Well, Erik Houser ’10 did it. For the first time in recent memory, apathy — rather than inhuman overzealousness — has delivered a candidate into the often esteemed ranks of our Student Assembly. And with the recent allegations regarding keylogging e-mail passwords, the time could not be better for this organization to take a deep breath and inject into its proceedings the common sense that Houser’s disaffected constituency demands. A good place to start this process is with the SA Election Code, which should be reformed before more grand — or grandiose — plans take command of the SA’s focus.

To illustrate our point, here is a hypothetical that should make any believer in effective democracy shudder: Imagine an SA incumbent who decides not to run for re-election, but hopes to ensure continued access to the annals of SA power by handpicking his successor. While such a situation should be outlandish in a system with open elections, under the current SA election code, and under certain conditions, it would be remarkably easy to manage.

In the less-contested class officer positions, incumbents are very likely to win their seats again; so likely, in fact, that they frequently run unopposed. However, SA candidate lists are not announced until the beginning of the campaign period, after it is already too late to declare candidacy. This creates a situation in which an officer can ensure that a friend can run unopposed or with minimal opposition by simply keeping mum about his intention not to re-seek office. His assumed presence on the ticket scares off the majority of the opposition, while the student body is kept in the dark because of the election rules that keep candidacy declarations confidential until it is too late.

These same rules lead to the familiar situation in which there may be several write-in campaigns for an office for which no one has officially declared candidacy. Students who are willing and eager to take on the job are kept in the dark about its availability until it is impossible to take a spot on the ballot.
There are good reasons for the rules to be the way they are, but these rules do not respond to the needs of the campus. The concern is over snowballing campaign periods, which rack up costs and give unfair advantages to candidates who hit the campaign trail early.

We already have rules against early official campaigning, and these rules, if strictly enforced, should be enough on their own. Beyond that, we think that this campus, recently struck by a spell of apathy, would benefit from a little word-of-mouth buzz and excitement, even if it is before the official campaign period and unofficial in nature. The SA must change its policies such that candidacies are announced as they are declared.

And of course, with such a broken elections code, reform by no means should be limited to this one area alone. There is now no mechanism for a candidate to drop out of a race, as if this were some sort of unforeseeable eventuality. Under current rules, those who no longer wish to run simply break campaign finance rules in order to become disqualified. And, if this election cycle taught us anything, discrepancies between the SA Election Code and its Constitution need to be identified and addressed.

Ever since the College of William and Mary adopted a policy of medical amnesty for incidents involving alcohol two years ago, the question of drug amnesty has been a recurring issue in campus discourse. Today, Sen. Ben Brown ’11 will present a bill to the Student Assembly that would grant amnesty to those whose drug consumption has landed them in the hospital.

This reform, though welcome, is misguided when combined with the College’s extreme drug policy. It ends up endangering students more than it helps them. If the SA wants to make the student body safer, they must reform the College’s marijuana policy before attempting to steer the policy toward more dangerous drugs. Allowing students to be protected by drug amnesty if they are hospitalized while keeping in place policies that kick freshman out of housing for marijuana possession sends the wrong message to students.

When the College enacted alcohol amnesty the administration declared that they value individual safety over the enforcement of law — to a certain degree. The College says that if you are under 21 and you are drunk, they care more about your health than punishing underage intoxication; however, if you are found to be in possession of alcohol, the College still allows itself to discipline you for underage possession of alcohol. In short, alcohol amnesty only extends to consumption.

It is at this point that drug and alcohol amnesty policies must diverge because, unlike alcohol, you cannot be charged for the consumption of drugs — merely possession. For example, if I were to walk by a police officer and the officer smelled alcohol on me, the law gives him or her the power to charge me with underage possession of alcohol, even if I did not literally have alcohol on my person. However, if I were to walk by the same officer and the officer smelled marijuana on me, while this would give him probable cause to search me, if I were not in possession of marijuana I would be free to go — no matter how stoned the officer thought I was.

When asked about this discrepancy, Brown told me that Dean of Students Dave Gilbert was open to granting amnesty for a minor drug possession charge if someone was hospitalized and found to have drugs on them. However, he wanted to reserve the right to punish students whom he believed to be dealing drugs. While the simple acknowledgment of the law’s discrepancy shows that the administration has put some thought into drug amnesty, the decision remains in the hands of Gilbert.

Unfortunately, this is indicative of the College’s larger drug policy. The student handbook offers no distinctions between drug offenses, stating that a series of sanctions can be levied by themselves or in combination with others. These sanctions vary, and come in the form of warnings, loss of privileges, task participation, disciplinary probation, suspension or dismissal.

I distinctly remember being told by a Resident Assistant that the penalty for possessing marijuana in a freshman dorm — which is substance-free housing by default — is the denial of the privilege to live on-campus for the remainder of the year. This is particularly crippling for freshmen because they are required to live in on-campus housing. I witnessed, firsthand, the dismissal of a hallmate through this rather roundabout policy.

No matter how drug amnesty is put into place, the existence of policies like this overcome any possible good that it could create on campus. Without complete policy reform, drug amnesty will only encourage the abuse of cocaine and prescription opiates — abuse that is easily hidden behind closed doors. Marijuana use, though completely non-lethal and extremely unlikely to result in hospitalization, is much more easily detected by someone outside your door.

The punishment should fit the crime. A student who overdoses on cocaine should not be able to walk out of the hospital knowing that he or she is protected by drug amnesty while a student smoking marijuana in his dormitory is being kicked off campus.

E-mail Russ Zerbo at rjzerbo@wm.edu.

News reached the College of William and Mary community last week of the four finalists for vice president for Student Affairs — arguably the most important administrative position at the College. Whoever gets the job will have some big shoes to fill, as many of us older folks look back on Sam Sadler’s ’64 days at the College with fondness and miss his steadying presence on campus.

In last Friday’s Flat Hat, the newspaper’s editorial board wrote that Virginia Ambler ’88 Ph.D ’06 , a two-time alumna who currently holds the position on an interim basis, should be given a permanent appointment. I would personally love nothing more than for Ambler to be hired as permanent VPSA if she is the best candidate. At the moment, however, I don’t know if that’s the case, and neither does anybody else except for members of the Search Committee, who are understandably refraining from taking sides until the student body has a chance to meet each candidate and provide their input.

For those of you who don’t know a great deal about the position, the VPSA oversees just about everything that matters to the student body, including the Dean of Students Office, Residence Life, the Student Health Center, the Student Conduct and Honor Councils, Student Activities and of course, most important of all, the Student Assembly. While our immediate interactions with the vice president can range from simply reading e-mails to regular meetings, most aspects of campus life are run from that office in the Campus Center.

The importance of the position has been reflected in the scope of the search-and-review process that has taken place over the past year to find a permanent replacement for Sadler. According to Clay Clemens, professor of government and chair of the Search Committee, 80 applications were initially received, and the four finalists all boast strong credentials and experience from various universities.

Undoubtedly, Ambler — with her education and experience — would have been a strong candidate even if her years in student affairs had been at a different institution. However, The Flat Hat’s editorial seems to indicate that the main reason for hiring her would be her familiarity with the College and her involvement with issues of student affairs on campus. But can somebody please tell me why that’s necessarily a good thing?

Sure, it helps to know your way around campus and be familiar with different student leaders and organizations. But these connections can be fostered over time, and the new VPSA will be able to get a feel for campus this summer and next year. If familiarity with the College was a prerequisite for the job, there would be no reason to spend time, money and resources on a nationwide search.

What we should be judging these candidates on is not how well they know the College, but what impact they will have on the campus community. In taking a look around, can anybody truly say that they are happy with the state of student affairs? I doubt it. We still have students getting bumped, even though the College has additional housing space at the Dillard Complex that it could use as a back-up, if for no other reason than to ensure that students have a place to live if they wanted it. The Greek system is a complete mess. Student life is virtually nonexistent unless you’re 21 or you decide to suck it up and just deal with the College Delly.

As a result of the absence of on-campus student life, town-gown relations continue to be marked by distrust and anger.

The College doesn’t suffer from a “deficit of institutional memory,” as The Flat Hat’s editorial asserts. There are plenty of people who respect the history and institutions of the College who can carry the torch of tradition. Rather, the College suffers from a surplus of bureaucratic stagnation. There are heaps of problems, lots of committees and task forces, and nothing that actually gets done. Sweeping these issues under the rug just won’t cut it anymore.

We need someone for this important post who can fix that. We need someone who can unite the student body and instill in it a sense of identity and purpose. Where that person has worked in the past, or happens to work now, is largely irrelevant.

E-mail Alexander Ely at anelyx@wm.edu.

For Walter Benn Michaels, the only type of diversity that really matters is socio-economic. Its enemy is none other than capitalism, which he believes to create inequality. Michaels argued that SAT scores serve as vehicles for universities to discriminate against the lower class, and financial aid is a farce that only benefits the wealthy. At the conclusion of the question and answer period, Michaels strongly disputed the fact that the average income has in fact risen and that social programs have increased since the 1950s. Despite the accuracy of his statistics, they fail to demonstrate causation with his arguments.

Surely, a correlation exists between a student’s economic class and SAT scores. Though educational institutions rely heavily on SAT scores, they don’t use them to discriminate against low-income students or families as Michaels suggests. Correlation does not mean causality. Second, Michaels points to Harvard’s financial aid system, which he argues only benefits the rich, “who don’t need it.” He neglected to mention that those with incomes of $60,000 or less make no contribution. Moreover, Harvard reaches out to those in lower income brackets. According to Harvard’s Financial Aid director, “Our students who recruit for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) worked side by side with Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (UMRP) reaching out to students with family incomes under $60,000 and $80,000. We are greatly encouraged by the results of their efforts.” Michael’s supposed conspiracy to keep universities staffed with “rich kids” is laughable.

What should we think of Michaels’s claim that capitalism creates inequality? Where is the causal link between capitalism and inequality? Inequality has existed since the dawn of man, even in communist nations, so one is hard pressed to find it. Moreover, why did Michaels claim the real average income in America has declined since 1950 and that Americans were better off in 1950? According to historical statistics his claim is false; the poverty line has actually risen. More importantly, the unegalitarian shift of the late 1970s-1995 is due to a shift in the earning powers of different and emerging occupations, such as technology (Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, two of the world’s richest men), and a change in the distribution of working hours and income earners. For example, “between 1977 and 1995 there was a shift toward dual-career households, with men and women of high earning power tending more and more to be married to each other, adding to the inequality of total household incomes.”

Furthermore, Michaels’s statements contradict each other. He claims that the income of the lowest earners has declined since the 1950s and disagreed with my statement that social programs have increased since the 1950s. If socialism is the answer, as he so boldly stated, then why does he claim Americans are worse off despite the exponential growth of social programs? It is common knowledge to any high school student enrolled in U.S. history that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s social programs of the 1960s created Medicare and Medicaid, causing the number of entitlement programs to proliferate, while spending for such programs surged exponentially in the 60s and 70s. In fact, public funding for social welfare programs accounts for more than 20 percent of gross domestic product.

American identity is largely formed by its economic system, which provides opportunity and incentives for risk taking and entrepreneurship; encouraging innovation that creates wealth and employment. Michaels’s proposal for massive wealth redistribution would destroy the very system that has made America an economic powerhouse. Indeed, there are numerous inefficiencies in the system that should be fixed, such as health care, but they are inorganic to the system itself. We do not live in a zero-sum game world and inequality is not a measure of injustice. The proper approach is not attempting to repeal the laws of economics, a venture which historically fails and results in wide spread collateral damage, but rather to create mechanisms that create jobs and economic growth.

E-mail Lance Zaal at lezaal@wm.edu

For those who believe in the ideal of public education, these are unsettling times. Over the last two decades, diminishing state funding and soaring education costs have put tremendous pressure on the College of William and Mary’s balance sheet — and its aspirations. And even as private donations and tuition increasingly cover our operating costs, the College is still constrained by the state’s enrollment quotas and in-state tuition ceilings. This week, a Libertarian speaker suggested that privatizing the College — thereby freeing it from some of Richmond’s control — may help alleviate some of this pressure. While we do not necessarily agree with this point of view, there could be no better time, given our economic woes, than the present to explore the option. The administration should create a committee to investigate the long-term costs and benefits of increasing privatization at the College.

It is important to note that privatization comes in many forms and is in no way binary. The broad term encompasses any possible way a public university may take on the aspects of the private sector. This could range from the total severing of our ties with Richmond — an outcome that at this point is almost unimaginable even if one believes it is desirable — to outsourcing our housekeeping to a private company in order to cut costs, as we already have done with our food services.

The College, as one of the state’s top schools, has already been given the greatest level of autonomy possible under state law. But as higher education continues to play the whipping boy in this recession, we wonder if the General Assembly can always be trusted to uphold its end of the bargain. Perhaps we could do better on our own.

Becoming increasingly privatized has the potential to endanger some of this school’s greatest assets, such as its affordability and openness. But doing so also could open the door for excellence unattainable under current financial restraints. This issue demands the utmost cautious consideration, but at the very least, it is worth investigating.

Sexual assault can be difficult to talk about, but silence surrounding this issue can be devastating. Rape continues to be one of the least reported crimes in the country; according to the 2008 National College Health survey, roughly 250 students at the College of William and Mary had been the victims of sexual assault within the 12 months prior to the survey being taken. However, the William and Mary Police Department reports show that in 2007 only five people reported sexual assault officially to the campus police. Nine out of 10, according to the College’s sexual assault education website, knew his or her attacker before the assault. This is really disturbing to think about, because this means that the attacker could be a person’s friend, boyfriend, classmate or hallmate — someone we know as part of our Tribe — who has committed sexual assault.

I’m absolutely not trying to say that all acquaintances are rapists — far from it. It’s always important to remember that the majority of people are not rapists. But if we ignore the fact that rapists are usually people that the victim knows, we distort the realities of sexual assault on our campus and thus affect the methods we use to try to prevent it. When thinking about sexual assault prevention strategies, we need to look at ways to stop people from committing assault in the first place, and one way to do this is to start talking about consent.

Hopefully, you’ve seen the T-shirts and fliers around campus proclaiming, “Consent is Sexy!” But what does consent really mean? We’re often as silent about consent as we are about sexual assault itself. In fact, silence is often interpreted as consent — if your partner didn’t say no, he or she meant yes, right? By talking about what getting consent really means, we can dispel the myth that silence means consent — or worse, that “no” means persuade me. Consent is nothing less than an enthusiastic “yes” and getting that yes means striking up a conversation.

This dialogue starts on a personal level. People tend to think that asking a partner’s permission before initiating anything sexual somehow ruins the mood. But since when is talking about sex unsexy? Simply having this conversation can really go a long way in establishing and ensuring consent. Tell your partner what you like and how you like it — whether you’re talking about having sex, making out or anything in between. Listen when they tell you what they want. You could even share some fantasies. Most importantly, listen and respect what the other has to say. Whether your partner is someone you’ve been dating forever or some hottie you’ve just met, the conversation about consent has to happen every time.

If we embrace that consent needs to happen every time and that consent needs to be unequivocally enthusiastic, instead of tacit, this can go a long way in changing our attitudes about sexual assault. We need to develop a culture at the College in which issues like sexuality, consent and sexual violence are openly and honestly discussed. This would mean creating an environment on our campus in which any sexual activity without the consent of both involved is completely unacceptable. By always listening to and supporting the individuals who have survived sexual assault in our community, we would establish an environment where those who have experienced assault are not afraid or ashamed of sharing what happened to them.

Sexual Assault Peer Advocates created Sexual Assault Awareness Week to open up dialogue about consent and sexual assault within all members of the Tribe. We’re taking the first step in creating a campus that is free of sexual violence by breaking the silence on sexual assault and consent as a community. Ending sexual violence starts with understanding consent. Consent is communication. Consent is respect. Consent is sexy.

E-mail Megan Keeling at mrkeeling@wm.edu. Keeling is the SAPA publicity chair.