February 17, 2008
Although Ms. Shen is more clear in the email than she is on the flier about "in house," she makes clear that St. Barack's friends did not use our money to fund their campaign. Other members of the group concede that it is unethical to use all of our money for their campaign.
Charles,
I am the current chapter coordinator of the Claremont Colleges Students for Barack Obama. I was informed recently of one of your blog postings on Feb. 2nd titled "Did St. Barack's Friends Use Our Money To Fund Their Campaign?" in which you suggest that our organization's flyers were paid for with school money and thus imposed a cost to other students. This is completely untrue. There is no "ethical quandary" as you raise because our organization bore all of the expenses internally (aka "In-House"). This fact was stated explicitly on every flyer.
Also, the stamps from Pomona and Scripps College are in no way a political endorsement, but are a standard administrative part of allowing any flyer to be posted across the 5Cs. Officially, every 5C flyer is required to have at least one stamp and are generally only rejected if the flyers advertise alcohol. The same stamps were also present on flyers advocating other presidential candidates.
I would appreciate a correction of the original post so that the truth of the matter is made unmistakable and these speculations you now know to be false are explicitly rejected or disposed of.
-Valerie Shen
Readers of this blog will no doubt know that St. Barack sometimes plays dirty politics. But his supporters might be engaged in something closer to home. They apparently printed fliers
in house" and distributed them all over the 5 Cs to rally support for the great Barack Obama.
Now given that they printed them here and no doubt used Claremont college printers, does this not present an ethical quandary? They, after all, used school facilities and school money to endorse a candidate. If Pomona College and Scripps College approved their content, as the seals indicate, does this not constitute an endorsement of St. Barack?
Colleges need to stay non-partisan, even if their members do not.
Hat tip: ConfusedMinority
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8 comments:
I think students being banned from printing political material on school printers would be a far worse infringement on their rights of free expression than just allowing people to exercise their unlimited printing privileges without discrimination.
In fact, you are probably very welcome to go print out hundreds of fliers advocating turning Fallujah, or some other obstinate Third World village, into a "parking lot". Your doing so would in no way constitute a CMC endorsement of genocide.
I you want to do some real journalism on this, I would be interested to know where the respected colleges draw the line: fliers for the Minutemen Project? American Nazi Party material? Hate speech against homosexuals? Libelous material about President Gann?
You clearly derive a lot of satisfaction from picking fights with school administrators--here's a genuine opportunity!
All of those are excellent questions, Peter. Me thinks we already know the answers to them, however.
I think, though, that if I wanted to make fliers suggesting the bombing of some Third world village that would not be as partisan as fliers for St. Barack. After all, Democrats have a track record of bombing obstinate places.
LBJ, anyone? How about Clinton and Iraq the day of the impeachment?
Of course I don't in anyway condone the comparisons between the American Nazi Party, hate speech against homosexuals, or libelous material against Gann.
I find the Nazi Party to be a movement of the American Left, hate speech laws to be unnecessary and balkanizing, and why print libelous material against our dear President?
Somehow, I find pointing out the fact that the Democratic party also has a lousy track record on treating poor/brown/yellow people like human beings is kind of a cop-out here.
The issue at hand is whether students have a right to use school printers to spread political material without the school having to endorse or be associated with the content. In my view, students do have that right. You are free to disagree.
A small digression:
The association of Nazis and fascists with the left, although common especially on the American right, is a fallacy born of defining political positions purely in terms of how much "government involvement in the economy" they advocate. The perverse outcome of such thinking is that feudal monarchies, where the government basically owned everything, suddenly become "socialist", while anarcho-syndicalists and the like, advocating the violent destruction of the central government and its replacement by a network of completely voluntary and democratic organisations, suddenly become "right-wing".
To complete my beautiful reductio ad absurdum I will simply point out that supporters of feudal monarchy were and will always be a reactionary and conservative, while anarcho-syndicalists belong on the far left. No doubt even you will agree with that.
The correct way to plot ideologies from left to right is to look at whose class interests they serve--fascism in Italy may have increased government involvement in the economy, but its overarching goal was to crush a potential communist or anarcho-syndicalist revolution, and thus protect the capitalists and the land owners. They financed Mussolini and his thugs, just as they financed Hitler. They were clearly shrewd business-men--for their troubles they got many years of open season on Reds of all stripes.
There is a little more nuance to the issue than what I have just written, but I have to go get coffee now.
Peter:
1. Students are not banned from printing Political Material. The colored fliers that we saw all over the place could not be printed from any computer lab. Those were created from the Library copy center which provides the facility to create multicolored, specialty papers in bulk.
2. Your argument has nothing to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean that, if you disagree with Fox News, they have an obligation to broadcast you on the air. That sort of ambush transcends into the issue of property rights. You do however, have the right to create your own station, or any such medium and pass your message. My guess is that you are probably in favor of state-owned media, so no discussion would be relevant here.
3. College funds are a collection of Fees and donations. When an institution allocates money to promote a single special interest (in this case endorse a political candidate), it indirectly makes us, as students pay for promoting St. Obama. We have no say in it and should not be subject to such meaningless expenditure.
4. Minuteman Project was never promoted on campus. ASPC promoted the debate using the funds allocated to them. In no way were they advertising. St. Obama was not coming to speak at the 5C's and was not affiliated with the college.
5. The concept of plotting ideologies by looking at the class interest they serve is a leftist ideology in itself. The very same corporatism that you accuse Mussolini of, is what I am against as well. The NAZI party was the National Socialist Workers Party and used similar rhetoric that you indicated in the last paragraph. They asserted that the current regime serves the interests of wealthy Jews, and not the working poor. We see that perverse politicized logic in subtle forms today.
1) So this debate comes down to which printers were used? It would have been fine if they'd used regular white paper? Methinks this is a pretty irrelevant distinction.
2) My argument has everything to do with free speech, because in order to be meaningful, free speech must be able to trump property rights. If it does not, than it is simply rhetorical hot air, and we could spare ourselves a lot of self-delusion by simply scrapping it from our Constitution entirely. Basically, your notion of free speech is contained within the rights to property and person, and so a specific right to free speech is superfluous in your scheme of things. No?
3) The strict enforcement of such rules (because rules would be needed in order to avoid such expenditures objectively) would get pretty ridiculous and bureaucratic; you would need a whole plethora of forms and extra staff to approve or reject printer use on ideological grounds. Most likely cheaper and less anal-retentive to just let people use the printers freely.
4) I had actually forgotten that the Minutemen people were here a while back. It was simply an example of an extreme political group.
5) Aha! Silly me. I'll have to go explain this wonderful insight to just about every non-corporate funded social scientist out there. Since you wrote nothing substantive to the contrary, may I presume you would call feudal monarchy "socialism"? I think the few remaining monarchists in the world would take great offense at such a suggestion!
More importantly: the fact that a party rails against "elites" of some sort does not make them socialist!
Republicans in the US are constantly attacking the "liberal media" and other "liberal elitists" who allegedly control the country through some insidious behind-the-scenes conspiracy--thus garnering votes from working class people who love to hate those educated know-it-alls. Are these Republicans socialist agitators? I think many of them would physically assault you if thus accused (think Bill O'Reilly in a dark alleyway...).
Is it not more likely that the right has discovered over the years that because most working-class people don't really understand the world, class antagonism (borne of feelings of frustration and alienation) can easily be diverted away from the wealthy and turned on some other, prominent target, like arrogant liberals, greedy Jews, or godless Communists?
1. CMC has free printing (for now) and students adhere to an honor code not to abuse that. If someone prints that many Obama posters, ITS would impose a quota or block your printing. Its not because they were Obama posters, but because you abused the system. In the other 5C's they have limited quotas and once you cross that limit, they make you pay. It isn't about which printer as you crudely put it. The copy center charges students for their service, which is funded by the college. If you want to waste your quota/get banned by ITS, go ahead. Just don't make me pay for it.
2. Free speech should trump property rights? So Fox News has an obligation to air anyone who wants to go on air? I don't know my 'Scheme of Things' Why not explain that childish notion? Property Rights protect free speech. Anyone can setup an establishment without being ambushed by other individuals or the government and being forced to change their opinions or viewpoints. Why does your notion of free speech involve my and every other students money?
3. Free printing only partially exists at CMC. Over time I see that wasteful luxury going away and for good reasons. I never said that we should screen which special interest gets the money. No special interest should get our money. The more decisions a central authority makes, the more wasteful and counter-productive it is.
4. Right, but since that never happened, its silly to use that as a defense.
5. I don't want to list all the points you haven't addressed or a lack of substance on your part. Thats a trivial discussion.
I never said that makes them socialist. I was comparing the rhetoric. Socialism is based on the policy and economic model pursued. The left tries to draw meaningless distinctions between Communism and Socialism. In both forms, resources and prices are centrally allocated and private property is invaded. At its core, it runs with a belief that someone else with lesser information can make a better decision than the individual himself. The biggest disparities in income exist in countries where such a model is followed.
Every feudal economy had unique features. It may not manifest itself in the form of socialism as we saw it in the 20th Century. Nevertheless, it was certainly not capitalist in any sense. The closest modern form would be mercantilism in some cases.
First of: This is redundant: but I was talking about the rhetoric used and not the policies endorsed. Republicans run on a much broader platform than attacking liberal media. And thats certainly not the reason why people vote Republican.
Second: Its interesting that you mentioned me being attacked for saying something. That's exactly why we need property rights!
Your assumption that the working class doesn't understand the world is sick and plain wrong. Your understanding stops at a proletariat and bourgeoisie. Just because others don't see the world in the same marxist revolutionary way doesn't mean that they are wrong. Free Speech Right?
Now given that they printed them here and no doubt used Claremont college printers, does this not present an ethical quandary?
No, there is no ethical quandary. These posters were printed using the money from individual student print accounts. At Pomona we are entitled to a certain amount of print quota, which we pay for through our tuition. Furthermore the paper used to print the flyers was purchased by students with their private funds.
They, after all, used school facilities and school money to endorse a candidate.
No school money was used to print the flyers. The only school facilities used were printers at Pomona’s ITS, the use of which is paid for entirely out of individual student accounts. The distribution and copy center was also used, but every flyer that was printed there was paid for with students’ private funds
If Pomona College and Scripps College approved their content, as the seals indicate, does this not constitute an endorsement of St. Barack?
The approved for posting stamp only indicates that the flyer does not violate the rules for posting on the 5Cs. The main point of the stamp is to ensure that students don’t post material advertising the presence of alcohol at campus events. It does not constitute an “endorsement” by the colleges or the ASPC. Flyers were posted for other candidates, including Hillary Clinton. Any student wishing to post a flyer urging students to vote for their candidate could receive the same stamp.
Furthermore, the implication that Students for Barack Obama somehow stole your money is insulting. Before making your next post you need to do a modicum of research on the topic. At the very least you should have made an attempt to communicate with the contact person listed on the flyer before making false, serious accusations about Students for Barack Obama, as well as individual members of that organization. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if this rises to the level of libel, but it is certainly extremely poor journalism.
Nicholas Conway
Pomona College '08
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