The Tory has, of course, never been shy about criticizing Nassau Hall when we believe that the actions it pursues are contrary to the interests of the student body. When doing so, however, we always make sure to maintain a tone of civility, and to propose solutions rather than merely tearing down ideas proposed by others. In this way, I believe that the Tory meaningfully contributes to campus discourse– a standard that a few of the supporters of Greek organizations have failed to meet.

A similar dichotomy between constructive and combative advocacy can be observed in the two political movements that have arisen in the United States during the Great Recession– the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. These groups, and their relevance to Princeton students, are the subjects of an article by Elizabeth Swanson in this issue. As she notes, they share many common attributes. Both are diffuse movements without a clearly defined leadership or agenda. Both decry the corrupt nexus of Big Government and Big Business that has spawned bailouts for the influential and well connected while sticking the middle class with the bill.

In attempting to make their voices heard, however, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have taken markedly different paths, with predictable results. Say what you will about the Tea Party, there is no denying that it has had an extraordinary impact on the American political system. This is no accident, but a consequence of the movement’s decision to channel its energies into the electoral process. The Occupy Wall Street protesters, by contrast, still have not moved beyond the raw, unbridled anger on display in New York, Oakland, and other cities. Although they have legitimate complaints, the demonstrators have yet to come up with a realistic platform with broad popular appeal, concentrating instead on demonizing the wealthy and demanding more government handouts.

Princeton has a reputation as a politically apathetic school, especially in comparison to its Ivy League peers. This stereotype has been cited as an explanation for the relative absence of student involvement in the Occupy Wall Street protests. But just because Princetonians aren’t camping out in Zuccotti Park, doesn’t mean that we aren’t paying attention to issues of both local and national concern. In this issue of the Tory, our writers examine how Princeton students are responding to today’s confusing, and often frustrating, political climate.

One attribute of modern American politics is its sheer volatility. Longstanding coalitions have fractured, creating a vacuum that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street each seek to fill. As conservatives, we are left to assess whether the orthodoxies of our ideological forebears are still relevant. Traditionally, support for the death penalty has been an article of faith among conservatives. In a point-counterpoint piece, Chris Goodnow argues that this stance should be retained, while David Byler makes the case that it ought to be reconsidered. Similarly, while many prominent conservatives have stressed their opposition to gay marriage, Joe LoPresti argues that legal recognition of gay marriage is, in fact, the true conservative position. Meanwhile, Toni Alimi explores the complicated intersection of religion and politics among Princeton students, and the paradoxes that arise when the pulpit and the polls collide.

America’s shifting political landscape gives a new urgency to foundational questions about the meaning of conservatism and the values of our society. As our authors show, Princeton students are not absent from these debates; quite to the contrary, there are at the forefront, poised to shape our national discourse for a generation.

Sincerely,

Sam Norton ’12

The phrase “An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye makes everybody blind” is commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, and this idea applies to the American justice system. In 1954, the American Prison Association became the American Correctional Association – a largely symbolic move that indicated an increase in focus on rehabilitation of prisoners. In spite of this move, one particularly strong element of a penal justice system remains. That institution is the death penalty. I believe that the death penalty has no place in a society that makes the best possible use of its justice system. In order to make this point, I will outline foundations for justice and a good justice system and show that the death penalty is incompatible with these ideals. Then, I will briefly appeal to ideas imbedded in the American justice system and in conservative thought to bolster my case.

The first task in this debate is defining justice. As long as some level of punishment is part of the justice system, the principle that “the punishment fits the crime” provides the basis for allotting punishments. In other words, the punishment for greatly harming another is large and the punishment for doing less damage is smaller. However, in certain situations, intent and mental health must hold a place in the judgment process. Under these constraints, justice can be defined as exacting the weightiest punishments on rational citizens who execute a plan to greatly harm others, while those who knowingly inflict less damage should be dealt smaller punishments. While this system necessitates that weighty punishments are allotted to the worst offenders, justice itself doesn’t necessitate a death penalty. With that idea in mind, I will describe why a justice system without a death penalty should be adopted.

The justice system should have two purposes: to keep society safe from those who would harm it while making the best possible use of society’s resources. It’s important to note that the idea of “punishment fits the crime” is not explicitly stated in this framework. That’s because fitting a punishment to a crime involves only considering the safety of society at large and proper use of societal resources. To make this point more clear, consider retribution, another standard for allotting punishments. In the context of the death penalty, retribution typically means that if a mentally sound person has executed a plan to commit an egregious crime then the offender deserves to die. When one asks why the offender deserves to die, no independent reason for allotting that penalty is provided. Instead, proponents of the death penalty appeal to the idea that death fits a crime, avoiding the argument altogether. A logical inconsistency is also hidden in these arguments. Nobody advocates punishing rapists with rape or molesting molesters, yet the death penalty is deemed an appropriate response to violent crime. In these ways, retribution is a bad argument for the death penalty. Another argument for the death penalty is that someone who takes away another’s rights, particularly their right to continue living, should have corresponding rights taken away from them. This is just the argument for retribution stated in different terms. The idea that killers give up their right to life advocates for the death penalty without giving an independent justification for allotting that penalty. This argument appeals more to intuition and moral tradition than any identifiable train of logic, and while moral tradition has led people well in the past, it must, like all traditions, be subservient to logic, reasoning, and practical thinking, which are incompatible with the death penalty

In a just society, the greatest penalty should be incarceration for life with the possibility of regaining some liberties. This penalty, when executed properly, would protect society from criminals as effectively as the death penalty. Proponents of the death penalty often claim that certain criminals are a danger to those around them and should be killed to protect the public. This argument makes sense, but carefully implemented life imprisonment garners the same result. If violent prisoners are kept in maximum-security prisons in secluded locations, their ability to directly harm society disappears. This idea is supported by hard evidence. In April, Slate stated that the number of prison escapes has decreased from 14,305 in 1993 to 2,512 in 2008. These numbers are incredibly small considering that the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that there were over 1.5 million prison inmates incarcerated in 2009. While some inmates do escape, the rate of escape is very small and on the decline. The death penalty is thus unnecessary for keeping society safe.

Another common point made for the death penalty is that the government’s resources could be more effectively spent on prisoners who could be rehabilitated than on those who clearly can’t be changed. Even if we put aside the fact that executing a prisoner is often more expensive than letting them serve a life sentence in prison given the cost of the appeals system for those who are sentenced to die, we can still argue against the twofold assumption that this statement is built on. The first part of that assumption is that keeping certain prisoners alive will be a large net expense to society. The second part is that certain criminals permanently surrender their right to continue living upon committing a crime. The first assumption implies that prisoners will neither learn useful skills in prison, nor become sufficiently socialized to partially re-enter society. It’s not difficult to imagine a prison system that uses a combination of psychological evaluations, records of behavior during incarceration, and gravity of committed crimes to reapportion certain rights to prisoners over time. In such a system, if prisoners were reformed to the point that they could re-enter society safely, why couldn’t they be allowed to get a job and earn money? That money could be used to cover that inmate’s expenses while in prison, allowing the inmate enjoy some freedoms while reducing cost to the state. Of course, such a system wouldn’t be perfect – there would be cases in which a criminal used his or her newfound freedom to commit another crime. This shouldn’t annul all the previous benefits mentioned, though. If the justice system learned from its mistakes and used the utmost caution in reapportioning rights to prisoners, the system would eventually improve so that the benefits of repealing the death penalty could be felt with little or no incidence of such tragedies. Additionally, if a prisoner indefinitely continued with his or her unacceptable behaviors, then they could be kept away from society until natural death occurred. The practicality of rehabilitating prisoners rather than killing them is evident.

The second assumption is that prisoners surrender their right to keep living after committing a crime. This assumption was dealt with earlier, when there was no positive reason to say a prisoner should surrender his or her right to life upon committing a crime. Additionally, as stated previously, the death penalty permanently prevents inmates from eventually regaining their freedoms and society from enjoying the benefits of their productivity for no discernable reason.

Before moving on to other arguments against the death penalty, some attention should be given to the idea of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. It should first be noted that deterrence is difficult to measure, given the low number of executions typically examined in such studies. In “Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate, John Donahue of Stanford and Justin Wolfers of Wharton note that “Sampling from the broader universe of plausible approaches suggests not just reasonable doubt about whether there is any deterrent effect of the death penalty, but profound uncertainty – even about its sign.” Moreover, the American Civil Liberties Union notes that, “states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.” Additionally, those who cite the death penalty as a deterrent often fail to consider if juries will be less likely to convict a person whose sentence is death rather than life imprisonment. The death penalty also fails to deter those who commit crimes of passion. In sum, using deterrence as an argument for the death penalty doesn’t carry the weight of evidence, and so it can be refuted without arguing over its morality.

Marquis de Lafayette said “I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.” That is, the death penalty is unjust because it risks and sometimes destroys innocent life. Proponents of the death penalty usually invoke a deceptively simple argument in this scenario – that if we can execute 99 guilty men at the price of executing one innocent man then we should do so. This idea fundamentally conflicts with one of the basic principles of our justice system – “innocent until proven guilty.” The idea that any defendant is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty reveals that given the choice between letting an innocent man and a guilty man go free or punishing them both, we should let both of the men go. In that way, given the choice between executing 99 guilty men and one innocent man or letting them all live, we should let all 100 live. Whether or not “innocent until proven guilty” is a good principle, the death penalty is inconsistent with that key component of the justice system.

The final point I will make in this debate is that the death penalty is more than a moral and philosophical issue – it’s a limited government issue. If the government has the right to execute its own citizens, one’s likelihood of survival is tied partially to the competence of government officials. This is not a conclusive case against the death penalty by itself, but it is an important notion for any moderate or conservative to consider.

These arguments show that the death penalty is not a necessity for justice and is incompatible with the most practical vision for the justice system. The values of pragmatism, assumed innocence, and conservatism urge the abolition of the death penalty. For these reasons, I hope that the death penalty is abolished and that a more reformatory prison system arises in the United States.

In 1965, a man named Robert Massie killed Mildred Weiss while robbing her and her husband at their home in San Gabriel, California. While Mr. Massie originally received the death penalty, the California Supreme Court commuted all death sentences to life in prison in 1972. Exhibiting “good behavior,” Mr. Massie was released on parole in 1978, only thirteen years after having committed a heinous atrocity. Less than a year later in January of 1979, Mr. Massie murdered San Francisco liquor storeowner Boris Naumoff in a petty theft of a couple hundred dollars. Mr. Massie was tried, convicted, and successfully executed in May of 2001.

Crimes like these are unique, but unfortunately not uncommon. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 15% of violent felons, defined as those who commit murder, aggravated assault or rape, will commit a violent felony again. We can speculate motives for such crimes, implement all the well-intentioned rehabilitation programs we can think of, and hire the most penetrating criminal psychiatrists, but none of these efforts will resurrect Boris Naumoff from the grave. Had Mr. Massie been executed after his first crime, pursuant to his judicious trial and conviction, we cannot say that Mr. Naumoff would still be alive today, but he most likely would have been alive in February of 1979. For those who claim to value life, however small or historically insignificant, they should find this trade-off to be acceptable, or at the very least deeply thought provoking. This anecdote is certainly not conclusive, but it does patently reveal the cost benefit analyses that are made with peoples’ lives as we continue to vacillate on the death penalty issue.

Considering this balance, the modern death penalty is a judicious mode of punishment, reserving the harshest sentence for the most atrocious crimes. While its utility as a deterrent to future crime is hotly disputed, capital punishment is an effective prosecutorial tool, ensuring the greatest justice for the largest number. It values the lives of lawful citizens above those who have consciously sacrificed their right to live by murdering a fellow human being. If a man is said to own himself, then there is no surer way to give up that ownership than to irredeemably obliterate the self-ownership of another. In what may appear to be an incongruent paradox, the death penalty is the surest way to uphold the sanctity of life.

The irrevocability of capital punishment has drawn many statistical analyses, the majority of which are in direct contradiction to one another. At one moment, a researcher will cite a 1973 study conducted by SUNY Buffalo Economics Chair Isaac Ehrlich, who found that for every inmate executed, there are seven lives spared as future criminals are deterred from committing homicides. In the same breath, a different researcher will note that US crime rates are higher than those of many other countries that have outlawed capital punishment altogether. The two researchers will then hurl academic studies and conflicting cost analyses at one another, claiming that their own data is causational, while their opponents’ is merely correlative. In truth, the motives for murder and the complexity of the individual human mind render most of these studies unhelpful. A country could have a lower murder rate for a whole host of reasons besides a ban on capital punishment, and it is certainly a stretch to forecast how many hypothetical lives were saved by a hypothetical execution. If death penalty data is not a wash, then it certainly is a muddled mess.

Despite these conflicting studies and academic opinions, it would be premature to assume that the death penalty has no deterrent effect whatsoever. Logically speaking, paying credence to our own run-ins with parental punishment, the larger the negative consequence, the less likely we are to perform a certain impermissible act. This is purely a product of my experience with the human race, not based in analyses or regressions, but I find it safe to assume that you will find this observation to be generally correct. Transplanting this logic to our discussion of the death penalty, Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University, argues that, “capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else.” This principle is enshrined in our jurisprudence, where capital punishment is the last and final form of punishment. Even if the death penalty were not to convince a particular barbarian not to murder someone, van den Haag ultimately maintains, “they certainly would not be deterred by anything else.” As a product of deduction, capital punishment is therefore our most effective potential deterrent, even greater than a relatively comfortable life sentence without parole.

If the death penalty is the greatest potential deterrent that our system of justice can employ, then it also has the greatest potential to save future lives. This potential, even unrealized, is enough to justify capital punishment. If we are to live in a society that values human life, and more importantly those who value life themselves, then we must utilize all avenues that most effectively protect us from homicide. To allow one victim to perish at the hands of a criminal who would have been deterred by the threat of execution is unacceptable. Certainly, our criminal justice system is intended to protect the lives of potential victims above those of actual murderers. To oppose capital punishment in all cases, and to therefore unequivocally side with the murderer’s right to life, is to grant a barbaric criminal a greater justification for existence than the innocent and unsuspecting victim. To me, this is the greatest perversion of justice.

Even if we were to doubt my first premise, that the death penalty is our greatest potential deterrent, this still does not render capital punishment inert. As John McAdams, a Professor of Political Science at Marquette University wrote, “If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.” Once again, if our society is to value life as both an ideal and a pragmatic concern, then the trade-off outlined here is certainly enticing. The fact that there is a hope of deterrent, which no study could ever erase, is enough to justify capital punishment’s utility as a mode of justice.

When death penalty skeptics encounter arguments like the one furthered here, they oftentimes raise concerns that we could mistakenly execute an innocent defendant. Certainly, capital punishment must be carried out carefully through a series of appellate processes to make sure that we execute only the deserving convicts. This is exactly why an inmate’s journey down death row takes decades, littered with attorneys, appeals, and delays. In an article for the Wall Street Journal in June of 2000, former District Court Judge Paul G. Cassell wrote, “After reviewing 23 years of capital sentences, [researchers] were unable to find a single case in which an innocent person was executed.” When a condemned convict is taken off death row, it does not imply that the system is broken and that the death penalty should be abolished but that the system is working exactly as it should—executing only those who deserve it.

All this said, it would be shortsighted to suggest that a lack of misused executions in the past invariably proves that we will never wrongfully execute somebody in the future. The system has proved its efficacy over decades, but skeptics continue to argue that the risk of accidently killing an innocent defendant is too great, most recently pointing to the case of Troy Davis. After granting Davis a temporary injunction, all nine members of the Supreme Court did eventually agree that there was sufficient evidence to executive him, essentially serving as our greatest check against wrongful capital punishment. The ever so slight chance that he was innocent does not disrupt the foundation of justice upon which the death penalty rests. Many essential human activities require risks that endanger our lives, whether that be driving a car or flying a plane. Just because a truck driver crashes into another vehicle, killing that driver, does not mean that we should outlaw driving. Human error is an immutable condition, and since we must assume that risk, I will join Professor McAdams and err on the side of protecting the truly innocent.

Other capital punishment skeptics still maintain that there is no reason to take this risk because there is no reason to ever employ the death penalty. Life sentences without parole are an equally effective mode of justice, allowing the murderer to live while making sure he will never kill again. I have already discussed the deterrent side of this argument; so let me briefly address the issue of societal cost. While death penalty opponents cite cost studies saying it is cheaper to incarcerate a criminal for life than to execute him, there are just as many studies arguing the exact opposite. We must therefore look not at how many dollars are spent, but how those dollars are spent.

As our prisons become more crowded, scarce resources must be stretched over larger inmate pools, meaning the care for each inmate is diminished as another criminal enters the prison system. Our most violent criminals, those who would be legally deserving of the death penalty, require the most resources to pay for their high security cells and “extended” stays in our nation’s jails. These are resources that are not being used to help rehabilitate criminals who actually will have the opportunity to be reintegrated into society. Therefore, regardless of the price differential between life in prison and capital punishment, dollars spent on a lifetime prisoner have no positive societal value, and they actually drain resources away from criminals who do have the chance to enter back into society as contributing members. Additionally, it is interesting to note that resources spent on an execution at least have the benefit of potential deterrence. If we are to look at life without parole as a balance of costs, the murderer wins while society loses.

It is no coincidence that justice is oftentimes personified as a blind woman holding scales, balancing the rights and responsibilities of both sides with no more bias than to pursue what is right. If we are to protect the life of a murderer, and in the process possibly endanger the life of a victim, then we are inherently assuming that the murderer’s life is more valuable than that of the innocent. This view is wholly unacceptable, for these barbarians who maliciously and senselessly kill their fellow men have no place in society and have consciously given up their right to live. They have committed crimes with full knowledge of the consequences, and they are therefore worthy of stern and swift punishment. An eye for an eye may make the whole world blind, but allowing men to gouge the eyes of others leaves us with a society in which only the malevolent may see. The death penalty does not undoubtedly prevent such a society, but it is our greatest safeguard against it.

The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are very different movements. Although there is some ideological overlap, the Tea Party can be understood as a conservative backlash to President Obama’s election and perhaps more specifically his health care reform plan, while Occupy Wall Street is a response to the harsh economic climate of the Great Recession as well as a loss of faith in Obama as an “American savior.” Both movements have sparked national debate, and the Tea Party has effectively changed the political climate for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. And yet, neither movement has left an imprint on Princeton’s campus. There is no Tea Party club like the ones springing up at other universities around the country, and despite our close proximity to Manhattan, few Princeton students are engaging in the protest. It is their common root that has left Princetonians largely disengaged with both movements.

Back in 2009, ‘Tea Party’ meant a physical event—tea parties were rallies organized using Facebook groups. Participants would meet with like-minded libertarians, make speeches, and read excerpts from Ayn Rand and the Federalist Papers. Their frustration and momentum from the rallies precipitated into an objective—to move away from bloated central government and return to Jeffersonian small government with power divided amongst the states. The goal was to elect Tea Party candidates on the federal, state, and local level.

While the Tea Party still celebrates its roots as a spontaneous grassroots movement, it has evolved into a more professional political organization. Rallies and campaigns now receive funding from sympathetic interest groups like FreedomWorks, as well as private citizens like David and Charles Koch. Some historians and political pundits initially expected the Tea Party to become a third party, like the Populist Party in the late 19^th century, or the modern-day Green Party, but this did not happen. Instead, the movement became subsumed by the Republican Party, and Tea Party values have—for this election cycle—become almost synonymous with Republican values. Though the Republican-Tea Party union has given the movement a mainstream presence in the public square, the Tea Party has maintained its skeptical outlook on “politics as usual.”
In its brief lifespan, the Tea Party has grown significantly, in numbers and in power. There are now 60 members of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, including 17 freshmen from the 2010 midterm election. The Tea Party is in a position to determine the Republican nominee, and conversations about whether a candidate is acceptable to Tea Party voters are common.

The small Tea Party presence at Princeton has integrated quietly into the College Republicans. There are several members of the College Republicans that identify with the Tea Party. Brian Lipshutz ’12, the President of the College Republicans, sees this as a natural union of complementary ideologies. He also feels that there is room in the College Republicans for a wide range of moderate and conservative thought.  “All of our members at [College Republicans] discussions are sympathetic to the Tea Party’s call for limited, constitutional government,” says Lipshutz. “Of course, our members sometimes have disagreements with certain Tea Party figures about specific policy proposals, interpretations of the Constitution, or rhetorical strategies. But I’m sure my friends on the political left would say the same thing about certain Democratic Party figures.”

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is six weeks old at the time of this writing. Dre di Mura, Wall Street occupier and son of Princeton faculty member Vince di Mura, compared OWS to the Tea Party. “We’ve learned from the mistakes of the Tea Party,” he said. “We’ve declined, respectfully, the partnerships of political parties…the great thing about this movement is it doesn’t have any objectives. Right now it’s like a think tank. We’re gathering our ideas to consolidate so we an be more efficient.”  No leaders have emerged, but the Marxist and anarchist rhetoric used at the General Assembly meeting of occupiers by the food tent at Zuccotti Park on November 1 suggests that this act of civil disobedience is at least a step or two to the left of Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, which, like OWS, was interpreted by some as a liberal response to the Tea Party.
Participants at Occupy Wall Street look more diverse than the average Tea Party member—although, as the New York Times recently noted, members of OWS, like the Tea Party, are predominantly white.  What the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement share in common, however, is a profound anxiety that the country has made a wrong turn. The Tea Party and OWS focus on different primary antagonists: the federal government and the banking system, respectively. A self-identified liberal Catholic who got his master’s from Columbia sits on the F line headed to Wall Street. He carries a sign reading ‘I am the 99%’ and insists that the Supreme Court’s biggest mistake was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) when the Court granted corporations all the rights of personhood under the fourteenth amendment.

Many conservative commentators have mocked OWS and criticized the movement’s lack of leadership or a clearly articulated agenda. Though Princeton is generally left leaning, our response has been largely the same—ranging from distrust to amusement. During Princeton Halloween, one student dressed as a Wall Street mogul in a suit and tie with a sign reading, ‘I am the 1%.’ Another student wore trousers, a white collared shirt with dollar bills stuffed in the breast pocket, and a sign that read ‘Occupy Occupy Wall Street.’

Several Princeton groups have arranged for trips to Occupy Wall Street. On October 21, the Pace Council for Civic Values sponsored a trip to observe the protest. Only ten students participated. Rev. Tara Woodard-Lehman, the Presbyterian campus chaplain, extended an invitation to a number of religious groups on campus to travel to New York and observe OWS, but had to cancel the trip due to lack of interest. There are two other reasons for the lackluster response to OWS at Princeton, and these reasons can be applied equally to the lack of engagement in with the Tea Party movement.

First, Princeton undergraduates are generally politically apathetic. Seniors will remember that the 2008 election generated much momentum on campus and culminated with many election night celebrations.  Students and professors took part in phone banking efforts for both Obama and McCain, and many spent fall break campaigning. This moment was the exception to the rule and can be largely attributed to the Obama campaign’s ingenious, game-changing social media and organizational strategies to mobilize young voters. The 2008 election represents the high-water mark of student political engagement at Princeton since the turbulent 1960s—and even then Princeton was remarkably inactive compared to other East Coast universities. There is not enough room in this article to explore the reasons for Princeton apathy, but countless Princeton faculty and students have lamented the general lack of political engagement or even knowledge of current events. We even have a name for it: the Orange Bubble.

In a Daily Princetonian column published in Spring 2010, Christopher Troein ’12 concluded that we were willing to consider the Tea Party’s views, but just too busy to take part. But instead of just calling apathy by name, he suggested some amount of struggling and anxiety around protesting. “We know that it is impossible to boil down politically and socially complex issues to a single banner, and we are too busy to try.” This attitude is different from apathy; we wrestle with political issues. We may feel empathy for a cause with all of its subtleties and complexities, but we stop short of standing for the cause in the public square where we know the complexities will be boiled down to two stanza chants, two word signs, and two line bullet-points on CNN.

The second reason that we are not involved is that the Tea Party and OWS are both populist movements.  As di Mura observed, “this [Occupy Wall Street] knows no race, this knows no party, this knows no faith. This is the people’s movement.” The Tea Party wants to “take back America” for “real Americans.” Populist movements are  “us” pitted against “them” for social and economic justice. The “us” is The People, and the “them” is, well…us. The ones with the power and the voice. Elitists. Princetonians.

The Tea Party is often considered anti-intellectual, and the anti-intellectual strain of most populist movements is understandably unappealing to Princeton students. Presidential candidates who identify with the Tea Party have even sought to trumpet their anti-intellectual credentials (with the obvious exception of Newt Gingrich, a former college history professor). Rick Perry proudly touts his Texas A&M degree as superior to an Ivy League education, while Michele Bachmann has refused to retract some of her more fanciful remarks, such as her claim that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly to end slavery.” Some adherents of the Tea Party have also expressed affinity for conspiracy theories, such as the birthers. A recent Yale study shows that the majority of Tea Party members do not think that global warming is real. It is this kind of rhetoric that gives us Ivy League eggheads a queasy feeling in our stomachs.

Though the Wall Street occupiers have accumulated a 4,000 volume ‘People’s Library’ and different OWS caucuses hold regular academic discussion groups, OWS has its own anti-intellectual strains. In the last six weeks, reporters have recorded many occupiers giving statements so inarticulate they seem like parodies. And like any unorganized populist movement, OWS includes disturbing factions ranging from anti-Semitic and homophobic to crackpot. This beast has many heads, and, as Troein’s article suggests, Princetonians are hesitant to stand behind such an eclectic movement.

Populist movements work to give a voice to the disenfranchised, the ‘silent majority.’ The simple fact is Princetonians are not disenfranchised. We are the 1%. Some of us have accumulated thousands of dollars worth of student loans, and many of us work student jobs, but our intellectual and cultural capital grant us access to a privileged life that is completely inaccessible to most of the other seven billion occupiers of the planet Earth.

Conservatism at Princeton not only lives and breathes; it also thrives. Organizations like the College Republicans, the Anscombe Society, and Princeton Pro-Life provide active forums wherein conservative-minded students can voice their opinions and attempt to affect change on social and political levels. Indeed, a common theme at the annual “Most Conservative Ivy?” event typically conveys a message in the form of the following: ‘At Princeton you are blessed to have a vibrant conservative community, as it presents an opportunity for real dialogue which benefits conservatives and liberals alike.’

Such a message is certainly valid, and yet we do see certain trends present in the active conservative contingency of students at Princeton. These trends are thought provoking and sometimes a bit perplexing. To wit, in December of last year, I wrote an article for the Tory entitled “Princeton, Religion, and Politics” which dealt with the political activism of Protestants and Catholics on campus. In this article I’d like to revisit the topic of faith and politics at Princeton, this time looking at the conservative activism of Muslim students at Princeton. Specifically, I wish to examine the relative dearth of Muslim students who are actively involved in organizations like the ones aforementioned and explore reasons as to why such is the case.

As is the case in many traditional religions, Islamic teaching on certain social issues that are at the forefront of national politics today might be reasonably considered conservative. However, in understanding more fully the reasoning behind certain groups’ political leanings, we must not fall into the all-too-familiar trap of overgeneralization. In my correspondence with Imam Sohaib Sultan, the chaplain of the Muslim Students Association at Princeton, this was quickly brought to my attention: “Islam, like other religious traditions, is not monolithic in its interpretations. Diversity of thought and opinion is encouraged,” he explained. Given the diversity of its members, the Muslim Students Association “is mixed between conservatives and progressives and everything in between.” Imam Sultan granted, however, “that many Muslims would share ‘conservative’ values on social and moral issues relating to sexuality, family, and defense of human life” and that “the general Muslim American community is politically liberal and socially conservative.”

Given the teachings of Islam on issues such as those which relate to defending life and upholding the family, one might expect to find a number of Muslims involved in certain groups on campus which are conservatively bent, and yet as was mentioned before, such is not the case.

One might expect simply that Muslims might not be involved in such groups exactly because of certain political disagreements. Just as there are many Protestants, Evangelicals, and Catholics who are pro-life and for traditional marriage and might still self-identify as liberal because of other deep political differences with conservatives in American politics, so might many Muslims with similar views on certain issues, informed and advised similarly by a commitment to faith, be unwilling to self-identify as conservative. Certainly on the level of interpretation of religious texts, no major faith tradition is monolithic. However, divergence exists in terms of political affiliation even among individuals of similar interpretative backgrounds, simply as a result of differing opinions on which political goals are most crucial, and on how best to achieve even goals to which both parties agree.

In fact, according to Imam Sultan, this is often the case. Often, he told me, Muslims see their concerns as lying “more with social justice, civil rights, and the problem of indiscriminate violence in the name of war. Those moral issues are, whether fairly or unfairly, more often associated with a liberal or progressive agenda than a conservative one.”

I also corresponded with Princeton senior Mushim Usman by email, who adds, “I consider myself socially conservative and a practicing Muslim, but I actually don’t hold the same views as many pro-life groups do with regard to abortion or stem-cell research. So in that sense, I’m not participating in these groups because I actually disagree with their stances on these issues.”

Such notions seem to closely mirror national trends. Certainly data support Imam Sultan’s analysis of the political leanings of American Muslims. On many issues, particularly as they relate to social mores, American Muslims might be characterized as conservative, especially in relation to the rest of the nation. According to a Fall 2008 article published in Contexts, a publication of the American Sociological Association, American Muslims opposed abortion at a rate of 56% (compared to 46% of the general population), and 59% of American Muslims felt that the government should do more to defend and instill moral values in society (compared to 37% of the general population).  In addition, 69% of American Muslims opposed gay marriage, compared with 76% of the general public.

However, according to a poll by the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, in the most recent presidential election, about 89% of Muslims voted for Barack Obama (compared to 2% for John McCain), while according to the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, two-thirds of Muslims self-identified as Democrats and only 4% self-identified as Republicans. But according to a Council on American-Islamic Relations poll of voters in the 2000 election, about 72% of Muslims voted for George Bush. As one can imagine, the leftward shift by American Muslims seems to have begun in the wake of September 11^th.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the following anecdote, recounted by Usman: “the LGBT [community] reached out to Muslims and was very supportive.” Today, he says, “You see that most Muslim groups are doing things with LGBT and other left-leaning groups because these guys reach out to us and show their support when we are being vilified in the media.” The current crop of students at Princeton is of the 9/11 generation, and many Muslim students at Princeton have felt in full force anti-Muslim sentiments for the last ten years.

Indeed, this vilification is not simply present in the conservative community, but it is, in a sense, more salient in it. Usman states that, “certain elements (and I would say the most vocal) in this [conservative] movement are the ones that vilify American Muslims and are just completely ignorant of the religion and its beliefs.” Imam Sultan agrees: “Too often public intellectuals and leaders from the conservative movement have made intolerant and deeply offensive statements about the Islamic faith and the Muslim community. This, of course, is alienating and creates a barrier to coalition building.”

As such, we see that it is not surprising that Muslims at Princeton are in general not active in groups like the College Republicans; because in general, Muslims at Princeton (and across America) are simply not politically conservative. However, this does not explain fully the dearth of Muslims in campus conservative organizations that are socially active but reasonably apolitical.

Granted, groups that are specifically pro-life and pro-family do not portray themselves as, and are not, bound uniquely to any political ideology or religious tradition. Nevertheless, it just doesn’t seem important whether or not these groups do align themselves religiously or politically; all which matters is that they are perceived publically as such. Usman laments what he perceives as a lack of cooperation between Christians and Muslims on certain fronts: “it is a pity that we don’t see a lot of cooperation between these two faiths in my opinion.” It is the case that these barriers may be breaking down over time: in October, Princeton Pro-Life featured a Muslim speaker, Suzy Ismail, as part of its interfaith service on Respect Life Sunday, and leaders in conservative groups have expressed hope in greater incorporation of Muslim students on campus.  Princeton senior and Pro-Life Vice President Addie Darling echoes Usman’s statements: “I would love it if we could get more of our Muslim brothers and sisters involved.”

Pre-natal testing opens a range of opportunities to parents. It allows them to see not only the gender of their unborn baby and its developing fingers and toes but also its disabilities and potential genetic diseases.  Such information allows parents the chance to prepare for life with their new child- whether that means decorating with blue instead of pink or researching the effects of Down Syndrome.  But coupled with another medical option, it also allows them to make a choice. Parents can determine whether or not they want to raise a boy or a girl, a perfectly healthy child or one suffering from a disability.

The number of people with disabilities and genetic diseases is slowly fading in the United States, including such ones as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs. We are gradually progressing towards the possibility of eliminating some genetic strains, as the carriers of these diseases become increasingly cautious of procreating. It would be wonderful if we could achieve a society devoid of disabilities, such as spina bifida, or disorders dormant in our genes that flare up and compromise the health of future generations.  We would carelessly worry about just passing on to our children “daddy’s nose” or “mommy’s feet” instead of Down Syndrome or Sickle Cell. But at what cost does such a society come, and what do the means of our pursuit in this matter reveal about us?

The sizeable decrease of those born with disease and disorders, often exemplified in the instance of Down Syndrome, is not due to a new antidote or treatment, but, rather, abortion. Due to technology, parents can determine not only the sex of their baby but also if it is or might be disabled. When faced with the realization that their babies will not have the perfect body or mind, many parents opt to terminate their pregnancies and spare the children and themselves from having to cope with the more challenging lifestyle. According to the “Prenatal Diagnosis,” the percentage of Down Syndrome pregnancies terminated has been placed at over ninety percent.

What message does our society send, especially to those living with disabilities, when we are willing to abort disabled children?  It is better to be dead than disabled. It becomes a fast-forwarded, modern survival-of-the-fittest.  Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and the creator of the term “eugenics,” argued that “what nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly and kindly.”  We destroy the weakest and most vulnerable of our kind, in order to refine humanity to its superior, healthiest form. This should sound familiar. It was part of Hitler’s agenda with the Aryan race.  Indeed, some of the first people he ordered eliminated were the disabled; to him, they were subtractions from society.

Today, we do it quickly. Quietly. Cleanly. Today, we couch it in terms of mercy and compassion: we’re sparing the disabled from a difficult life, a life in which the negatives outweigh the positives. We don’t worry about the world being worthy of them but of them being worthy of the world. We tell them their lives aren’t worth living, and we never give them the chance to prove us wrong. But let us consider those who survive and, in many instances thrive, with these disabilities. What are we saying to them by our actions? After all, we don’t want to birth the imperfect children already conceived but would prefer to wait for the perfect babies- the ones that deserve to live. If we are willing to terminate fetuses based on their defects and disabilities, how long until we become a society that views all disabled people as an unnecessary burden and calmly eradicates them? How long until we coldly calculate and quantify the value of each human life– plugging in the variables and solving for the opportunity to emerge alive from the womb or breathe another breath? Perhaps, we are doing that already.

This is not to ignore that living with a disability poses challenges– both to the ones it affects directly and those around them whom it affects indirectly. One woman was diagnosed at a few years of age with severe rheumatoid arthritis. The diagnosis put her life expectancy at early twenties. As she grew, her body twisted to the point that she was confined to a wheelchair with limited mobility, a tiny distorted person in purple. She struggled with the deterioration of her physical abilities, even contemplating suicide at one point. But she did not die. She commissioned a specialty van and learned to drive from her wheelchair with a system of knobs and mirrors; she saw her thirtieth birthday; she married and then was widowed; she saw her fortieth birthday; she lived alone with her cats; she married my uncle. A large portion of her life she navigated with her trusty wheelchair, a no-nonsense attitude, and a dry sense of humor. Around her fiftieth birthday, she passed away from complications of severe rheumatoid arthritis-having doubled her projected lifespan and changed my uncle’s life. No one who knew my aunt would say she had an easy life by any means– but neither would they say it was not a life worth living.

How many people, whether from the fear of dealing with the difficulty or from the pursuit of perfection, have missed the enrichment that their disabled children might have offered them?  And, how many parents of disabled children would wish that they had never been born? In fact, according to a New York Times article by Amy Harmon in 2007, over the last several years, the parents of those with Down Syndrome have been speaking out and have had their children do the same. They want potential parents of children with Down Syndrome to know the rich lives the children are capable of leading and how their own lives are affected and enhanced by them. They are afraid knowing that there are some who see the lives of the disabled, of those who would grow up like their own children, as not worth the inconvenience of tending, and so abort their fetuses. Harmon writes that some parents “see themselves as society’s first line of defense against a use of genetic technology that can border on eugenics.”

These are children not aborted because the mother has been raped or because the family situation is rife with poverty and abuse. These are children that by-and-large would have been born. But, prenatal testing showed them as damaged goods, and so they were discarded.

What is truly terrifying is that worth today is not only determined by physical imperfection but also gender. Sexism, something our modern society seeks to eliminate, is alive and well in the abortion industry. The idea of a sort of made-to-order baby means determining both its health and its sex. In places such as China, with its child restrictions, sex-selective abortion, or “gendercide,” is perhaps most prevalent as parents strive to get their pregnancy the way they want. Many times, the parents want a boy, not a girl. This is sexism in the purest sense of the word– a determination of the value of a person on the basis of gender. It has been estimated that millions of girls have been aborted in sex-selective abortions, drastically skewing the gender balance in places, such as India and other parts of Asia.

While many view sex-selective abortion as an over-seas phenomenon, it is unfortunately not foreign to the United States. According to polling, most Americans are against sex-selective abortion. Currently, there are a handful of states that have created laws against sex-selective abortion. However, as determined by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, women may abort for any reason, and discrimination based on gender is legally acceptable. Based on this ruling, it appears that the states’ bans on sex-selective abortion are unconstitutional.

An operation that was supposed to assist in the liberation and empowerment of women has been twisted around and has begun to bring them down. Not only does sex-selective abortion impact women more, but it also declares that in the world today, women are not placed at equal value to men. In a society dedicated to equality and opportunity, let us examine whether we are failing not only ourselves and the victims of sex-selective abortion, but future generations as well, by this precedent. The message that has been voiced, enacted, and protected, is that, yes, worth can be dependent on whether you are male or female.

The combination of the rise of abortions based on health and gender indicates that the worth of an unborn child is determined by want. That is, depending on the desires of the parents, the baby is either valuable or worthless. When approaching abortions based on the pre-natal screening, it is essential to ask: is a person’s potential and significance determined by the feelings and wishes of others?  If it is not, should we allow people to terminate pregnancies- these buds of potential-because they have found out their children are not formed according to their preconceptions?

On October 5, 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron addressed a Conservative Party conference to affirm his commitment to implementing gay marriage in the United Kingdom by 2015. Said Cameron, “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and we support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a conservative, I support gay marriage because I am a conservative.” Such a statement may seem bizarre to the average American conservative. For any number of reasons, though generally for religious ones, the American right wing has tended to oppose expanding rights to include gays and lesbians. However, as the recent controversy over the inclusion of organizations like GOProud, a group of gay conservatives, at the Conservative Political Action Conference has demonstrated, many in the conservative movement have started to challenge this tendency, and rightly so. Support for marriage equality for gays and lesbians is a conservative position, and American conservatives ought to embrace it accordingly.

While support for gay rights remains a minority position in the Republican Party, this minority is not nearly as slim as it was ten, or even five, years ago. Prominent conservatives such as Dick Cheney and Ted Olson, who represented George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore and who now represents the plaintiffs in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which aims to overturn Proposition 8, support gay marriage. A case brought forward by the Log Cabin Republicans, an admittedly more moderate group in the GOP, helped advance the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, which passed in the lame duck session in 2010 with help from many Republican Senators, including conservatives such as George Voinovich of Ohio and John Ensign of Nevada. This reflects a trend in the population at large; in an unprecedented shift, surveys taken within the last year by a number of major polling firms have started to show that a majority, albeit a slim majority, of Americans support same-sex marriage. Numbers are even stronger for support of civil unions; a CBS News poll taken August 20-24 of last year found 70% combined support for gay marriage and civil unions. And as one may expect, these numbers are especially strong among young voters, a notoriously weak demographic for conservatives.

This changing tide of opinion helps support the idea that conservatives ought to reassess long-held assumptions about gay marriage, but it does not, in and of itself, demonstrate why that reassessment ought to result in a change of opinion. The arguments of this article will not be of a demographic nature; the potential political gains are not a reason why conservatives should support gay marriage, although they are certainly a welcome side effect. The conservative case for marriage equality is entirely philosophical and ideological. In fact, marriage equality allows conservatives to realize many of their most vital goals: protection of individual liberties from an overly intrusive government, support for strong families that can raise healthy and well-adjusted children, affirmation of religious freedoms and the better nature of Western values, and, of course, equal rights as mandated under the United States Constitution.

The first and last of these points are clearly intertwined. While rights do not come from the Constitution, the enshrining of certain protections in the Constitution ensures that, at the very least, the most important rights are explicitly laid out such that they cannot be violated. These rights are especially important to Americans, and doubly so to American conservatives. The conservative belief in a government with as little intrusion as possible into one’s life serves as the springboard from which all other conservative views flow. For this reason, conservatives support a free market and the ability for one to enter into contracts. The idea that a government could invalidate a mutually beneficial contract that harms no one simply because it disagrees with some aspect of the exchange is abhorrent to conservatives, and rightly so. These views extend to many personal decisions as well; most conservatives have decried efforts by many politicians to limit certain types of (generally unhealthy) food, most notably through trans fat bans. Of course, in comparison to marriage, one of the most important decisions in one’s life, these rights are miniscule. More than anything else, especially in modern life, marriage is a contract, one that binds two individuals in a number of ways, both intangible and tangible, personal and legal. The federal government provides married couples with a number of abilities. By denying to two adult individuals of sound mind the right to enter into a mutually beneficial contract that grants them these abilities, this most crucial conservative belief in Constitutional protection and equality under the law is violated.

Critics of legalized gay marriage also miss the idea that it is possible to support the legalization of gay marriage while not necessarily feeling personally supportive of the idea. Those with religious objections cite Scripture as a main source of their disapproval. However, a prudent conservative recognizes the fact that policy ought not come from the beliefs of one particular religious group; for logically, if one’s own religion can legislate its beliefs, a different religion can pursue legislation against the original person’s beliefs. This is the reason that the Constitution expressly prohibits the establishment of religion. Put simply: no twenty-first century conservative would want to see blasphemy outlawed, and thus, similar logic ought not be used to advocate against same sex marriage.

The second, and quite possibly the most important, reason that conservatives ought to support gay marriage concerns stable families that can raise healthy and well-adjusted children. Today, the United States faces a crisis of failure to form families, especially for children who need them. In many cases, children remain in foster care until they age out rather than being adopted. Certainly, these problems strike at the core of conservative beliefs about the family. Of course, the ideal for any child is to have two capable, loving parents who demonstrate commitment to the child and to one another through marriage. Many gays and lesbians would be more than happy to help resolve these problems. The 2010 US Census found that about one quarter of gay couples were raising children. And contrary to what some on the fringes of the conservative movement say, this is a positive development for these children. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a study in 2002 that confirmed, after collecting data over several decades, that there was “no systematic difference between gay and nongay parents in emotional health, parenting skills, and attitudes toward parenting.” The desire for gay couples to marry and raise children demonstrates exactly what David Cameron meant when he referred to “conservatives [believing] in the ties that bind us… [and] vows to support each other.” Homosexuals clearly wish to join the more traditionally conservative fold through marriage. Conservatives, rather than resisting, should provide enthusiastic support.

The third point, recognition of religious freedoms and of Western culture’s better nature, may sound like a textbook argument against same-sex marriage. Somewhat unexpectedly, however, these ideas point squarely in favor of gay marriage. Critics adhere to the idea that churches would be forced to perform gay marriages in the event of legalization. Of course, no religious institution is required to perform any service that violates its beliefs; it is the reason why churches are not forced to perform marriages, including for people who are not members of the church’s faith. However, some religions, such as Reform Judaism and the Episcopal Church, permit gay marriage, but cannot practice it under current law. Thus, legalizing gay marriage would strengthen religious freedoms, not weaken them.

Continuing in this vain, there are some who claim that gay marriage would fundamentally redefine a “sacred” institution. However, while homosexual acts were disapproved of throughout the history of Christianity, unions of two individuals of the same sex have existed in many Western societies. In medieval France, there existed an arrangement called affrèrement, under which two men would pledge to live together and jointly own property. Historian Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University argues that there is “considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships… [The affrèrés] loved each other, and the community accepted that.” Thus, the idea that gay unions are without precedent in Western society runs contrary to historical evidence, and by extension runs contrary to conservative views of developing policy.

To close these arguments, it is prudent to examine what may be the most compelling issue regarding gay marriage: the idea that legalization would change the definition of marriage. If that is the case, then perhaps the definition ought to change. Conservatism is not opposed to change when it is warranted. It was, after all, a Republican appointee to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote the unanimous opinion in the last major change in the definition of marriage, Loving v. Virginia. While Warren may not be a conservative in the eyes of many, his opinion in the case, which legalized interracial marriage across the United States, made a conservative argument, framing the decision as one protecting Constitutional rights. Wrote Warren, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.  Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Note that Warren’s opinion was not the will of the majority—which, it is worth stating, is often the left’s favorite source of legitimacy. At the time of the ruling, only about a quarter of Americans supported interracial marriage. This opinion came from the central idea of conservative ideology: the rule of law. Occasionally, the fundamental underpinnings of American law, generally inalienable rights, demonstrate that certain minor laws do not stand on firm moral or legal ground, and thus find themselves abolished. For all of the fundamental reasons stated above, conservatives ought to recognize that the minor law that prohibits gay marriage is illegitimate. American conservatives would be wise to heed David Cameron’s words. While the practical political rewards of demographic expansion are palpable, the more valuable moral and philosophical rewards of supporting the logical conservative position in favor of gay marriage are vital for the conservative movement if it wishes to stand on solid footing in the years to come.

That’s not to say, of course, that your time here will be without challenges. Being away from the comforting familiarity of home can feel isolating, especially at the start of your freshman year. For center-right students on a predominately left-leaning campus, that isolation is compounded by a sense of political encirclement. Whether liberals are a foreign species to you, or (like me) you often found yourself the only conservative in the room back in high school, Princeton will present the most serious test of your political convictions you’ve ever had to face. Liberals at Princeton, unlike your typical MSNBC-fed left-wing sycophant, are really smart. They know all the best arguments for their positions– and, just as important, they know all the arguments for our side, along with the most effective rebuttals.

Confronted with this overwhelmingly hostile political climate, what’s a conservative at Princeton to do? You definitely don’t want to wall yourself off from anyone who disagrees with you– that would be defeating the entire purpose of your education. In fact, you should do the exact opposite. Engage your political adversaries in discussion as much as possible, and try to understand their point of view. Debate can be an effective format for reexamining and fortifying your own opinions.

At the same time, you don’t need to defend your views alone. Despite the University’s overall liberal orientation, Princeton boasts a wide array of groups that provide a forum for conservatives to enjoy the company of like-minded students, as profiled in David Byler’s article in this issue. I remember during my freshman year, as the campus was gripped with Obama fever and commentators predicted the death of American conservatism, the camaraderie of the Tory and the College Republicans gave me the confidence to hold fast to my beliefs. Although today the future of the conservative movement appears far brighter than it did in the aftermath of the 2008 election, such organizations still serve a vital role, offering students with center-right leanings a space to gather and express their political ideas without fear of ridicule or persecution.

The Tory, as Princeton’s only student publication devoted to moderate and conservative political thought, combines these twin goals of reinforcement and outreach. We are committed to covering stories of importance to Princeton students from a conservative vantage, but we also aim to foster dialogue with those who don’t share our outlook. For this reason, we frequently publish letters to the editor and guest columns, and feature competing perspectives in point-counterpoint pieces.

For a sample of what the Tory is all about, I encourage you to pursue this issue, which includes some of our best writing from the 2010-11 academic year. In these articles, you’ll find reports on the stories that have dominated campus headlines: gender neutral housing, the task force on women’s leadership, early admission, and more. What makes these articles valuable is that they don’t merely regurgitate the story as portrayed by the administration and the Daily Princetonian, but dig deeper to find hidden truths buried beneath the surface.

My advice to you, then, is threefold. First, never shy away from voicing your opinions, even when you know that you’re in the minority. Second, seek out fellow conservatives in order to refine your understanding of your views. Finally, my third suggestion, complementing the first and second, is to read the Tory. Doing so will prepare you for encounters with liberals while helping you to define your own political identity. Keep an eye out for our magazine– we deliver to every dorm on campus. And feel free to come to our meetings if you support the Tory’s mission and would like to get involved.

Sincerely,

Sam Norton ’12

Whenever a problem arises on campus, no matter how small or large, complicated or simple, direct or obtuse, a small assembly of sympathetic undergraduates is amassed, a triumvirate of renowned faculty is exalted to a set of chairmanships, and an adulatory email is quickly dispersed amongst the student body, assuring us that the committee will engage in tough deliberation to produce actionable solutions. After months of secret meetings (or poorly attended panels that always manage to conflict with my class schedule), a hundred-page report is produced, another adulatory e-mail is ecstatically sent out, and the conversation fizzles in the Prince until it eventually falls flat. Thus lurk the symptoms of the Task Force Syndrome, a disease that saps us of the ability to actually solve our problems but leaves us with a well-formatted PDF document.

The Eating Club Task Force, whose recommendations have been met with skepticism at best and outright repudiation at worst, was discussed and debated ad nauseam in both the Prince and the Tory, yet a consensus to move forward has still not been reached. In actuality, the recent announcement of the sixth bicker club, Cannon Dial Elm, flies directly in the face of the task force’s chairman, Secretary and Vice President Bob Durkee ’69, who suggested that the Street reduce the number of eating clubs and eventually move away from the current bicker system. While deliberation is indeed a precursor to any informed and thoughtful decision, discussion for the sake of discussion produces platitudes with no purpose.

And yet, in spite of the Eating Club Task Force’s dubious success, another task force has released its report, another article in the Prince has been dutifully written, and another issue has been raised with no specific solution. The day that we returned from Spring Break, as we groggily forced ourselves from bed to grab breakfast (or not), we were met with the news that the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership had finally released its 114-page report “after a year and a half of workshops, surveys and examinations of data.” Unfortunately, in spite of such research and time commitment, the committee produced few solutions to right the supposed wrongs that it was contracted to address.

The committee’s charge, as articulated by President Tilghman, to investigate “whether women undergraduates are realizing their academic potential and seeking opportunities for leadership at the same rate and in the same manner as their male colleagues” was fundamentally flawed on two accounts. First, an outside determination as to whether a student is “realizing [her] academic potential” is a preposterous proposition on its face, for how can we determine what one’s academic potential is, even if we manage to define what that incredibly vague term means? Success in high school is not a valuable parameter for comparison, for Princeton’s rigorous academic environment, a product of grade deflation and a student body comprised of the “best and brightest,” a drop in grades should be expected. Also, determining one’s “academic potential” requires personal introspection on an incredibly deep level, which might leave even the student herself unsure as to whether this amorphous milestone had been reached. In large aggregations of data, where such personal connection is not intended or feasible, such conclusions about fuzzy propositions are unwise and unwarranted.

Second, the question as to whether women are “seeking opportunities for leadership . . . in the same manner as their male colleagues” is totally unnecessary and counterproductive, for there is no reason for us to expect that men and women should approach leadership “in the same manner” simply on the basis of their gender. According to a study conducted by Janet Hyde and Sara Jaffee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology department, statistical gender differences in decision-making capacity, such as the ability to make decisions based on justice as opposed to emotion, are so small that they are almost statistically insignificant. This is not to say that men and women should make decisions in the same manner, but rather that differences in decision-making styles are based in personality, not gender. A man is just as likely to make an emotional decision as a woman, so determining whether or not men and women approach leadership “in the same manner” provides no explanation as to whether or not a gender gap exists. It is far more likely that any differences, even if they are statistically significant, would be derived from differences in personality and leadership style. Furthermore, to use men as a reference point for comparison is also silly and almost insulting to women, for how can we assume that men are an acceptable standard for leadership? Certainly some are, as are some women, but this is based on the personal drive and characteristics of the individual, not a preconceived notion that men are more disposed to leadership.

While the individual person, and not the individual’s gender, is most important in determining leadership capability, it would be foolish to assert that there are no aggregate delineations between male and female personalities. Men are better at spatial reasoning tasks, while women have greater capability to concentrate and engage in fine motor coordination. To state an obvious truth, people are better at different tasks, but there is no reason to label these differences as the product of a schemed gender gap. As an aggregation of all genetically determined skills, men and women are equal. To disrupt this balance by favoring one sex over the other would be nothing more than biologically based discrimination.

So, given that the underlying purpose of this committee is flawed both theoretically and pragmatically, it is very difficult to find its conclusions to be convincing. According to The Daily Princetonian’s summary of the report, the committee accurately noted that there have been disparities between the numbers of men and women in the “highest profile campus leadership positions,” such as “USG president, Honor Committee chair, the four class presidents, and the editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian.” This factoid led to a subsequent claim that women are underrepresented in leadership roles on campus. However, to assume that these seven highly selective positions represent the entire array of leadership opportunities on campus is a vast oversimplification of leadership here at Princeton. There are hundreds of student groups, each of which need at least one leader, and there are many other avenues through which students exhibit leadership in unofficial roles. To claim almost cavalierly that women are underrepresented as leaders on campus with only seven data points is unorthodox at best and brazen at worst.

Furthermore, the committee suggested that women do not pursue leadership positions as frequently as men because they are deterred from positions where the perception is that one cannot “actually get something done,” and because they have “concerns over personal exposure.” Inherent in this assertion is a direct insult to men. Is the committee assuming that men are more concerned with resume building and dithering about than women, or that men are more willing to senselessly expose themselves to campus politics? While the committee would certainly assert no, their statements undeniably say yes. Once again, one’s propensity to build his or her resume is not a function of being a man or a woman. Rather, it is a desire derived from one’s own personality, goals, and ambitions.

The committee also drew some erroneous conclusions from grade information compiled since 2001. For example, in a recent trend that has been paralleled at universities all over the country, Princeton women have a higher average GPA than men, and women in general are more likely to attend and graduate from college. Yet, on the basis that only 8 of the last 41 valedictorians have been females, USG Vice President Catherine Ettman ’13 concluded that her “female [peers] were performing at a lower rate than [her] male peers.” This claim is absolutely ridiculous and unfounded. The evidence clearly shows that females on the whole are performing better than men, but this does not suggest that there should be more female valedictorians than male ones. Valedictorians are individuals who are highly motivated, incredibly bright, and undeniably determined, among other personality traits, and these characteristics do not depend on gender. If we did expect all people to conform to the average performance of their genders, then it is true that there would likely be more women valedictorians. However, gender is not the only variable factor in determining the probability of academic success. There could certainly be variability between the two sexes if the individual people were simply better equipped to be the valedictorian. Unfortunately, rather than accepting that the past 33 men who have been named valedictorians were worthy of the recognition, the steering committee instead elected to undermine their achievements, claiming that there is no way they could have been better than women on that scale. Such an assertion is an affront to those 33 men, merely concocted on the basis of their gender, not an independent analysis of their achievements or capabilities in relation to the highest female “contender.”

So, since the committee’s data and assertions do not account for actual statistical differences, nor do they consider the individual capacities of students, the steering committee was led to make vague and unassertive solutions, hereby revealing the crux of the Task Force Syndrome. By claiming that Princeton must “recognize and celebrate the many ways in which both women and men undergraduates are providing leadership, address residual stereotypes, and help all students imagine the potential effectiveness of elected leadership positions on campus,” the steering committee essentially advocated a vague institutional affirmative action program for females grounded in a drive to manipulate public opinion. (The committee did suggest some specific changes to Freshman Orientation, which I generally agree with, but these are outside of the original mandate to provide solutions to perceived gender gaps at the University.) Besides the call to “celebrate,” which could be pursued through some sort of USG-funded cocktail party, the committee did not provide any actionable solutions to address the perceived problem of gender inequality, which I have argued does not exist anyways.

While the Task Force Syndrome label is certainly applicable to this steering committee, whose solutions could not be carried out even if they were founded in evidence, the central and most basic problem with this committee is one of concept, not of implementation. It defies unbiased, statistical and analytic procedures to manipulate evidence to support a preconceived notion instead of allowing the evidence to suggest a possible hypothesis. The members of this steering committee, almost all women, certainly had an underlying agenda, and they pursued it faithfully. This is not to say that they were poorly intentioned or in cahoots to deceive the Princeton community; I generally believe that they are genuinely concerned about this issue, and we as the student body should appreciate their drive and determination. However, this passion should be implemented and invested in other campus issues that actually exist and have clearly defined, actionable solutions.

Lastly, and perhaps most ironically, the concept of this committee is an affront to women, for they have been cast as subservient to men when no such relationship actually exists. The committee has suggested that women’s success at the University must be institutionally bolstered if they are to keep up with the achievements of men. In the same vein, men are seen as unfairly advantaged, calling their stunning achievements into unconscionable question. Instead, we should all recognize that men and women do not differ in their academic capabilities based on gender, but based on their individual personalities that supersede the gender divide. A man does not work harder because he is a man, nor does a woman work harder because she is a woman; such claims undermine their efforts, alleging that they are a product of random genetics. Instead, women and men work hard because they are individual people with individual goals and aspirations, a fact that should be honored, not denigrated by dehumanizing statistical analyses that pursue a prescribed agenda.

Chris Goodnow is a sophomore from Pleasanton, CA. He is Operations Manager of the Tory. He can be reached at cgoodnow@princeton.edu.

In 2006, when the University announced that it would be abandoning its early admission program beginning in 2008, President Tilghman explained that the decision was made because “…it is the right thing to do.”  Yet after four classes have applied under the single-admission program since, Princeton announced this year that it would reinstate a modified early admission option. President Tilghman explained, “we hoped other colleges and universities would [also eliminate early programs], and they haven’t,” yet she maintained how “very pleased” the University has been with how the single admissions program “has worked.” By this testimony, this program of single-admission was created in the name of what was “right,” was at least successful enough to please the Administration for a handful of years, but was done away with because other universities did not follow suit. Many articles have expounded the theories that may or may not support an early admissions program at Princeton, but the series of events that have unfolded with regards to Princeton’s admissions policies are simply not consistent enough to be discussed exclusively in broad, theoretical terms.  There is a great deal of nuance to the realities underlying the University’s decisions that account for the apparent incongruence in the rhetoric, the theory, and the policy.  By taking a closer look at the data surrounding Princeton’s changing admissions policies, we might hope to get a better understanding of the significance of Princeton’s decision to revive a version of an early admissions program.

It is important to first take a look at what this change in University policy is actually doing when it says it is “reinstating an early admission program”—and what the University intended to end when it stopped early admission in 2008.  There are a variety of early admissions programs at colleges and universities throughout the country. The primary distinction is made between Early Decision and Early Action.  The former usually refers to a program that permits an applicant to apply by an early deadline exclusively at one particular institution, with the agreement that the student will enroll if accepted.  The latter often means the student is free to apply by an early deadline- and often can do so at multiple schools with similar policies- and will learn of their outcome (i.e., accepted, rejected, waitlisted, deferred to the regular applicant pool, etc.) by an earlier date.  A single-choice Early Decision program, like the one Princeton had until 2008, bolsters the statistics of the University, as an entire group of admitted students matriculates at a rate of 100% or close to it—a number (the “yield”) that factors into the famous rankings of colleges and universities. However, the University identified concerns that have often been lodged against this type of program when it cited “the right thing to do” as a motivation behind ending single-admission program in lieu of a single-choice Early Action program.

Critics of early admissions programs contend that they advantage white students and those from wealthier backgrounds to the detriment of lower-income students and those of racial minorities.  First, it is said, the latter group is less likely to have adequate information to put together an application by the earlier deadline—thus denying them an opportunity to be considered in a pool that often enjoys a higher admit rate.  Second, and perhaps more significantly, decisions regarding financial aid packages- a concern that weighs more heavily in poorer communities- are not available in their totality to those applying early prohibiting students from simultaneously applying to restrictive early programs and comparing financial aid awards among multiple schools.

If these concerns are as legitimate in practice as they seem in theory, we might expect to see a jump in racial minority and lower-income applicants after an early program is abolished.  Further, if this were the case, we might also expect the University to maintain this altruistic policy regardless of pragmatic concerns (such as the practices of other institutions), as the policy was introduced and acknowledged as one that flew in the face of the practical needs of the University (such as keeping the yield high).  So when this year President Tilghman said, “We have carefully reviewed our single admissions program every year, and we have been very pleased with how it has worked,” in the same press release that abolishes that very program, her statement further muddled our understanding of what a single admissions program “working” looks like.

Unfortunately, even given all of the questions this raises, the University does not report, and has not specifically commented on, the type of data that would turn this theoretical question into an empirical one.  Luckily, there is some information available as to the makeup of applicant pools over the years, and these might provide a glimpse into the effects of the policy changes.  The first group of students to apply under the single admissions program (i.e., without the option of applying early) was the Class of 2012.  All racial minorities have been combined in the University’s public data, and they report that this group made up 34.5% of the pool, with 56% of the total body of admitted students for that class receiving some form of financial aid.  This is a slight increase from the preceding class (the last class to apply with an Early Decision option), which awarded 54% of the admitted students financial aid, and saw 33.9% of applicants qualify as racial minorities.  These differences are so slight it is difficult to credit the modest increases in both categories to the change in admission policy.  While data on the racial and financial make-up of the early applicant pools as compared to the regular applicant pools would be more insightful, the University does not report this information.

Though it is difficult to draw conclusions based on the small amount of reported data and the minor changes from immediately before to immediately after the change in policy, the trends over multiple years are worth considering.  The percentage of admitted students receiving financial aid (in years after the implementation of the no-loan policy in 2001) had remained relatively constant at about 54% before the elimination of Early Decision.  While the increase for the first post-Early Decision class was modest, the following few years saw consistent increases culminating in the Class of 2014, of which 63% of students received aid (reported as of March 2011).  A significant externality is the turbulent economy in the past few years; these changes might as easily reflect the changing times as they do the change in policy.

Another trend that might not be as susceptible to macroeconomic changes is the increase in racial minority applicants.  Again, the immediate changes appear miniscule, but the years that follow have seen consistent gains in the total amount of racial minority applicants with the most recent pool being made up of nearly 38% minority students.  This comes after over a decade of racial minorities applying as a steady 28% of the applicant pool. The largest year-to-year changes, however, seem to take place before the change in early admission policy in 2008.  The Admissions Office is proud of a range of changes they have made to appeal to a wider spectrum of the high school population (including, for example, the reduction of required SATII tests due to their rising cost), and any of those changes might have caused the changes in the application pool.

While these statistics may not lead to a definitive evaluation of the University’s decisions to end- and then reinstate- an early admissions option, they do lead us to frustration.  The University has made any number of claims about their decisions regarding this policy- from those based in morality, to those based in pragmatism- and any number of critics and champions have rushed to commentate.  And despite all of this, the level of accountability to the many questions raised by these changes remains disappointingly low.  Due to a lack of public data, it is difficult to know exactly what President Tilghman means when she says the single-admissions policy “has worked.” However, if this does mean the Admissions Office believes recent changes in the applicant pool are tied to the policy changes, it is difficult for the University to justify its abandonment of this policy.  One possible explanation is that administrative data suggests early applicants are less affected by awareness of an early program than they are by the issue of financial aid, and a non-binding Early Action program would, therefore, be tenable to these marginalized groups. However, without any data or reasonable measure of accountability, such questions remain unanswerable.

To introduce a policy change in moral terms, announce its success, and then abandon it on the basis of practicability is complicated, but not necessarily evidence of a logical breakdown.  It does, however, inevitably beg questions that address the specifics of that policy to an extent that seems unmet by the University.  In recent years the University has made obvious efforts to broaden the accessibility of Princeton to more racial and socioeconomic sectors of the country; for this it ought to be applauded, but nevertheless held to a level of scrutiny that demands adequate explanations for policy changes that may have repercussions on who makes up the applicant pool.

Andrew Blumenfeld is a junior from Los Angeles, CA. He is Blog Editor of the Tory. He can be reached at ablumenf@princeton.edu.