Last night’s World Forum on the Future of Democracy provided welcome insight into political realties that the United States and other nations will have to face in the coming years. We are proud that the College hosted this high-profile event, which marked the end of the year-long 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Settlement.

p. Serving as panelists in the forum were former Supreme Court Justice and current College Chancellor Sandra Day O’Connor, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Ali M. Ansari from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. We welcomed the visit of moderator Jim Lehrer, who serves as the anchor and executive editor of PBS’s “NewsHour.” The gravitas Lehrer brings to political discussions from his years as a national correspondent brought prestige and recognition to the forum and the College.

p. The College is privileged to have figures such as O’Connor and Eagleburger, who once served on the College’s Board of Visitors. The College’s connection to important figures in American politics should remind students that, despite the College’s occasional funding problems, we are part of a community that it is at once historic and relevant to the most significant issues of the day. The entire yearlong Jamestown anniversary also highlights this dichotomy, celebrating America’s historic past while also discussing its future.

p. We appreciated the panelists’ frank discussion on democracy. Rather than hailing democratic systems as infallible, all three panelists acknowledged that there remain challenges, even to the developed American democracy. O’Connor noted that a nation “isn’t a success by hanging the word democracy on some system.” O’Connor explained that for the system to work, all participants have to be absolutely dedicated. We appreciate that sentiment.

o, Largely missing in recent years at the College have been high profile and consequential political showcases like last night’s forum. In 1976, the College hosted a nationally televised presidential debate between President Gerald Ford and then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Since then, we have occasionally hosted newsmakers such as former President George H. W. Bush, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. However, their appearances have not generally been geared toward significant policy discussion. For a college as historic as ours, we encourage the return of national leaders and newsmakers. We hope that administrators can continue to keep the College a prominent place for public discussion and debate.

p. Outside of the public session held at William and Mary Hall, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ’65 spoke of democracy abroad, especially in relation to the Bush administration’s Iraq War policy. While Iraq will remain a divisive issue for a nation that is increasingly concerned about the direction of the war, we are happy that this debate is happening here, at our College and in our city.

We live in a bubble. The brick walls of our campus cushion us from unwanted reality, providing a fluffy and warm existence within. In Jena, La. this is not the case. Racial tensions have been escalating in a local high school in Jena since last summer, when a black student sat on a bench that was unofficially designated for white students.

p. According to a Sept.14 article on WashingtonPost.com, six black students were arrested and charged with attempted murder after a fight with a white classmate. After occasional fights at my high school, the accused would generally get a week of after-school detention or a few days of suspension. But being arrested and accused of attempted second-degree murder? This has gone beyond the gravity of a mere fight.

p. Racial tensions still exist in rural parts of the South, which is a painful fact. But it becomes more frightening when members of our generation shamelessly exacerbate them. And what’s worse is the lack of punishment they receive from their elders. Picture the grotesque image of three colored nooses hanging from a tree as a warning — this cannot be dismissed as a prank; it is a full-fledged hate crime. According to a Sept. 4 article on CNN.com, the perpetrators of this crime were first expelled, but then had their punishment reduced to a few days of suspension. Big surprise.

p. This incident has grabbed national attention and thousands of protestors are planning to march on the day of sentencing, Sept. 20. That’s great. But what is anyone going to do about this on, say, Dec. 7? The media has a ridiculously short attention span and, because of it, so does the public. When we turn our heads the other way after a while, something like this may happen again, as it did now. So what do we do? Do we keep our eyes peeled in constant vigilance for such an episode? If only there was a step-by-step procedure we could follow to put a definitive end to this. But there is none.

p. Even though there are no overnight schemes to make it all better, we can still start making motions towards progress. It is disturbing to see youths of our generation committing acts that are utterly disgusting and incomprehensible. But we have to see them. Ignorance cannot be a choice.

p. It’s hard to come out of a soft, lathering bubble — I know. It’s like waking up early on an icy winter morning and deciding to walk out on your warm and overwhelmingly inviting bed. But it has to be done. We shouldn’t have to wait for something like this to happen to show our concern and sympathy. By showing that we care and are intolerant of such incidents, we will be able to lessen the intensity of such tensions, if not eliminate them completely.

p. It is true that, as college students, we can get very few to lend their ears and listen to all that we have to say. However, we can still increase our awareness and knowledge now, so when it comes time for our voices to be heard, we know exactly what to say and do. One way or another, this has to stop, so we might as well start putting an end to it now.

p. __Kalyani Phansalkar is a freshman at the College.__

No one is happy about the College’s budget crisis. The governor demanded the College cut seven percent of the state portion of its budget, or $3.4 million, annually. Recently, I heard a professor in the English department mention one of the first and most potentially damaging effects of these cuts: a temporary freeze on all new hires.

p. The financial ills of the English department are already serious and can only be compounded by cuts. One of the department’s most popular professors was denied a tenure-track position last spring, despite a petition from students pleading for her to be retained. The creative writing faculty, while talented, remains understaffed. And the unmistakable rank of sewage still floats daily through the classrooms in Tucker Hall.

p. My professor had the tact not to mention these things when he brought up the budget cuts. He only sighed in an implicit acknowledgment of the coming belt-tightening and the damage it can do; all departments are hurt by a hiring freeze. Then he walked over to the wall and adjusted the air conditioning. The classroom was already cool, though it was over 90 degrees outside. Soon it was colder. The students began to reflexively rub their arms and hunch their backs to keep warm. Several put on sweaters they kept in their bags for just such over-cooled classrooms. After class, everyone left with the lights still on and the air conditioning still blasting.

p. There are similar scenes all across campus: we bemoan the budget cuts as we overuse and abuse the energy it takes to run campus. Last year, we spent $6.5 million powering the College. A study available on Greeningwm.com shows that, per person, our campus produces more carbon dioxide (and thus consume more energy) than the average American, and three times as much as the average German. It estimates that our little university produces more carbon dioxide than the entire country of Chad, which has a population just over ten million. We are truly America’s “hottest small state school.”

p. We have two choices. We can continue to do nothing about our rampant energy use, allowing budget cuts to deteriorate the College’s academics in the same way that our carbon dioxide emissions deteriorate the fragile beauty of the Virginia landscape. Or we can seize this as an opportunity. By slowing energy usage across campus, we reduce both expenses and carbon emissions, thus preserving our academics as well as our environment.
The Student Environmental Action Coalition describes what they call the “low-hanging fruit” of energy efficiency at the College.

p. These initiatives would be relatively cheap and easy and would yield significant short-term savings. Many of them address the “hotel mentality” so many of us harbor — that the reason we refrigerate massive academic buildings, leave lights on in empty classrooms and leave computers humming after-hours in locked labs is because we, as individuals, are not personally responsible for paying the bill. Meanwhile, our energy spending is through the roof and we cannot afford to tenure some of our most talented professors.

p. Or we could install motion sensors that turn off lights when classrooms are empty. Computers could be set to go to “sleep” mode when not in use. SEAC has particularly stressed installing energy meters in every campus building, thus allowing the College to track which have adopted the most effective energy-saving practices. Students would be unlikely to be the focus — residence halls consume only a quarter of the energy on campus despite being the only buildings in continuous use. Professors and administrators, however, status-focused as they are, would surely bend to social pressure to not be the most wasteful. It would certainly be in their interest, given that it is their own salaries they could be saving.

p. A compact fluorescent bulb lending program, in which more efficient $2 bulbs are lent to stu-dents so to use in place of incandescent bulbs, is another sure way to save money. Each replaced bulb can save $10 in annual energy costs. Given the thousands of students living on campus, and that a compact fluorescent bulb lasts several years, this translates into tens of thousands of dollars in the first year and more in the following years. Enough to hire a new professor or retain an unaffordable one. Maybe two.

p. Perhaps the most lucrative improvement the College could make in energy efficiency would be to commission an Energy Service Corporation audit of the College’s energy use. The service is free and the auditors do all the work. (Auditors take a percentage of their client’s savings as their fee, though only for a couple of years.) A recent audit on William and Mary Hall reduced energy consumption by 40 percent, saving the College $200,000.

p. And that’s just one of the hundred or so buildings on campus. If we commission an ESCO audit of them all, this budget crisis might just be resolved. We could save our academic departments from damaging cuts or hiring freezes. And who knows ­­— we might even get to save our environment, too.

p. __Max Fisher is a senior at the College.__

James Madison University student government president Brandon Eickel’s ouster curtailed a two-flank collegiate excoriation-fest, one resting on an allegation that would make any deskbound student tremble: the P-word. A few samples: “This raises the broader issue of plagiarism among college students,” “[Eickel’s acts] would be deemed plagiarism at a very minimum,” “we were dismayed to hear that Brandon Eickel … had plagiarized nearly half of his campaign platform” and so on, according to the Sept. 6 and 10 issues of The JMU Breeze and the Sept. 14 issue of The Flat Hat.

p. The firestorm appears jarring at first, considering the situations in which the word plagiarism normally shows up: Plagiarists purloin passages from books, mention ideas from scholars without citing their work and otherwise deny an author his or her due compensation for having labored over a keyboard. Compare this phenomenon to campaign trail mimicry, in which bumper sticker slogans predominate, and even help, the electoral process. Plagiarism thus seems to apply only to texts, such as books and scholarly articles.

p. Eickel’s brand of duplication, say detractors, lies closer to text-theft than to catchphrase-propagation. For example, Eickel’s promise to “turn leftover food into nutrient-rich compost for JMU’s flowerbeds and trees” mirrors Zach Pilchen and Valerie Hopkins’ promise to “turn leftover food into nutrient-rich compost for William and Mary’s flower beds,” without initially acknowledging the original.

p. Despite the glaring copy-paste ethos, Eickel’s missteps don’t quite qualify as plagiarism. As campaign messages, the two enumerated platforms extend beyond the words on their websites, forming inextricable facets of the campaigns. Unlike texts, campaign promises cannot exist independently of future action. Pilchen’s composting plan did not connote, “I think composting is a good idea,” but rather “If I gain office, I will be moved to begin a composting program.”

p. Furthermore, Eickel could not have intended the same sorts of actions as Pilchen, even if their promises matched word for word. Indeed, descriptions of action cannot exclude the context for the action. Take this simplistic case: Person A and Person B may both support the general act of giving an apple, though Person A’s gift of the apple to please a teacher denotes a starkly divergent set of circumstances than Person B’s donation of an apple to feed a starving child. Here, while both people engage in “giving an apple,” it seems clear that the two instances of giving constitute two discrete acts, involving distinct sets of motives and consequences.

p. In fact, when examined more closely, Pilchen and Hopkins’ composting plan even precludes inter-collegiate resemblance. When Eickel writes of disseminating “Know Your Rights” cards, surely he does not imply an intention to convince the members of the SA Senate to appropriate funds in order to raise awareness of the College’s unique residential policies among a uniquely minded College constituency. While Eickel copied words, then, he did so for a vision of action all his own. Even if Eickel wanted to ape what he thought worked in order to get ahead, his platform diverged enough from its source to pose an inimitable array of challenges. Policy, it turns out, cannot be plagiarized.

p. Eickel, then, did not steal policy without attribution — that would be impossible. What he did do, though, was gain inspiration, apply that inspiration in a way that would suggest plagiarism and then, most likely inadvertently, indicate his version as copyrighted. That was where he blundered: his use of “copyright” tipped the aping issue from the realm of common courtesy to that much grimmer realm of legally punishable idea theft. Best of luck to the sloppy non-plagiarist.

p. __Paul Gottschling is a junior at the College.__