Highland – Upperclass housing by the Rec center; consists of Morgan, Lewis, Mayfields, and Chaffins.

On the Card – Restaurants and services (both on and off campus) that take Meal Money. Unfortunately does not include Lacoste.

The Wall – Outside Sarratt/Rand, student orgs and sororities/fraternities try to steal your money.

Last Drop – Coffee shop downstairs in Sarratt.

The Pub – Traditional bar food upstairs in Sarratt. Beer on the card.

AnchorLink – Vanderbilt’s online student organization system. Nobody likes it.

The Anchor – Study space above New Rand. Supplies to make banners, posters, etc.

Kensington – The cross street affectionately known as “Greek Row”

Natty – Beverage of choice.

Dank New Rand – Ridiculous nickname given to Rand Lounge. The section of Rand with Pie and Leaf.

Printer’s Alley – Location of the world famous Lonnie’s Western Room. If half of your freshman nights out aren’t here, you’re doing it wrong.

VanderBubble – Needless to say, we can get a little pre-occupied with ourselves. The outside world takes a backseat when you’re “inside the bubble”.

Brookie – Rand’s world famous combination of a brownie and a cookie. Number 1 cause of the Freshman 15.

Estrogym – The gym in the Commons Center. You don’t want to be that guy.

Grins – Vegetarian café next to Branscomb. Pronounced “Greens”. Why? No idea.

Overheard at Vanderbilt – notorious Facebook group where Vandy stereotypes are reinforced. Relax, everyone hates the person who gets offended.

Many of you, I hope, have asked yourselves, “Where do I fit on the political spectrum?” The political spectrum is not unilateral. There’s more than just liberal and conservative.  At least from my experience, most students consider themselves socially liberal and economically conservative. Most students would like the government to play as little of a role in their lives as possible. Now I’m not big on labels, but if I had to put a label on the political stance of most students, it would be libertarian.

What is libertarianism? First, defining it does not do it justice, because there is no all-sweeping ideology that every “libertarian” falls under. At its essence, though, libertarianism is a celebration of the individual. It is a political philosophy that believes the best society is one where individuals make their own choices, define their own values, think their own thoughts, say their own words, join whatever groups they wish, and do whatever they want, so long as they do not harm others. Libertarianism is against force and coercion. Libertarians believe the government should play as little a role in our lives as possible; they believe that the government should only do what we allow it to do.  Libertarians are in favor of peace, of economic freedom, of personal liberty, and of small government.

Some think that libertarianism is a cruel, selfish ideology, but they misinterpret the value of individuality. Just because you don’t like the welfare state, does not mean you do not like charity. Just because you don’t like high taxes, does not mean you don’t care about community. I, for one, love charity and love community. I just don’t want charity to be forced out of me and I don’t to be forced to advance the community. I want to give myself voluntarily to charity. I want to be a part of a community, not because of duty, but because I choose to be and because I cherish the individuals along side me in my communities.

College, more than any other time in your life, will show you the value of the individual—of both your own individuality and the individualities of all the wonderful and different people you will meet in the next four years.  You will discover yourself by interacting with other individuals. You will modify your values and your outlook on life by hearing the different stories of each new friend and seeing the world from a different perspective. You will not be defined by your hometown, or the house you are assigned to, or your VUcept group, or the clubs you join, or your major, or even your reputation. You will define yourself. Your individuality will define you.

-Tommy Pruchinski is a freshman in the College of Arts and Science. He  can be reached at thomas.c.pruchinski@vanderbilt.edu.

In my last article (written during the dust-up over same-sex marriage which was then making its way through the Supreme Court) I made an admittedly preliminary and slipshod effort to explore why I believed conservatives and liberals have come to an impasse over the same-sex marriage debate. In that article, I emphasized that there was a clash over basic terms at issue: the nature and validity of “institutions”, rights-language, and (most importantly) the definition of marriage itself. Conservatives and liberals are largely unable to speak on the same wavelength with regards to this issue because their basic political and epistemological questions are different. What I did not highlight—and what I want to explore in this article—is the fundamental narrative clash that is also at play. It is my contention that what I will call the individualist definition of marriage has an underlying narrative coherence, as does the institutional definition of marriage. It is my belief that the institutional narrative surrounding marriage collapsed decades ago, and thus any conservative attempt to “defend the institution of marriage” from a cultural vantage is doomed to fail before it even begins.

What, then, is this institutional narrative surrounding marriage? In my last article, I explained the conservative orientation toward institutions in general, but did not explore what an “institutional” understanding of marriage entails. In my opinion, there has been no better philosophical defense of marriage as traditionally understood than that put forth by Sherif Girgis and Robert George. They define marriage this way (with the background being Edmund Spenser’s famous Wedding Poem):

Spenser’s wedding poem sings of an ideal. Translating poetry into prose, we might say that it sees marriage as a comprehensive union; joining spouses in body as well as in mind, it is begun by consent and sealed by sexual intercourse. So completed in the acts of bodily union by which new life is made, it is especially apt for and deepened by procreation, and calls for that broad sharing of domestic life uniquely fit for family life. Uniting spouses in these all-encompassing ways, it also objectively calls for all-encompassing commitment: permanent and exclusive.

Girgis and George write at length concerning each of the points above. Comprehensive, exclusive bodily and domestic union oriented towards procreation as a definition of marriage, however, has an underlying “story” to it. This story goes something like this:

A society is formed based around certain rituals. A boy or girl is born into such a society and grows up, being educated in its ways and taught how to function in their own unique way. Each stage of their life is marked by certain distinct rites of passage. These rituals are buttressed by a wider ritualized community with its own civil, political and religious rituals that complement and serve as orientation for these rights of passage. Though as this child grows up he or she will have many goals, certainly one of them will be to marry, start a family and raise children of their own as the community grows. It is in marriage that the civil, political and religious stations of life intersect to form one of the central rituals of human life that is essential for communal continuity and identity.

It is hard to explain in the space allowed just how much the character of marriage’s narrative has utterly changed. It is also difficult to demarcate a neat line upon which the modern American marriage split from the stock “institutional” marriage narrative described above. No-fault divorce laws seem a good place to start, but even they were allowed by a singularly romantic conception of marriage that narrated the stories of individual wants and desires.

This issue of the Torch is especially focused on Vanderbilt itself. How is the drastic break between these two marriage narratives relevant for us as college students? The way in which we tell our own stories about love, marriage and family have wider effects on our communities and our culture. Popular culture is replete with images of marriage as the culmination of a romantic entitlement: it is eros (fulfillment of oneself by desire of the other) let loose from all ritualistic bonds of restraint. Declarations of eternal passion are set alongside a 50% divorce rate that (if statistics are anything to go by) is only likely to rise. I am by no means opposed to romance or the potential happiness passion can bring to a life. But “starting a family” and “finding a soulmate” are two radically different teleologies of marriage, and they will have guaranteed effects on the stability of such marriages.

It would take a dramatic cultural shift for marriage to regain a kind of narrative coherence that makes the conservative defense of that institution sensible. The conservatives want to believe that the storyline behind marriage is still intact—that “till death do us part” and all that goes with it still makes sense. On an individual level, perhaps it can and does.  But on a societal level, a cluster of pseudo-marriages called “relationships” govern our romantic interactions. Rather than “till death do us part”, it is “till ennui do us part”—and on to the next search for the flight of eros in a soulmate.

-Kelby Carlson is a sophomore in the Blair School of Music. He can be reached at kelby.s.carlson@vanderbilt.edu 

Vanderbilt University, like any other university, takes its greatest strength from the wide variety of people and knowledge bases it houses. People of dozens of different races, classes, creeds, sexual orientations, religions, genders, skill sets, languages, interests, and abilities come to abide here, and every single one of those facets of identity and background plays into how they interact with the campus community. This becomes especially obvious when it comes to the Vanderbilt political climate, which can be bewilderingly and unexpectedly confusing to a seasoned veteran, much less a first-year. As a rising senior of diverse experiences, a VUceptor committed to peer mentorship, and an anthropology major who’s given these things a lot of thought, I’d like to share with you some survival tips I’ve learned over the past three years—which hopefully will help you hit the ground running, whether you’re excited to get involved in the political scene or just want to know how to end an argument with your roommate.

1) Come with your mind open. Perhaps the most important advice I can possibly give you, whether in relation to politics or to college life in general, is to not be afraid to grow. As mentioned above, college is a whole slew of different beliefs and ideals, some of which will be strange to you and even frightening. You’ll encounter new ways of thinking, and you will certainly make friends with people of different ideologies and political beliefs than you.  When that happens, be prepared for your entire worldview (including your political worldview) to be challenged, probably in ways that make you uncomfortable. Just remember—that discomfort is not necessarily bad. It’s just proof that your brain is stretching. College, for most of you, will be the four-year span in which you really start to become yourself, to become who you will be for the rest of your lives. That may entail some re-shuffling of your beliefs and assumptions—I’ve had liberal friends who became more conservative, conservative friends who became really liberal, friends who’ve become moderate and friends who’ve become more or less involved with politics than they ever were before. Perhaps the best, safest, and most healthy way to deal with this is to just wait and see. Go to meetings for all the different political organizations—more than one meeting of each, if you can help it. Talk to people. Don’t be afraid. Do be willing to learn, and even to change your mind.

2) College politics are not high school politics. College students and post-college adults have different reasons for being political than high school students, and different ways of acting on their politics. Remember, you’re playing with the big kids now—you’re at a top-tier university full of really intelligent individuals. People you meet will often have much better arguments and rationalizations for being political or apolitical than you’ll be used to from high school, and you’re going to have to come up with much more rigorous and nuanced ways to argue your position. Also, political organization and activism is much more intense. College activism operates very much in the real world and seeks to change it in tangible ways; the stakes are a lot higher, the effects more lasting. Activists of all ideological persuasions will be trying to recruit you, and will be very good at doing so. Be careful but optimistic.

3) Find a baseline. As soon as you can, find a friend group or an organization that you are unreservedly comfortable with—that welcomes you and that you feel you can safely talk about your beliefs with. You’ll feel better, less besieged by new and conflicting ideas, less like you’re being attacked if you have somebody to come back to at the end of the day and grumble with. It may not be who you expect—if you’re Christian, you may find the Muslim student group more accepting of you than some of the Christian groups on campus. I found a few Christian groups more accepting of my agnosticism than the secular students’ group on campus my first year. You never know.

4) Groupthink is not your friend. And you will encounter it in spades. The worst side effect of having lots of really smart, really outspoken people organizing together is that over time, you reinforce each other’s ideologies; the result can be a snowball effect, even radicalization. It can happen to any ideological group, and the effects are never good. Groupthink makes you more likely as an organization to reject ideas different from yours, behave in more extreme and reactive ways, and withdraw from outsiders. Watch for it, in yourself as much as in your friends.

5) Stick to your guns. If there’s something you really, truly believe, speak up for it. The best way to combat the aforementioned groupthink is to have/be a devil’s advocate—if people see you vocally standing up against enforced group norms, they’ll be less afraid to do so, and more likely to question their assumptions. This may mean standing up against people you care about a lot. Peer pressure can be a good thing, but where it ridicules you or seeks to make you disregard what you feel deeply to be logical, good, and right, you are not obligated to bow to it. You have a voice. Using it does not make you a traitor.

6) Count to 10 when you’re angry or hurt in an ideological argument. Literally—stop, take a deep breath, and think about what made you angry. Did they say something truly hurtful, or did they simply touch a nerve? How did the conversation get to this point? Being reactive, aggressive, angry, or defensive about politics generally leads to bad places. Build bridges; don’t burn them, as much as you can help it. Be willing to step back, to take responsibility if it’s warranted, or to forgive people if it’s not your fault. You’re not going to always convince people you’re right. That doesn’t mean you can’t work with them or be friends.

7) Think about “why”s. “They’re crazy” is rarely a good explanation of someone’s politics. Ask yourself why people believe what they believe—what are the social, political, and personal reasons they act in certain ways, react in certain ways, think in certain ways? Ask yourself the same things about your own politics. You may discover some painful truths. But you’ll also find some truly unique insights, and gain a deeper, more compassionate, more complex understanding of how people interact with themselves and the world around them. Go deep. It will astound you.

8) Professors are not apolitical, but they are human. The answer to the question “Did I just lose points because of my politics?!” is, almost 90% of the time, “No.” Despite popular culture stereotypes and horror stories, even professors who don’t like your politics usually have enough skill, experience, and professionalism to not grade you down for them. More likely, they’re taking off points because they feel like the way you’re presenting your argument is over-simplistic or misses the point they were trying to teach you. If you get into a situation like this, communicate. Ask them what their intellectual premises are and why exactly the points got docked. Then try agreeing or disagreeing with them based on those premises. If, however, you discover that they did mark you down because of bias, remember that there is a chain of command—you can always talk to the head of the department or, if necessary, a dean.

9) It is possible (and sometimes unavoidable) to date someone with different politics. Just trust me on this one.

10) You will find a home here. It may not be where you expected. You may have to build it yourself. But I can absolutely guarantee—you will find it. You just have to be willing to look.

-Ames Sanders is a junior in the College of Arts and Science and can be reached at amethyst.w.sanders@vanderbilt.edu.

That is an odd masthead to an article discussing same-sex marriage from the “conservative” perspective. The posturing in recent days has been of either embitterment or sullenness.  Facebook was practically awash with red equals signs; less present, but still notable, were the conservative jeremiads warning about the disastrous consequences of homosexual unions. Just what is one to make of these discussions in the wake of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over DOMA—which President Obama ordered his attorney general not to defend—and Proposition 8 (struck down by the California Supreme Court)? I would like to take a few pages to be the conservative contrarian, and explain both why gay marriage is inevitable and why conservatives have been unable to acknowledge it for a long time.

To make my case, I need to state at the outset that the issues I will be describing exist at a superstructural level. The question of what “I think” about gay marriage—or even what the majority of society thinks about this one moral-legal question—is largely irrelevant. Instead, the debate has its foundations in a pro-crustian bed of philosophical disagreement. The disagreement is twofold and underlies a great deal of American political tension.

The first disagreement is over the nature of institutions. Conservative philosophers (as opposed to economic libertarians) place great weight on the importance of institutions for civil society. A simple definition of an institution would be a pre-political reality of human life and relationships that is so formative for human society that it becomes a public reality. Conservative conceptions of government rely on this framework; rather than government being externally imposed as a conquering leviathan, government arises out of a pre-political need for order, equity, and justice.  Institutions have objective “goals” and “ends”, no matter how the institutions fair in real life.  The liberal conception of institutions exists in sharp contrast. Formulated by those such as Locke and Rousseau (with Hobbes being something of an exception), institutions were seen as a curb to man’s freedom. Institutions were inherently oppressive because they were bound up with the will to power (man dominating over man) and the unnecessary constraints of traditional morality that accompany such power-plays.

Disagreement over the nature of the necessity of “institutions” as stipulatively defined above lies at the heart of the same-sex marriage debate. Conservatives conceive of marriage as just such a pre-political reality. It is rooted in the biological reality of human life and the need for the ordered conception of child-rearing. Marriage, then, arises out of this state as a way of demarcating boundaries so that these specific aspects of humanity might flourish. In this way, conservatives argue, marriage can be said to have an objective reality oriented toward a “telos”, or end, even if individual marriages do not fit totally comfortably into such an institutional structure. Liberals, by contrast, see such an institutional conception of marriage as a very well-defined manifestation of the kind of power-games civilization produces. Far from being a beneficent institution, “marriage” as traditionally defined is seen as oppressive, deforming of character, and even historically inviable. This fundamental disagreement over whether marriage is a good institution (or even an institution at all) makes it very difficult to find common ground. This is because the legal debate hinges upon larger societal concerns which usually cannot be legislated and until challenged do not even always require articulation.

The second disagreement between conservative and liberal philosophers that impacts the marriage debate is that of rights. Even within American conservatism, there is tension between the traditionalist Burke and the Enlightenment philosophies. The central question at hand is whether rights come with duties, and if so, by whom are such rights and duties assigned? Conservatism thinks of rights in both integral and societal terms. To clarify, this means that rights are something possessed uniquely by humans (either because of their rational capability or their relation to God) but those rights exist in a social framework with implied duties. By this logic, the right of free speech comes with a concomitant duty to temper one’s thoughts and to weigh one’s words carefully. The tension comes when the social dimensions of rights are separated from the individual dimension of rights. In classical and modern liberalism, rights are seen as something possessed atomistically by each individual; these rights do not arise out of human nature so much as they help guide human nature toward perfection. Russell Kirk, conservative philosopher, describes how this conception of rights was bound up with the will to dismantle institutions:

“Man, naturally virtuous and great-souled, had been corrupted by institutions, especially by private property: so Rousseau had preached. Wipe away the old order of things; set man free to follow his impulses, preferably on some tropic isle; follow nature. This vision is what Irving Babbitt called the idyllic imagination, as opposed to the moral imagination. The perfection of human nature and society: that was the aspiration of the men who, amidst great confusion, patched together the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. To accomplish this, they fancied, the shackles of the past must be struck off.”

The question of rights impacts the marriage debate in a similar vein as the institutional debate.  When rights are conceived atomistically and individualistically, the right for same-sex couples to enjoy the same legal benefits as heterosexual couples seems prima facie obvious. But if rights are conceived up as bound up with social norms and reflecting not only entitlements but duties, then thornier questions arise over the nature of social life and to what extent these “rights” can be de-coupled from legal and social reality.

I said at the beginning of this article that the legalization of same-sex marriage is all but inevitable and that conservatives will have to think of ways to deal with that in the upcoming years. It is my hope that the above discussion clarified why I might have said this. Legally and socially, the institutional nature of marriage has been largely forgotten. Instead, it is conceived of as a private contract based on certain emotional characteristics that are cross-sexual and have variable durations. Rights are conceived of as something individuals possess without respect to societal duties. When put together, the new social conception of marriage that this implies is fully inclusive of same-sex marriage (and perhaps other kinds of marriage that as of yet have not been put to debate.) Though valiant attempts, such as those of Sherif Gergis and Robert George, have been made to defend the conservative position on marriage as an institution, it is clear legally and socially speaking that their attempts are proving unfruitful.

I have no solutions for conservatives in this article. I do have an exhortation, however: we must not live up to our negative reputations in this area. Conservatism has been described as the most buoyant and joyous philosophy, with a love of tradition, a respect for custom, and a delight in the personal. That is the reputation we must live up to in showing collegiality, kindness and charity to not only our LGBTQ countryman but anyone with whom we morally or philosophically disagree.

As most readers are probably excruciatingly aware, the past year or so has been marked by a relative conflagration of media attention and social, political, and religious contention—both on-campus and in the national sphere—over Vanderbilt’s disputed “all comers” policy. However, it may have surprised some to find that the deep chasm splitting the student body might have translated into concrete attempts by legislators to intervene in the affairs of the university. And it definitely surprised some people that the intervention in question would have come in the forms that it did—both as the extant bill targeting the police force, and as an earlier bill last spring which would have threatened the $24 million in state tax revenue Vanderbilt receives for providing free medical care.  The moves certainly unsettled Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who vetoed the original general bill, and Attorney General Bob Cooper, who ruled the more recent one unconstitutional on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds. Both Haslam and Cooper have expressed that while they are not opposed to seeing similar legislation applied to state universities, they are hesitant as to the viability of enforcing it on a private institution.

While I cannot speak for everyone in my peer group, the very fact that a group of lawmakers is so willing to essentially strong-arm a university like Vanderbilt strikes me as somewhat disturbing—especially considering the fact that the group is primarily Republican in composition. The Republican Party has a proud history of dedication to the Constitution and constitutional law, and continues to emphasize its commitment to minimizing the reach of the government into the private sector—to ensuring that the arm of the law cannot suppress our rights to freedom of assembly, speech, etc.  What, then, does it say when legislators who endorse those values also endorse bills which support the right of a governmental body to reach in and dictate the affairs of a private educational establishment?

Ostensibly, the recent actions of Rep. Pody and his compatriots were intended to protect the rights and the voices of groups they felt subject to institutional bullying by Vanderbilt and by a broader set of social forces at play in the nation.  However, well-intentioned or not, does the fear of bullying itself justify bullying in retaliation?  It is highly unlikely, given the amount of time, effort, and public relations work the university has invested in it already, that Vanderbilt will rescind its non-discrimination policy, even under duress. If they had not failed, then the bills Pody et al. attempted to pass would have stripped Vanderbilt of some essential services, and in the process harmed a wide variety of people not even party to campus sociopolitical conversations—the people who receive healthcare from Vanderbilt, for example, or the trauma patients in the hospital whose safety is often secured by VUPD. And beyond that, they would have set an unhealthy precedent for allowing the government (even just at the state level) to deliberately manipulate and pressure the way a private educational body conducts its affairs—an action in and of itself ruled repeatedly to be constitutionally unsound.

We live in a political and socioeconomic climate of relative uncertainty, a period of change and upheaval on all fronts—much of that change good, and some of it likely harmful. But as in all periods of uncertainty and change both positive and negative, perhaps the one thing with the greatest potential to affect our lives in the long run is fear. If we do not check our own actions and reactions, and especially the actions and reactions of our politicians and lawmakers to the things we fear, we run a tremendous risk of becoming what we seek to avoid, of becoming the thing we despair of the most. Good motivations can and have in the past lead to tremendous oversights and overreaches of political authority; it is only by checking and evaluating how our actions adhere to our principles that we can truly be sure our politics are at least as honest to those principles as we could hope them to be.

On March 26, 2013, amidst a media whirlwind surrounding the issue, the court heard the oral arguments from both sides. As expected, the questioning was polarized between the conservative and liberal contingents of the court, in addition to the justices who doubted if the court should even be hearing the case. While one can speculate indefinitely on the decision that will be made in late June, it is clear that there are five options the Supreme Court has in ruling on Prop 8: (1) constitutionally protecting same-sex marriage nationwide, (2) protecting same-sex marriage in California by overturning Prop 8, (3) upholding Prop 8 and affirming states’ freedom in determining marriage laws, (4) equating marriage and civil unions (which would allow for same-sex marriage rights in the nine states that currently allow civil unions),  and (5) dismissing the case on procedural grounds.

There is much debate as to how each decision will affect the future of the Republican Party. While GOP members have had disagreements on the ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ effects the ruling will have, it is unanimous that any decision the court takes will force a shift in the party’s political position.

As of late, many political commentators have claimed that the US Supreme Court upholding the right to gay marriage will benefit Republicans. This is due to the undeniable fact that American society is becoming more accepting of homosexuality. Remaining opposed to same-sex marriage has increasingly become a hindrance to GOP politicians that want to stay within party lines, but are struggling to get votes at the same time. These commentators believe that if the issue of gay marriage is taken off of the table, then Republican candidates (particularly in more liberal regions) will no longer have to awkwardly conform to a social perspective that is no longer widely accepted in the United States. Such a ruling would be of particular benefit to the GOP’s 2016 presidential candidates, who would no longer have to carefully maneuver around the issue to get to their strong suit: the economy.

There has also been a backlash against such opinions by those who believe the GOP would be better off if the US Supreme Court were to uphold Prop 8. Arguments of this grain reason that too much fragmenting would occur within the party if the GOP ideology were to submit to the judicial standard of same-sex marriage. If the court were to uphold Prop 8, there would be no opportunity for the GOP to reposition itself on the issue, and therefore no potential for internal divisions. The potential for party polarization is manifested in statements by Mike Huckabee, political commentator and de facto arbiter for evangelist Republicans. The former Arkansas governor was recently asked in a Newsmax interview if the GOP would ever switch on gay marriage. His response: “They might. And if they do, they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk.” He is right; the Supreme Court’s decision will have zero effect on the significance of the issue to social conservatives. They will not simply “drop” the issue as a lost cause. If such a contingent of Republicans were to leave and form their own party, the GOP would be, without a doubt, quantitatively devastated.

The debate over Prop 8 presents a crossroads for the Republican Party, and every prominent member seems to be voicing their opinion on where it should go next. Senators Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Rob Portman (Ohio) have recently declared their support for same-sex marriage, and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has predicted that the next GOP presidential candidate could be an advocate as well.    Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and a majority of congressional Republicans remain staunchly against gay marriage, a view that many hold personally.

As the verdict on Proposition 8 nears, we can only wonder how the decision will affect the GOP. The trade-off between the social malleability of the party and the loss of social conservatives versus the social constancy of the party and political stagnation in the eyes of young voters will remain a heated topic in the days to come.

Anchor Link allows organizations to publicize events, keep records, and stay connected with members and other organizations. It has certainly made it easier for organizations to distribute information and recruit new members. However, the libertarian in me is skeptical about Anchor Link. Should the university be keeping track of us like this?

Whether they know it or not, every student has an Anchor Link profile. The university knows what organizations you are apart of, what lectures you attend, and what frat parties you’ve been to. Like it or not, every student organization has to use Anchor Link: from club sports teams, to political organizations, to fraternities. The school now has its eye on every organization, every meeting, and every member.

I can already hear people saying, “Well, if you have nothing to hide and are not ashamed of your involvement, why does it matter that the University has all this information?” Although this is a valid point, I respect privacy and believe that most others do too. Many students and many student organizations would rather be let alone.

As most of you may know, several fraternities have been kicked off campus and many more have faced the reign of terror of IFC. Was Anchor Link used in these proceedings against the chapters? I would safely assume so.

One might say that all student organizations reflect on this university, so they should be subject to the university’s scrutiny. But is it fair to student organizations that they always have Big Brother looming over them? Should not these organizations comprised of adults be given freedom and responsibility to manage their own affairs and abstain from the affairs of others, if they so wish?

Additionally, Anchor Link conjures in me the fear that nothing we do in this day and age is private. At every level it seems that someone is tracking us, collecting and storing our data, whether by Facebook, Google, or the federal government.

In fact, the CIA is attempting to gather every piece of data that exists—text messages, emails, tweets, pictures, videos, and the list goes on.  This might not scare some and might even make others feel safe, but it makes me shiver.

Should we allow anyone to have such intimate knowledge about us? What happened to privacy? The fact of the matter is, in this digital world, nothing is private. Someone has to be skeptical about data collection measures, because we simply do not know how the data will be used.  You have to ask questions or bad things will inevitably happen.

Thankfully, if anyone has the capacity to enact the positive change and generate the necessary enthusiasm, it’s Isaac and Lucie. They drew from a unique coalition consisting of widespread support from across campus, including both the Greek and non-Greek populations (the fact that that is radical is pretty sad, but that is worth exploring another time). Since its inception, VSG leadership has lacked turnover, as the president has always come from the previous administration. While this has perhaps provided for efficiency and ease of transition, it has caused the organization to stagnate; hopefully an injection of new blood will spike interest and allow VSG to reach new heights.

Again, hopefully looking back a year from now we will see a different version of VSG, one that does a more effective job of engaging the student body and advocating for its interests with the administration. There is no point in mincing words—the amount of people who truly care about food trucks and movie nights is around the amount of wins our basketball team had this season. (Too bad Isaac and Lucie can’t fix that.) Student government needs to act as a liaison. And even if VSG fills that role right now, if students are not aware of what it’s doing and frankly don’t care, then VSG is failing. At the very least, the voice of the student body has shown that we don’t want VSG to fail; we are eager to see it turned around and have something that reflects the top-tier quality of this university. So good luck, Mr. Escamilla and Ms. Calderon. Make us proud.

This statement is bald, simplistic, and not entirely accurate.  Nonetheless, I must introduce this article with this statement.  I am blind, with a permanent eye condition.  In light of this, I receive certain kinds of aid, both from the state in which I am a resident and from private institutions of which I am a part.

As one who believes in the classic conservatism of Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Edmund Burke (the importance of tradition, the relational nature of civil society, and the danger of economic leveling), I have a tangled relationship to the government.  While many conservatives see the government as an antagonist that must be checked explicitly by Constitutional procedure at best, that is not a philosophy I can wholly ascribe to myself.  Certainly there are many reservations I have with the current system of welfare in this country.  Furthermore, I acknowledge the economic reality in our country that presages with more and more urgency the need for welfare reform.  I would like to propose, however, in this article, a paradigm for a conservative understanding of government aid.  This will take into account the necessity of individual responsibility, the interconnection between government and civil society, and the ways in which aid to the disabled underscores these questions.

One of the central tensions between a conservative disposition and the current form of government welfare is the conservative emphasis on individual responsibility.  The individual, so it goes, is enabled to abdicate her responsibility as a citizen by receiving “hand-outs” from the government.  Images of welfare queens and PhDs on food stamps abound in popular conservative discourse.  I would, at the outset, like to acknowledge these concerns as valid, even if I would question much of the usefulness of those images.  In my life and in the lives of disabled people that I know, there is a kind of encroachment on our selves by the arm of the government.  At its best, government aid to the disabled is meant to empower the individual.  The aid I receive comes not in the form of monetary handouts (though aid to the disabled may certainly take that form) but rather help with purchasing necessary technology and assistance with college tuition.  Contrary to leaving me in a state of dependence, these tools allow me to augment and improve the skills I already have.  However, welfare for the disabled does not always take this form.  For example, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) allows those who qualify—many of whom have disabilities—to receive a monthly stipend from the government.  This, if not coupled with training and incentives to seek out individual employment, can stifle the individual’s desire and ability to work for herself.  (An even more complicated service exists in Canada, where the ODSP system of welfare provides stipends but actually removes incentives to receive a job because of how low the bar for removal is set; it thus becomes more prudent to stay on welfare then to get a job if one is disabled in some circumstances.)

This tension between how government aids people—the disabled specifically—and the negation of individual initiative that can result leads to further questions.  For when the question of welfare is considered from the individual’s perspective alone, a crucial dimension is lost.  Individuals, contra much of enlightenment philosophy, do not exist in an autonomous vacuum.   Rather they exist within a historically contingent society, a civil society at that.   This is important for thinking particularly about disability, from the perspectives of rehabilitation and welfare.  In much of rehabilitative philosophy, the goal for a disabled person is “independence” and “self-sufficiency”—perfect examples of modern ideals.  But if, as traditional conservatism maintains, individuals are not purely autonomous beings, then this conception needs to be upgraded.  “Independence” must be augmented by community, societal dignity, and a sense not just of independence but of social flourishing.  This is possibly the greatest danger of the modern welfare state, for disabled and non-disabled alike.  When the state alone is conceived of as arbiter of self-sufficiency, then the other institutions (church, local community, the extended family, etc.) that hold civil society together will find their maintenance growing more difficult.  This is all too evident in today’s age of rampant divorce, alienation, isolation, and community decay.

The current rate of unemployment for those with blindness stands at 70%.  This is a long-established figure that has drawn much attention.  Sociologically, there are many reasons for this figure—lack of education in braille, lack of access to and training in technology, and the difficulty of transportation among them.  This is only one problem in a small sector of the disabled population—not to mention the overall American population.  How can the views of both individual responsibility and civil society that conservatism puts forward help us think about the welfare state differently? Let me offer three suggestions.

First, the welfare state’s primary duty cannot be to eliminate poverty or to completely redistribute wealth in such a way that economic inequality no longer exists.  The past fifty years of continuous welfare spending show that this goal, at least, is ineffective.

Second, in light of this, the purpose of welfare might be seen as “disabling inability.” The welfare state can help to provide methods for the disabled, for example, to receive the kind of aid that allows them to grow in both character and knowledge.  This will not just mean hand-outs for their own sake but training and incentives to promote employment and individual dignity.

Finally, civil society must play a part in the welfare of its citizens, including the disabled.  Buttressed by such things as the ADA, there are already examples of this.  (The one immediately leaping to mind is that of college accommodations to those with disabilities, which promote equality of opportunity, not sameness.) Private institutions—schools, churches, local agencies, charities—must not merely “fill in” where the government isn’t active but make an effort to use their abilities to promote multidimensional welfare: personal, economic, and social.

There are no public policy prescriptions in this article.  However, thinking about the different ways in which welfare is discussed and the different elements that are constituted at the individual and societal level can help better policies be created.  I am convinced that this is not merely applicable to one subset of people.  This is not a game of identity politics where I am asking for more rights or a bigger piece of the monetary pie.  Instead, it is a reorientation of government and civil society based on classical conservatism that can help re-shape larger welfare policies.  Ultimately, this should increase everyone’s abilities and scope for dignity—disabled and non-disabled alike.