U.S. Representative and Hunter B. Andrews Distinguished Fellowship recipient Robert Wittman (VA-1) visited the College of William and Mary Tuesday. Wittman’s district encompasses Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown.

Wittman spent most of the day on campus, sitting in on classes, talking to students, and meeting with College administrators. His visit culminated in an open student forum hosted in Blow Memorial Hall.

“We wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to meet with the general population here, to let people know what’s going on these days in Washington, [D.C.],” he said.

Wittman stressed the importance of meeting with students directly.

“I value the opportunity to meet with [students] and to give them my perspective, but also to take their questions,” Wittman said. “The more important thing is to make sure we understand from their standpoint what their questions are and how they see the development of public policy.”

Wittman addressed the half-filled room in Blow Hall before opening the floor for audience questions.
The congressman first discussed the recent budget crisis and possible government shutdown.

“Luckily [the shutdown] didn’t happen. I think that all folks — [on] both sides of the aisle — decided that it was better for us to operate,” Wittman said.

Faced with such an obstacle, Wittman said his first priority was to ensure continued support for military personnel.

“We want to make sure, going forward, that there are changes in how the government would function in light of a shutdown and make sure our men and women would be paid, regardless,” he said.

Wittman, who serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources and on the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force, spent considerable time addressing environmental issues facing such natural resources as the Chesapeake Bay.

“The Chesapeake Bay is an economic engine. It is a job creator,” he said. “Cleaner water means more productive capacity.”

Wittman said increased environmental damage to the bay is resulting in a declining value of seafood and overall productivity. He suggested that increased accountability among farmers and fishermen who use the bay’s resources, as well as a careful analysis of government spending, are possible solutions to this environmental and economic issue.

“Accountability is critical,” Wittman said. “Identifying where every dollar goes is also critical.”

Wittman also discussed his recent trip to Afghanistan, reflecting on the role of the U.S. government in rebuilding the war-torn country.

“Governance has improved, but it needs much more improvement. The big issue with government — there is corruption,” Wittman said. “But the U.S. can’t fix corruption. It has to be the Afghan people and the Afghan government who take on corruption.”

The College first honored the Washington Post political columnist David Broder with the Andrews fellowship in 2001. Since then, the College has used the award to attract notable public figures to campus every year, including last year’s recipient, journalist Linda Greenhouse.

“Every year, we have the Hunter B. Andrew Distinguished Scholar in American Politics, and a political figure is typically selected each year for this,” Office of the President Senior Administrative Assistant Carla Costello said. “It was established for the former Senator Henry Andrews. It’s an endowment [from] his family funds, so we can bring someone like this here.”

The College of William and Mary Student Assembly began its new session in Blow Hall Thursday.

The issues discussed included the election of a new SA chair and secretary, the solidification of several previously passed bills, the extension Keep Swem Open During Finals Act, and the Declare War on U.Va. bill.

The first order of business was to elect Sen. Matt Paganussi ’14 as secretary, succeeding Curt Mills ’13, and Sen. Noah Kim ’13 as SA chair, succeeding Stef Felitto ’12.

“[The position of SA chair] is more than an administrative role,” Sen. Doug Haynes ’12 said. “You have to also facilitate the senate’s purpose; you have to be the voice of the student body.”

A main topic of discussion during the meeting was the decision to allow the bill to keep Earl Gregg Swem Library open all day during finals and to pay for blue books for tests to apply to this semester’s final exams.

The bill, which had been previously passed, only covered next year’s final exams.
“We’re still kind of in a tough situation with our budget,” Kim said.

The senators debated whether or not the SA would have enough money in the fall to pay for both the Keep Swem Open During Finals Act and the STI testing bill. The Student Health Act III, which would pay for students to receive free STI testing next year, passed recently.

“Here’s the issue with our reserve,” Kim said. “We allocated $15,000 for STI testing. Now that kicks in after our rollover. The way we set up STI testing was to kick in after that rollover occurs. The problem is that we have no way to really know how much will be in that rollover.”

The SA allocated $3,648 to keep Swem open and cover the cost of blue books, and $15,000 to cover the cost of STI testing for the 2011-2012 academic year.

“We’re in kind of a difficult situation,” Kim said. “We technically have enough money, but we promised money that we don’t have to STI testing, and we don’t know how much money we will have.”

Many of the senators came to the conclusion that the SA would have enough money to cover both bills by the time rollover funds are added in the fall.

“I think it’s terrible that we have to make this decision, and we should have been a lot more careful about the things we spent money on previously so that we wouldn’t be in this situation and not have the money to fund the most popular thing that we do,” Sen. Grace Colby ’13 said.

The decision to extend the Keep Swem Open During Finals Act to include this semester’s finals passed 15-1.

The SA ended the session by voting on a bill which would unofficially declare war on the University of Virginia. Presented by Sen. Shep Walker ’11, the bill was stripped of, according to Walker, “clauses that actually did anything.” The SA voted for the bill to skip the committee process. The bill then failed, with a seven to seven vote, and four abstaining.

The behavior of Wall Street executives and Washington officials angered many Americans at the onset of the financial crisis. Andy Sorkin, New York Times columnist and author of “Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System-And Themselves,” sought to elucidate the motives and players of the cat-and-mouse game that ensued.

Sorkin addressed nearly 140 people, including 15 College of William and Mary students Thursday at the Williamsburg Inn on the causes and aftermath of the financial meltdown. Sorkin is the first of a number of authors who will be invited to Williamsburg as part of the Inaugural Authors Series, hosted by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, to discuss the issues surrounding their work.

“This is a conversation about the economy, how we got here, where we are going,” Sorkin said. “The important moment for our economic history, and where my story begins, is 2:30 a.m. on September 15, 2008.”

Forty-five minutes earlier that day, Lehman Brothers, a prominent global financial services firm, had declared bankruptcy; five hours before, Merrill Lynch, another large financial firm, had been sold for $44 million, and the financial system quickly braced for a storm.

“I said it was like a movie … my wife said it was like a book,” Sorkin said. “It turns out, we were both right.”

After nearly 500 interviews, clandestine memos, a firsthand look into the back rooms of power, and what Sorkin describes as a competition between Washington and Wall Street executives about who could provide the most information, Sorkin emerged unwilling to lay full blame on the top levels of Wall Street.

“I’m a reporter, I want to find the crime; I wanted to find the conspiracy,” Sorkin said. “But the more I looked … the more I found that the accountants were praising the practices, the lawyers were praising it, so executives really thought they were doing the best thing to save their company … Who is wearing the white hat and who is wearing the black hat is hard to decipher.”

While Sorkin contended that measures like the Consumer Protection Bureau and
legislation that places a financial net beneath failing companies have succeeded in “reforming the edges of Wall Street”, the major concerns lie within the structure of the system.

“When I looked on the other side of the cliff, it was so much worse than I thought,” Sorkin said. “This brings up the issue of transparency, and when you really start working, you see how interconnected we all are.”

Sorkin’s suggestions called for personal accountability from American citizens and a reduction of the size of companies.

“We will always have a financial crisis,” Sorkin said. “We are not going to eliminate that, but we can modulate the up and downs … If it was up to me, I would break up the banks. They are much too big for the small amount of executives to handle … We have to ask ourselves what we could have done, and what we can still do. If you really look at ourselves, we are not long-term thinkers, but short-term.”

Henry Albers ’12 enjoyed the discussion for its insight into Sorkin’s personal opinion.

“His book is very character-driven,” Albers said. “Sorkin believes that the problem is with the system, not the people. I really liked seeing what he himself thought about the economy.”

Sorkin is also the New York Times chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, the assistant editor of business and finance news, and the editor and creator of DealBook, a financial news site. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for Business Journalism in 2005 for breaking news and in 2010 for best business book of the year.

Abortion, right or wrong?

This was the question of the debate between Life Training Institute President Scott Klusendorf and Former President of the American Civil Liberties Union Nadine Strossen Monday.

Strossen kicked off the debate by looking at the similarities between the two perspectives, arguing that it isn’t a simple black and white issue and that people are not often absolutely pro-choice or pro-life.

“In our ideal world, every pregnancy would reflect an affirmative, thoughtful choice to become a parent,” Strossen said. “Every child would be enthusiastically welcomed and raised in a safe, healthy and caring family, and no pregnant women would encounter a tragic, unforeseen situation that may make abortion the least bad option.”

The differences between the two speakers’ opinions soon became evident as Klusendorf took the podium. To him, the issue boils down to whether or not the fetus is considered to be a life.

“We’ve got to answer the question, what is the unborn, before we can answer the question, can we kill the unborn,” Klusendorf said.

According to Klusendorf, all pro-choice arguments would be sound if they were not based on the premise that the unborn are not human. He stated that it is important to note that humans are not constructed, but developed, and that the pre-birth stages of life are simply part of the human stages of life.

“Everything that [the] embryo needs that will determine the course of its development is plugged in from the very beginning, and now it’s just going to run its course,” Klusendorf said. “If left uninterrupted, what you get is a fetus, a newborn, a toddler, an adolescent, an adult and a senior citizen. Just different stages that were there from the same entity that was there in the beginning.”

He argued that there are only four differences between an embryo and a human adult: size, level of development, environment and degree of dependency. None of these differences, according to Klusendorf, should be grounds for saying an embryo is inferior or has less of a right to life.

He claimed that while it is wrong to discriminate based on skin color or appearance, it is equally wrong to discriminate based on the four principles he discussed.

Strossen disagreed, and rejected the idea that there is a simple answer to the question of whether or not a fetus is a human life.

“Something can have some biological qualities that you could say make this something that will develop into a full-fledged human being or person,” Strossen said. “That is not enough to equate every single stage along the way with a woman. That’s why, to me, if there is a conflict between the two, it’s clear the woman should get priority, and the further you get along the way in the development process, the more moral and legal significance should be given to the potential life that is within her.”

Strossen also emphasized the importance of considering both the woman and the potential life. She discussed the pictures that pro-lifers often show of a fetus.

“What they ask us to visualize is the isolated picture of the fetus,” Strossen said. “Where is the person that develops, nurtures and sustains the fetus we are looking at? Where is the woman?”

To further emphasize the need to take the woman into account, she cited a study that showed two more likely causes of restriction on abortion: a hostile statewide public opinion toward women’s equality and women’s comparatively lower incomes.

“There is an absence of the voices of the women who are in the situation where they are trying to make a morally, least painful decision given their circumstances when they’re pregnant — all their family situation, all the health and other pressures,” Strossen said.

Another point of disagreement was on anti-abortion laws. Strossen argued that anti-abortion laws don’t stop abortions, they merely stop safe abortions. She cited a study by the World Health Organization which states that every year 70,000 women die from unsafe abortions in countries where abortions are illegal.

Klusendorf disputed these facts, citing an American Journal of Public Health Article that states that 90 percent of all abortions done illegally in the United States were executed by physicians in good standing in their communities, which explains why the death rate is so low. He said that anti-abortion laws do help reduce the number of abortions.

“If [abortion] is immoral and wrong, it would be immoral to only go after the underlying conditions and not implement laws against it,” Klusendorf said.

Despite both debaters citing similarities between their stances, no consensus was met in terms of future abortion legislation.