the last four digits of your Social Security Number. • Mail to: Knox County Board of Elections 117 E. High St., Suite 210 Mt. Vernon, OH 43050 • OR give it to a student organization or campaign running voter registration drives to turn it in.
Voting Things to know: • Early voting is the easiest, fastest and safest way to vote. Period. It takes you less time and puts less stress on the polling station on Election Day so that more people can vote. • If you live North, you are in Gambier Precinct A, if you live South you are in Gambier Precinct B. • You must be registered to vote beforehand, you cannot register at the polls. How to Vote Early: • Don’t forget to bring a photo ID. • Go to the Knox County Board of Elections on or after Oct. 2. 117 E. High St., Suite 210 Mt. Vernon, OH 43050 • Hours: Monday through Friday Oct. 2 - 19: 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Oct. 22 - Nov. 2: 8:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. • If you do not have an Ohio driver’s license, the last four digits of your Social Security Number should suffice as identification. How to Vote on Election Day (6:30 a.m. - 7:30 p.m.) • Don’t forget to bring a photo ID and the utility bill the school will send you in the coming weeks. • Head down to the Gambier Community Center on Meadow Lane. • Remember to get there early!