Whatever you think of College President Gene Nichol’s decision to remove the cross from the Wren Chapel altar until it is requested, the secretive way the policy change was made is an embarrassment to the ideals of this college. The decision to change the cross policy was made without input from students, faculty or alumni, and was not even officially commented on until media pressure forced a reaction from the president. The College should be a model for vigorous debate and transparency, not a place where decisions are made in the dark with the hope that they will never be brought to light.

p. The debate over the cross involves our history, our responsibilities as a state-supported institution and the place of religion in the public sphere. It concerns the future of the Wren Building, our most important and recognizable symbol, where freshmen are officially welcomed to the campus and seniors celebrate their graduation with a ring of the historic bell. This volatile mix of issues and symbolism was certain to elicit controversy and passionate opinions in the College community. Despite the obvious importance of this decision, it was made unexpectedly and without debate. There was no indication from the president that he was considering changing a half-century-old tradition, nor any consultation with the thousands of William and Mary students, professors and alumni who consider the Wren Building a symbolic embodiment of the College they hold so dear. The complete dismissal of community opinion is disrespectful to our traditions and ideals, and it has stirred up a deep well of resentment.

p. Not only was the community’s input never considered, but it appears that Nichol would have preferred his decision to go unnoticed. The policy change was made without a press release, e-mail to the community or any kind of official word from the president. The change was only brought to light after an e-mail was sent to members of the Spotswood Society, the student group that provides tour guides for the Wren Building, by the assistant director for the Historic Campus. The Flat Hat posted a story online, which appeared in the next day’s print edition. If it wasn’t for this e-mail, this story might still remain unreported. We felt that this story was important to more than just our on-campus readership, and members of staff began contacting other media outlets, including several blogs and professional news organizations. The response to our initial story was immediate, and it was soon picked up by dozens of newspapers, websites and television stations across the country. E-mails from concerned alumni and members of the public began pouring in. The next afternoon, Nichol responded to the public outcry with an e-mail to students explaining the decision and welcoming a “broader College discussion,” but the damage had already been done.

p. There are only two reasons the president would have avoided announcing his decision until faced with a public outcry. If he failed to anticipate the impassioned response, he is dangerously aloof and out of touch with the community. If he knew how controversial the decision would be, he must have hoped nobody would notice the cross’s disappearance, and that it could be removed without the controversy we are now facing. It is hard to say which is worse: a president who is blind to the values of the College, or one who thinks he can pull the wool over our eyes while he goes about his own agenda.

**Jeffersonian principles**
**To the Editor:**

p. The Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, originally introduced in 1777 by Alumnus Thomas Jefferson, helped abolish official state religion for the Commonwealth. This model was later extended to the national stage. Though you or I might like an established state religion, I might choose a different religion from you. We can thank Mr. Jefferson for protecting me from you, and you from me. Wise leaders respect the rule of democracy while wisely codifying the value in protecting the many from the few, as well as the few from the many.

p. I respect that the Wren Chapel was historically a place of Christian worship; and at times it serves as a chapel even to this day. If it was a church separate from the College, I would expect to see a cross there at all times. When my friends and colleagues desire to assemble for religious purposes in the Wren Chapel and to stand or kneel in the presence of their chosen symbol of faith, I expect a cross to be displayed without reservation or hesitation. When or if the Chapel functions as a classroom or for any secular purpose, I expect it to be a welcoming place for all members of the College community. The College in the 21st century has become a home for higher learning for all faiths, a place where all are to feel welcome to pursue knowledge. May it ever be so.

p. In a world where principles are almost passe and in a land where leaders govern based on polls and political winds, President Nichol has shown the courage to live based on Jeffersonian principles. By doing so, he stands strong with his distinguished alumnus and with the principles that helped form and shape our great nation.

p. **__— Daniel Shaye, ’90__**

Given the poor representation of women in the Student Assembly Senate, it is unusual for the female Senators to vote together as a block — there are only four of us in a body of 22, so we don’t have much sway when it comes to majority votes. However, last Tuesday’s consideration of the Judicial Code Reformation Act produced this Senate’s first ever gender-split vote; with three women voting against the bill, one woman abstaining and all but one man voting in support. The cause of this division seems, at first glance, somewhat innocuous: a proposal to change the burden of proof in College judicial cases from the currently used standard of “clear and convincing” to the stricter “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Initially this can sound like a good idea — if it’s a higher standard of determining guilt, why not apply it to the College’s judicial proceedings? There are several reasons.

p. Firstly, the use of this stricter standard is inappropriate because the penalties of College judicial proceedings do not justify its use. It is the burden of proof used in criminal courts in the United States, and simply stated, it means that a judge or jury must be sure, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the defendant has committed the crime. The exactness demanded by this burden of proof is necessary because the defendant faces, if found guilty, a sentence that will lead to the deprivation of life or liberty. From a legal standpoint, College punishments, up to and including expulsion, are incomparable with imprisonment or loss of life.

p. Secondly, the College does not have the resources to investigate crimes and prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. For this to be possible, the College would have to conduct investigations as actual prosecutors do, which would require everything from police and investigators to expert witnesses on DNA at their disposal. However, College officials explicitly told co-sponsors of the bill that the College could never have the capacity to collect the evidence necessary to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. No institution of higher learning in the United States uses beyond a reasonable doubt as the burden of proof for internal judicial cases, and for good reason.

p. Beyond being inappropriate and impossible, it was the spirit in which this proposal was made that makes it so offensive and, I believe, caused the vote to split between men and women. The act’s original sponsor and author, Sen. Will Coggin, has a well- established and public history of disagreement with the College’s management of sexual assault cases. I have little doubt that many of these reforms were intended to make the prosecution of sexual assault cases more difficult. The College’s judicial system is by no means perfect, and student-led attempts for reform are a step in the right direction. However, if we truly want to reform our judicial processes for the better, specifically in regard to sexual assault cases, we must start with un-biased perspectives and propose changes that are realistic and just for all students involved.

p. __Meghan McCarthy, a Student Assembly Senator, is a senior at the College. Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Flat Hat.__

I want to contribute a few points to the dialogue that Sam Sadler urged in Residence Life’s decision to not implement a six-day work week for housekeepers. As reported in Morgan Figa’s article in this issue, Sadler claims that he “want[s] to explore as a community” the questions that the proposed schedule change has raised. Now, “community” is a powerful word, and the right to use it must be earned. There are two unacknowledged obstacles in doing so at the College.

p. First, the administration sets the terms of the dialogue it wants to have. In a meeting with some RAs, Residence Life administrators complained that the proposed schedule change had not been expressed through the “proper channels” (according to an anonymous RA). Presumably, the “proper” channels run through Residence Life Director Deb Boykin’s office. When Ms. Boykin talks in the article about revising the “methodology” of the six-day plan to better determine how residents feel, she sets herself up as the sole arbiter of competing needs and values — accountable only to her superiors in the administration. It is, of course, a mark of progress that she wants to gauge student opinion by a measure more accurate than some multiple-choice survey. But, no matter how the investigation is conducted, at the end of the day she is still the one who chooses the questions and interprets the answers. A dialogue so constrained is no dialogue at all — it is a facilitated monologue. That’s why housekeepers and students needed a rally to express our opposition. We needed a forum of our own.

p. Secondly, the people who would be most affected by the proposal in question — the low-wage workers — are held on the margins of our so-called community. Their membership is judged by a double standard. On the one hand, they are expected to maintain that warm and special “community” atmosphere of the College. They are to be affable and outgoing. After all, at the meeting where they learned the six-day week would no longer be implemented in January, housekeepers were scolded for not talking enough to students (according to an anonymous housekeeper). They are to take pride in the work they do and the contribution they make to the campus. According to the June 9 issue of W&M News, the College has a ceremonial picnic to congratulate workers for their “character and commitment” every June. On the other hand, they are denied a voice in the community. Let’s not forget that Residence Life’s initial response when housekeepers expressed dissatisfaction with the plan: “If you don’t like it, you can find another job.” I have heard many times — in dorms, dining halls and around campus — the complaint of the housekeeper in today’s article: workers are afraid to speak out when their job is on the line. If they do have a problem, they are to voice it in their boss’s office, and on their knees. The notion that a dialogue can be held from such a position is ludicrous.

p. There’s a name for the College community’s double standard: paternalism. I can’t put it better than one housekeeper I talked to about this month’s events did: “They treat us like children. But we are not children.” In a region where paternalistic impulses once served to legitimize the most grinding human oppression, this should give us pause.

p. Now, Sadler doesn’t tell us what his community dialogue ought to look like, but I have some suggestions. First, it needs to be inclusive. Workers at the College do contribute something very special, much more than clean floors and hot meals. They should be allowed to contribute one more thing: their voices. Secondly, it cannot be conducted across a power differential, on administrators’ turf and administrators’ terms. The housekeepers have a union recognized by the College. The administration can and should be proactively engaging them in discussions over wages, benefits, scheduling and day-to-day treatment. When you’re stuck at the bottom of the totem pole, collective organization is the only way to get a voice of your own.

p. After a month fighting a decision that never should have been made, the Tidewater Labor Support Committee is going one step further than suggesting that the administration make good on its promise of dialogue. We’re demanding it. On Nov. 9, we proposed to President Nichol a College policy that would require good-faith engagement with the campus employees’ union and remove the present institutional obstacles to getting a voice on the job. (To see the policy, visit http://tlabor.people.wm.edu/rto.htm.) Some 500 students have already signed a petition urging the policy’s adoption. Until the policy is put in place, we will not consider the fight for workers’ weekends won — because the causes of the Residence Life debacle remain unaddressed.

p. I hope Sam Sadler and his colleague Vice President for Administration Anna Martin (the vice president actually responsible for most staff policies) will reflect on the obstacles to genuine dialogue at the College and take prompt action to eliminate them. If they do not, we can only conclude that the administration’s rhetoric of community is disingenuous — a cheap trick to preserve the status quo. If they do, then we can begin to build a community that truly merits the name.

p. __Andrew Shoffner, a member of the Tidewater Labor Support Committee, is a senior at the College. His views do not necessarily represent those of The Flat Hat.__

Many of us were familiar with the name Hans Tiefel even before we arrived in Williamsburg. Touted as the College’s toughest professor and instructor of five religious ethics courses, Tiefel was a symbol of academic rigor. He taught ethics in the Religious Studies department for 30 years; he was a hallmark of the discipline’s dedication to cultivating scholars endowed with a deep sense of social responsibility. He once remarked to his students, “I think one of the great things about teaching at a place like this is that you run into some really good human beings. We’re not all exceptionally smart, but we can be good. There is a difference between being smart and being good. Sometimes at William and Mary they occur together, and that is really splendid.”

p. When Professor Tiefel retired two years ago, the College lost not only one of its finest professors, but an entire discipline. It has recently come to our attention that the College does not plan to renew a permanent ethics position in our department of Religious Studies.

p. This could not come at a worse time. In our world today, decisions are often made globally. Throughout history and in the present world, humans have sought ways in which to live peacefully, harmoniously and richly. Developing an ethos of social responsibility is integral to a just and flourishing community. It demands that we constantly assess not only our current role in the world, but also our future course.

p. To that end, it is a mistake for the current administration to conceive of holistic liberal education without ethics. Removing ethics denies the social motivations imparted in its own mission statement: “The university recognizes its special responsibility to the citizens of Virginia through public and community service to the Commonwealth as well as to national and international communities.” Seeking to fulfill its social responsibilities, the College instituted General Education Requirement 7. This last and arguably most important GER requires every undergraduate student to take a course in Philosophical, Religious and Social Thought. “Not only must the course deal with matters of enduring concern to human life, such as meaning, value, justice, freedom and truth, but it must also aim at cultivating reasoned analysis and judgment in students who take it.” To remove the religious component of this requirement is to discredit the value of religious discourse to a fully realized liberal arts education. Moreover, denying the study of ethics in a religious studies context is to discount a profound facet of our human endeavor. Doing so limits our conception of what it is to live a good human life.

p. As graduating Religious Studies majors, we have experienced the challenges and the rewards of studying ethics in this context. Religious ethics brings the living religious traditions to the forefront of the political and social struggles that face us today. It challenges us to view the world from outside ourselves, to question what it is to be good, to know good and to achieve good. We are not solely concerned with how this loss may affect the Religious Studies department as a complete body of scholarship. Rather, we are doubly concerned that the College stands to lose this essential discipline forever. If the College loses the study of religious ethics, it denies its responsibility to cultivate well-rounded and ethical members of society.

p. This choice also has practical implications for our futures as students. Many professional and graduate schools have already noted the importance of ethics in education. At a time when these schools are increasingly demanding ethics courses as standard curriculum, the College places its undergraduates at a grave disadvantage. For example, each of Harvard’s prestigious graduate and professional schools officially incorporates ethics as a part of its educational philosophy.

p. With all of this in mind, it is our sincere hope that Provost Geoffrey Feiss and Dean Carl Strikwerda of Arts and Sciences will reconsider their choices regarding the role of ethics in Religious Studies by hiring a permanent professor of ethics in the department of Religious Studies.

p. __Ethan Forrest and Joanna Greer are seniors at the College. Their views do not necessarily represent those of The Flat Hat.__

Over the past year, numerous major universities around the country have decided to eliminate the early decision and early action options for college applications. Harvard and Princeton Universities were some of the first schools to eliminate the options for next year’s applicants. This decision will clearly make a significant difference in the application process as a whole.

p. For many students, there is often no benefit to applying early decision. In fact, the better schools are often more selective during the earlier application rounds. If a student is not a sure fit for the school, admission offices will simply defer the application and look at it again within the larger pool of applicants.

p. However, this option gives a clear advantage to wealthier applicants. Students from more affluent backgrounds typically apply early decision because they don’t need to depend on financial to make a decision. Many qualified students are unable to apply early decision, though, because it is a binding agreement with no guarantee of financial aid.

p. I agree that the option of early decision should be eliminated from the application process. By having everyone apply in a single round, each applicant is given an equal opportunity for enrollment and those who need financial aid are not put at a disadvantage.

p. There is also a growing worry among both college and high school teachers that high school seniors are not working hard enough after they get into college. Chances are that we have all heard of “senioritis” and most of us probably suffered from it during our senior year. The problem, however, is that it starts much earlier for those students who get in through early decision. After months of slacking during senior year, these students experience great difficulty re-adjusting to the workload of freshman year in college.

p. As someone who got into the College through early decision, I understand how negatively it can affect students’ academics. But, at the time, it seemed like the best decision I could make. I received my acceptance letter on Nov. 30, so I was carefree for the rest of my senior year. But, if you asked my parents or my teachers, both would have said that there was a noticeable dive in my performance at school. Once I was in, there was little motivation to work as hard as I did before.

p. Despite the clear advantages of eliminating the early decision option, most schools don’t have the luxury of doing so. Harvard can afford to do so because it has the highest rate of students who choose to enroll once they are admitted; it knows that students will enroll regardless. Many schools, however, would not be able to fill the expected number of students without the option.

p. Schools that can afford to eliminate the early decision option should do so. There would not only be a noticeable improvement in the academic performance of those high school students who would have applied early, but the clear disadvantage it poses for those students in need of financial aid would also be rectified. There is no point in giving an advantage to those students who already have an upper hand in the application process.

p. __Rachael Siemon-Carome is a freshman at the College. Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Flat Hat.__

In a country where over half of all citizens self-identify as “pro-choice” (according to a 2004 Gallup poll), I am sick of how twisted and misinterpreted this label has become. Since when do pro-choice activists hate women and try to trick them into abortion? Since when did “choice” become an undesirable ideal? (I don’t have answers, but you could ask the “Feminists for Life” flyers lining the halls of Morton.) I want to re-claim my name.

p. In truth, owning a pro-choice identity speaks for itself: it advocates an attitude of acceptance and support for whatever reproductive decisions women make. Pro-choice politics assigns no value to one choice over another — it only promotes women’s agency and self-determination in this realm of private-decision-turned-public-discourse. In the midst of political messaging, soundbytes and slogans, the real convictions behind a pro-choice ideology get lost in a cloud of misunderstanding and mendacity. While I fear redundancy from advocates such as myself, I fear even more the reality that many individuals still misconstrue a basic tenent of the pro-choice movement: pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. It seems almost silly to write. I mean, do thousands and thousands of American women and men actually devote their valuable time, money and intellects to a campaign pleading unsuspecting women to get abortions?

p. I don’t mean to imply that all pro-life individuals feel this way — in fact, I’m sure they don’t because I’ve known some very intelligent pro-lifers — but many pro-life organizations push the idea (an accusation, at worst, and an implication, at best) that we pro-choicers are out to coerce women into choosing abortion. I would ask them to re-read our name.

p. The whole idea behind the pro-choice movement in America has always been to offer more alternative reproductive choices to women. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, commonly known in this country solely for its abortion services, has been working for over 90 years to provide women with every resource they need to make the right choices for their lives. In fact, only 9 percent of Planned Parenthood patients actually use abortion services. The remainder of the approximately 5 million clients served by the organization and its affiliates take advantage of contraception and family planning services, gynecological care, STI testing and treatment, adoption referrals, sex education and information on reproductive rights advocacy and the needs of women in developing countries. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood’s official mission statement asserts that “It is the policy of Planned Parenthood Federation of America to assure that all individuals have the freedom to make reproductive decisions … Planned Parenthood asserts that both parenthood and non-parenthood are valid personal decisions.” I must have missed the fine print that says, “Oh, by the way, we only support women’s choices if they choose abortion.”

p. It seems that the “real” debate around abortion should simply remove itself from the current liberal/conservative pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy. The issue has nothing to do with personal decision-making or opinion. And frankly, the issue doesn’t need to focus on abortion. What a pro-choice ideology encompasses is a belief in the need for every woman to have the ability and resources to make her own decisions regarding reproductive health and parenthood. Yes, it includes abortion, which is not secretive or shameful for the pro-choice movement, but it also includes the right for a woman to detest abortion and vow never to obtain one. It allows women to delay childbirth and to receive high-quality prenatal care once they are ready. The pro-choice movement lets women escape their culturally circumscribed roles as mothers and celebrate that role if they so choose.

p. If we reject this ideology of choice, what we are left with is simply non-choice: a lack of agency, a lack of resources, a lack of self-determination and a lack of personhood. To respect women is to allow them to control their own reproduction, in whatever manner they desire. That is what it really means to be pro-choice.

p. __Devan Barber is a junior at the College. Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Flat Hat.__