Red Sox win World Series
INSIDE
Big change at Farmers Market
PAGE 2
$1 billion for SMU students
PAGE 4
A look at Alamo Drafthouse
PAGE 6
PAGE 5
friday
november 1, 2013 FRIDAY High 82, Low 55 SATURday High 75, Low 46
VOLUME 99 ISSUE 31 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
BEN OHENE / The Daily Campus
In the second of three panels, Celeste Ward Gventer, Peter Chiarelli, Carter Ham and Buzz Moseley discuss “Capabilities and Choices” for the military given the recently tightened Defense Department budget.
SMU hosts National Security Conference
Tower Center brings in defense policy experts to discuss military strategy under conditions of austerity Katelyn Gough Assignments Desk Editor kgough@smu.edu A little more than a week after the U.S. government ended its nearly month-long sequester over budget disagreements, SMU’s Tower Center addressed the budget question head-on, and not just from the American perspective. This year’s National Security Conference, “Making Strategy Under Budget Austerity,” instead continued the discussion from the preceding Tower Center events of this fall to investigate and build upon the points of international conversation currently driving the global playing field. In fact, the first panel Thursday focused on the effect of budget disagreements and sequestration on U.S. relations outside its borders. Within the country’s own historical context, the most recent sequestration and inability to pass a budget should not have come as too big a shock. In his opening statements, General Peter Chiarelli said while many are saying “the budget sequester was a success,” one needs to “get closer to the
problem to understand” just how easy or hard the question of budgeting is. “Since 1954, Congress has passed, on time, four budgets. Four budgets since 1954,” Chiarelli said. “When you look at the sequester cuts, you have to remember that there are only certain places you can cut [from] and get away with it.” Chiarelli, who served as the Army vice chief of staff and thus was given the task of that military budget, spoke from experience when explaining the lack of understanding of “the tremendous inefficiencies” when a budget resolution is not met. Cuts need to be made, “but the hardest thing to cut...is a program that is delivering what it is supposed to deliver,” Chiarelli said. Chiarelli gave instances from his work when programs were being cut to allow for other budget needs that had, overtime, become more routine than necessary. And even if there may appear to be an “obvious” opportunity to cut something from budget, it isn’t always followed through on, as demonstrated by examples of Congress’ work over the past
few decades. The understanding of the budget sequestration is one that differs greatly in Washington D.C. versus the rest of the nation, according to SMU professor Joshua Rovner. He explained that the “ongoing budget uncertainties” have serious consequences, and the lack of understanding can further ignite these. “There’s what the budget should look like in theory, and then the reality of doing it,” Rovner said. “You have to understand the messy and the gritty...If you ignore the nuts and bolts, you’ll have no understanding of how it happens.” Budget sequestration and strategies during such times, however, reach well beyond the American walls. Jeremy Shapiro, a Visiting fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, spoke on the U.S. European alliance, a system he said “is the key to American strength;” a fact that, according to Shapiro, “is particularly true to a time of budget austerity.” “These countries can fight with us and they can support us,” Shapiro said of the U.S.’s European
alliances. Despite the Euro crisis, “Europe is fundamentally stable...and I think it remains fundamentally stable.” Europe allows the U.S. “to access a lot of the others threatened around Europe,” such as the Middle East, that it wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. However, this country’s focus on these international affairs from its own perspective could, in the end, damage the very relationship that allows much of the work to be done. “The alliance may fade simply from neglect,” Shapiro said, citing “the fact that U.S. priorities seem to be elsewhere” rather than being “concerned with... European problems.” But it’s a two-way street, according to Shapiro. The alliance with Europe is one that needs to be updated — what needs to happen is a “reconceptualizing [of] the... alliance for U.S. and European global priorities.” Shapiro said due to constant changes in international relations and issues, “the old alliance...is not responsive to U.S. needs.” Rather, Shapiro drew attention to what he referred to as a “free-
riding problem” on the part of Europe. The European countries provide “legitimacy to the types of activities the U.S. wants to carry out” in the surrounding regions, and Europe carries none of the burdens while still receiving the protection. “It’s only rational to be a free rider in a situation like this,” Shapiro said. “But it will kill the alliance in a time of austerity.” Many working in the international field are talking about the “Asian pivot” that could also deteriorate U.S.-Euro alliances — as China and Japan grow in importance on the international spectrum, the U.S. could shift its priorities completely. Shapiro himself did not entirely buy into the notion, and Admiral Patrick Walsh, former Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, looked specifically at the growing U.S. focus on the South China Sea. “The reality of dealing with the Asia Pacific region...is that we’re dealing with the immensity of the region in a world that’s very integrative,” Walsh said, citing in particular the “explosive growth” the China region has seen over the past several decades. “The span
of [U.S. and global] interest is not only wide, but diverse.” The South China Sea is essential in international waters for trade and military travel. Walsh explained “the sea serves as the essential conduit that powers” an entire international system, and the “bulk” of the competing national interests and “regional and international disputes” now “travel by sea.” “Sea power has returned to preeminence,” Walsh said of national power in the region. He explained that “relatively few topics have the potential to determine” such significant outcomes as does the South China Sea and China’s role in all of it. And it’s a topic that is here and now, asserted Walsh. “We can’t look at the escalating tension in the region as something [still] over the horizon,” Walsh said. The next step, he said, is “dialogue.” “Everyone shares risks in [the maritime] environment,” Walsh said. “When we know each other’s interests [in the region]... we can begin to build confidence among nations.”
Fe ature
Student Body President ‘63 remembers JFK Katelyn Gough Assignments Desk Editor kgough@smu.edu Following President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in downtown Dallas, leaders from the city were asked to attend his funeral — as the student body president of SMU, John Hill flew in to attend the services honoring JFK and to pay his respects on behalf of the both university and Dallas community. “It was hard to believe Kennedy had been assassinated and even more so in Dallas,” Hill said, speaking to the shared sentiments of his fellow Dallas attendees. “We were all kind of shell shocked.” While Dallas became, for many Americans, a city of hate and betrayal following the assassination, similar associations existed years prior as well. “It was actually a very toxic environment politically,” Hill said, speaking to far-right
political groups that displayed “violence and animosity for people they didn’t agree with” during even the early stages of the 1960 presidential campaign. Darwin Payne, a professor emeritus at SMU and a reporter for The Dallas Morning News throughout the time of the Kennedy assassination and aftermath, explained that President Kennedy’s planned visit was one of skeptical support after several years of hostile political gatherings. Following U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s visit to Dallas several years prior, during which he was “spat upon, [and] had his speech interrupted constantly by a packed auditorium,” Payne said, “the same laments attacked [Vice President] Johnson and Lady Bird” during a campaign visit in 1960. “There was great fear and apprehension of the treatment and safety of the president while he was here,” Payne said. Hill echoed these sentiments
of hostility and aggression, and when it came time for him to address the university upon his return from the funeral, he “felt [all at the university] had a duty to go beyond campus and solve that problem” in the greater Dallas community. Hill explained that, at the time, there seemed to be three contexts within which SMU students experienced the assassination: one section of students who were “supportive of Kennedy... particularly with civil rights” and were therefore “really quite affected;” others who were not fans “but were affected by [JFK’s assassination] and felt saddened by it;” and a third group of nonsupporters for whom “it did not mean a lot to them in their personal lives.” Hill wanted his message to reach the entirety of the student body, regardless of their political views on Kennedy himself, because the issue of hatred stretched beyond even that. His attendance at the funeral
was, inwardly, “in search of understanding, in search of why our country had been denied the life and leadership of a man who stood for the things that all men should stand for: freedom, equality of opportunity, world peace and the elimination of prejudice and bigotry,” Hill said. “We needed to rid our society of that kind of hate and be more open to each other and each other’s ideas,” Hill said. “I was also trying to energize them in committing themselves to working for the public good.” In the years following Kennedy’s assassination, Hill said he saw “growing student involvement” in the social programs on campus concerning civil rights and wartime peace. He himself helped to lead a group of students and professors alike on a civil rights pilgrimage to further reflect on Kennedy’s larger message for equality and fairness. Now 50 years later, SMU
is a campus of both part unity and part division — there are continuously growing numbers of student diversity programs and organizations. There are also reports of hate crimes targeting issues including race and gender orientation. Current Student Body President Ramon Trespalacios believes that “there is still work to do towards creating a campus community where every individual feels respected and valued.” “It is important to understand that, in order for us to achieve our goal of creating a 100 percent inclusive campus, we need to... remember that what one Mustang does or says impacts the whole community,” Trespalacios said. He explained that the hate crimes that “have occurred in the past, even this year” need to come to a complete halt if the university wants to “achieve [its] goal of creating a 100 percent inclusive campus.” “It is our responsibility as
REBECCA KEAY / The Daily Campus
Ramon Trespalacios
students to take ownership of the issue and let people know that...SMU is no place for such actions,” Trespalacios said. “I challenge every SMU student to speak up whenever they see something that impedes us from becoming the best community we can be.”