Humanities requirement should reflect diversity of iconic literature

The Curricular Design Working Group, which was formed this semester to propose changes to the Geneseo curriculum following the Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education guidelines, recently sent out a campus-wide email soliciting suggestions on how to improve Geneseo education. 

One key component of the group’s mission is to evaluate and recommend changes to the general education requirements. They are working within several kinds of restraints—including working within SUNY’s general education requirements—but the process is an exciting one. Who hasn’t complained about a course they were required to take?

Since the group can only make changes that conform to SUNY requirements, they have the most power over features of our general education requirements that are specific to Geneseo. The most notable of these is the two-semester Western Humanities requirement. 

Much ink has been spilled in criticism of the HUMN requirement, some of it within HUMN classes themselves. Critics argue that the rigidly controlled list of what texts can be taught is too inflexible, the requirement that every student—regardless of major—take the classes too demanding. 

The humanities provide a moral and imaginative education that is central to the goal of a liberal arts education and to the life of a thinking person. My HUMN I class—which I took last semester—remains one of the top three courses I’ve taken at Geneseo. The requirement is important, but it has significant flaws.

The biggest problem with HUMN is that its stringently controlled list of required texts makes it too strongly focused on “traditional”—meaning white, non-queer, male, European—experiences and perspectives both within the body of Western thought and within the discipline of the humanities. 

To an extent, this focus is exactly the point of a course intended to focus on Western intellectual history. There is certainly an important role for learning about the ideas that have driven Western civilization within a liberal arts education, and Geneseo should retain this component of the HUMN requirement in some form. 

The focus becomes harmful, however, when it diminishes the role of other cultures, perspectives and experiences in shaping the intellectual landscape, both within the history of Western civilization and in the modern globalized world. 

It also limits students from engaging with the humanities in ways that help to explore diversity, which is a powerful capacity of the humanities. The current HUMN requirement functions in this way.

HUMN is notoriously inflexible, but a lesson can be taken from the creativity of professors that work within the constraints Geneseo imposes on them. Different sections of HUMN have mini focuses on gender issues, environmental issues, political issues, specific cultural traditions and even business perspectives.

Geneseo should recognize the value of allowing the humanities to engage powerfully with other areas of intellectual inquiry while also maintaining the rigor of its humanities requirement. 

One compromise would be to require two semesters of HUMN, but require only one to be focused on Western civilization. This would allow the other HUMN requirement to be counted toward various majors and minors, like women’s studies and environmental studies. 

It would also allow professors to take the emphasis off studying the Western canon itself in order to facilitate more emphasis on bringing its contributions into conversation with other perspectives, experiences and cultures. 

Such a flexible system would align well with GLOBE’s goal of ‘Integrative Inquiry’ and would better prepare Geneseo students for the complexities of intellectual life in the modern world.

Mental health training geared toward faculty, students

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Psychology major senior Kelly Cooke (center) participated in the Mental Health First Aid Training session on Saturday March 25. The training provided faculty and students with the necessary skills to help someone with a mental illness. (Ash Dean/Photo Editor)

Geneseo Mental Health Task Force hosted a mental health training program on Saturday March 25 to teach individuals on campus—outside of the counseling center—how to care for individuals coping with mental health issues and what to do in a mental health emergency.

A total of 32 faculty, staff and students participated in this eight-hour training session called Mental Health First Aid Training for Adults Assisting Young People. The course was taught by representatives from Delphi Drug & Alcohol Council and funded by a grant the organization received from the state.

Lecturer and Internship Director for the School of Business Robert Boyd thought that faculty could benefit from the training, explaining that faculty are in contact with students on a daily basis and when interacting with students it is important that they have the skills to recognize when a student is struggling with a mental health related issue. 

Head of the Mental Health Task Force and a staff counselor at Lauderdale Laura Swanson highlighted the importance of students receiving training in mental health issues.

“Students are often the first to notice changes in their peers,” Swanson said. “Students are around each other a lot more than they are around faculty and staff members on campus, so I think having students trained just creates a more compassionate and empathetic community and helps prevent other students from falling through the cracks.”

Student participants said that the training they received was informative and that such a program has the potential to reduce the stigma of certain mental health illnesses. 

 “I’m looking into a career in the medical field right now, and I think there’s a lot of stigma with substance abuse and everything, and to be able to apply that will be cool,” Pathways peer advocate biology major senior Aideen Dempsey said.

Participation in the training was not limited to Pathways advocates and future medical professionals. Business and communication double major junior Julia Tannenbaum took part so she could be a resource for people in her life struggling with mental health issues.

“You want to have a better grasp on it, especially if someone comes to you and you’re the person that people usually come to for this information,” Tannenbaum said. “You want to know the correct information so that you can help them in the future as well as help yourself so you don’t feel like you’re drowning.”

This approach coincides the mission of the Mental Health Task Force, which was formed in 2015 in response to rising concerns about mental health care on campus. 

“It’s about making mental health a campus-wide issue, not just a counseling issue,” Swanson said. “While counseling is always going to be the main place people go for mental health, it’s about having as many people on campus have the skills, have their eyes and ears on it and have care and empathy for their fellow students and the students that they work with.”

Earlier this year, the Mental Health Task force rolled out an interactive, virtual 30-minute program called Kognito At-Risk, which was designed to train members of the community in recognizing and assisting people experiencing mental health issues. Kognito At-Risk is available to all members of the Geneseo community, faculty, staff and students, and so far 437 people have completed it this academic year.

Swanson said she hopes that the training will expand and be offered several times a year, free of charge. 

“I think it might be the kind of thing where we hold a few sessions a year and whoever’s interested comes in for a Saturday, student, faculty or staff,” Swanson said. “I could also see it being used as an addition to other specific groups who may want more training. If there are students interested in getting involved, I’m interested in talking to them.”

While Boyd said the training will be useful to him professionally, he believes that the real value of the training goes beyond that. 

“It’s a moral responsibility, not a work responsibility,” Boyd said. “It’s a human responsibility. That’s what’s really important."

Mental health program would benefit stressed students

The Lamron reported that Lauderdale Health Center is greatly expanding its offerings of mental health services on Thursday Feb. 23. This is a necessary change, and one that needs to be accompanied by further action from the administration. 

I argue that Geneseo should offer Mental Health First Aid training to a broad array of students. Possibly even as a mandatory component of freshman orientation.

College students across the country are dealing more and more with anxiety and frustration, citing academic stress as the main contributor. These stresses are contributing to rising depression, substance abuse and suicide attempts. 

In the 2015 American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, over a third of college students reported feeling “so depressed it was difficult to function,” and 9.6 percent had seriously considered suicide.

At Geneseo, we are not immune from these trends. Beyond my own feelings of being constantly overwhelmed, I have several friends who have gone to Lauderdale who experienced suicidal and borderline-suicidal thoughts. 

We have also seen several deaths and arrests related to substance abuse in the past few years, and, most tragically of all, we lost two current and one former student in January 2016 to what was clearly a mental health related incident.

These problems are at least in part the result of a society and job market that expects more from students than ever before. While such forces are beyond the control of anyone in Geneseo, the response our institution takes to them is not. 

Mental Health First Aid is an education program that gives people the tools to identify and to assist those suffering difficulties in their mental health. Among other things, it teaches people the signs of mental health issues, what resources are appropriate for various problems and how to approach someone who might be suffering. 

These topics already receive some treatment at freshman orientation, but it is far from sufficient to address the scope of the problem.

The faculty and staff at Geneseo are as caring as we could hope for, in my experience, but the unfortunate reality is that students are in the best position to identify and to assist mental health issues. Given a wide pool of students, these skills would be a very effective way to address this problem.

One approach would be to require members of organizations such as sports teams and Greek life to go through the training. While this might be somewhat easier to administer and the majority of students at Geneseo are involved in some kind of student group, this approach would miss an especially vulnerable demographic: those who are not involved in student life. 

In an ideal world, every student would receive this training. Geneseo’s mission is to provide an education, and Mental Health First Aid training could be viewed as part of a lifelong education. 

Geneseo teaches involvement in community, and getting this training would allow Geneseo students to make a valuable contribution to whatever community they choose to join, both now and for the rest of their lives.

Labelling these issues as “mental health” problems confers stigma on them, but in reality these are issues that everyone deals with in one form or another. Having feelings of anxiety or frustration from academic work is in no way abnormal. 

It is how we respond to these feelings that will determine both our success and our happiness. 

People say that our generation has no resilience, but resilience is a set of skills, not an innate quality. Let no one say that Geneseo left its students ill equipped.

Trump moves to rescind fiduciary rule, threatens consumer protection

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order rescinding President Barack Obama’s crucial fiduciary rule that requires the government to protect consumers from corrupt or suspicious behavior on part of businesses. This order proves that Trump values wealthy corporations over the wellbeing of American consumers. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo)

When most people think of President Barack Obama’s legacy, the fiduciary rule is doubtfully the first thing to come to mind. That might be a mistake, however—although healthcare reform was the rallying cry of his first term, the entire Obama presidency was defined in many important ways by the issue of financial regulation. 

A financial sector run amok bequeathed to him an economy with 7.8 percent unemployment and enough brewing social discontent to spark both the Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders candidacy. 

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to curb the risky lending and betting practices that were the causes of the 2008 financial crash, but the legislation was rushed. While the rules it lays out are important, it remains an imperfect piece of legislation. 

More important than any single piece of legislation is the attitude that the government should protect consumers from any predatory behavior on the part of big businesses, in general, and the financial services sector in particular. That’s where the fiduciary rule comes in.

In 2010, consumer activists proposed the fiduciary rule during the discussions surrounding the Dodd-Frank Act. The objective of the rule is simple: it requires investment brokers who manage 401(k) retirement accounts to give financial advice that is in their client’s best interests. 

Without the rule, retirement account managers are free to serve their own interests by urging clients to invest in funds or companies that give that manager kickbacks. 

Such abuses were much more common than one might think; the Department of Labor estimates losses of $17 billion per year to consumers as a result of intentionally misleading financial advice.

The reasons investment managers might not act in their clients’ best interests are complicated; the rule that tries to prevent them from doing so is also complicated.     

The Department of Labor spent six years working to issue and to enact a full version of the fiduciary rule. Now President Donald Trump stands poised to rescind it. 

He issued an executive order instructing the Department of Labor to explore eliminating the rule on Feb. 3.

While Dodd-Frank is a piece of legislation that requires input, compromise and consensus from many parties, the fiduciary rule directly reflects the commitment of the current administration to the principle of consumer protection. Trump’s executive order shows the flimsiness of his commitment, despite the populist overtones of his campaign.

A sophisticated financial system is as necessary to a modern economy, but that does not mean that consumers should be expected to understand its ins and outs so well that they can protect themselves from exploitation. 

On the contrary, the complexity of modern finance makes it necessary for the government to intervene in the market at times to protect its citizens from financial sophisticates who often have every incentive to exploit them.

While it sounds boring, the fiduciary rule brings up questions that are at the heart of many of the struggles currently engulfing our society: what is the purpose of an economy? What is the purpose of a financial services sector? If we want each of these things to serve our needs, they must be actively shaped.

If the only thing keeping the greed of the financial services sector in check is Trump’s commitment to protecting innocent people, I’d say anyone who ever plans to retire someday has cause to get politically active.

Yiannopoulos protest protects students against hatred, abuse

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Students at University of California, Berkeley protest the arrival of speaker and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos to campus for an event hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans. The protest escalated to a riot which resulted in a cancellation of the event. Even though dissenters were criticized for rioting, it was worth it to protect vulnerable student communities on campus. (Ben Margot/AP Photo)

On Groundhog Day, Thursday Feb. 2, a far-right provocateur stuck his head out from his underground movement and discovered that the winter of liberal discontent is far from over.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the senior editor for Breitbart News, was invited to speak at the University of California, Berkeley by the Berkeley College Republicans. 

A peaceful protest of the event by over 1,500 students was disrupted by 150 masked agitators who became violent, burned vehicles, smashed windows and caused around $100,000 worth of damage to the campus. University police cancelled the event.

Yiannopoulos has made himself famous by essentially being an Internet troll. As a self-termed “free-speech fundamentalist,” he has written Breitbart articles with titles such as, “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?” and “Here’s Why There Ought To Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths.” These pieces are composed with the express purpose of getting a rise out of the left, and like so many in the Trump movement, Yiannopoulos thrives on the attention this generates. 

His appearance in Berkeley was part of a national tour called “Dangerous Faggot”—Yiannopoulos is openly gay and a British immigrant to boot, which just goes to show that in America you can grow up to be anyone you want to be.

His speaking engagement on Berkeley’s campus does not rise to a level that justifies property violence. Right wing pundits such as Tomi Lahren, however, were quick to blame the left without any real evidence that the black bloc protesters are part of any movement aligned with the left. 

Events like the riot that erupted against Yiannopoulos play directly into his hands politically—he would like nothing more than a chance to complain about the “intolerance” of the left and pose as a free speech martyr. Some argue that because of this dynamic, it would be more effective to ignore Yiannopoulos completely than to protest him.

These arguments might be more convincing if all Yiannopoulos had done was publish a few incendiary articles online. In fact, however, that didn’t seem to generate enough attention for him, and he has used his tour to abuse individual students.

At the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Yiannopoulos gave his typical mockery of the feminist criticism of the phrase “man up,” when all of a sudden he pulled up a picture of a transgender student on the projector screen. 

“I’ll tell you one UW-Milwaukee student that does not need to man up,” he said of the transgender woman. “This quote unquote nonbinary trans woman forced his way into the women’s locker rooms this year … I have known some passing trannies in my life …The way that you know he’s failing is I’d almost still bang him.”

The student was in the audience, and after the speech she withdrew from college over displeasure with how the administration handled of the situation. 

Fifty percent of transgender youth struggle with depression, and they attempt suicide three times as often as their cisgender peers. It doesn’t matter whether Yiannopoulos’s abuse was rooted in bigotry or a desire for attention—it is sickening either way. It says a lot about the alt-right movement that so much of their platform is based deeply in a desire to make people suffer. This shows that Yiannopoulos is a pathetic bully.

Officials at UC Berkeley should have precluded the entire mess by canceling Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement despite the protestations of the radical right. Let them squeal. If it saves one transgender student from violence so abhorrent she felt induced to give up her education, then it will have been more than justified.

Trump’s candid claims hold real threat with political backing

When President Donald Trump assumed office on Friday Jan. 20, he fulminated against “the crime and the gangs and the drugs” and vowed to end “this American carnage.” With violent crime rates at historic lows, his characterization reads as hyperbole—and the complex nature of such social issues causes his vow to strain belief.  

Trump’s inauguration speech perfectly mirrored a campaign season in which he described Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” lied to the press and made wild promises such as establishing a registry of American Muslims and building a wall on the Mexican border. The election of such a man has raised questions about the nature of facts and the role of language in public discourse.

“I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally,” Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump supporter Peter Thiel said. 

Taking everything Trump says 100 percent literally feeds perceptions that liberals are a stuck-up and contemptuous lot, and undoubtedly functions to increase divisions in the country. Yet it would be a mistake to think that Trump will not follow through on the majority of his promises—the simple reason being that his power as president will depend, to a large extent, on his reliability.

The United States Constitution grants the president many powers, but he can ultimately only accomplish things to the extent that others are willing to work with him. By not following through on his word, Trump would destroy the basic trust that underpins all civic relationships, ranging from those with Congress, to the press and to his own staff. 

Viewed from the perception of politicians as two-faced weasels, this conclusion might seem counterintuitive, but a solid body of evidence backs it up. Michael Krukones, a political scientist at Bellarmine College, found that about 75 percent of all campaign promises were kept by presidents in the period from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter. Whether the promises became reality depended on a wide range of actors, but the presidents he studied all acted to implement their proposed agendas.

 Some view Trump as a media manipulator and pawn of the right-wing extremists. His coalition says that what he says is a distraction that should be given no weight. This argument misses the point. Even if Trump is nothing more than the dancing monkey used by the radical right as a cover for their takeover of the American government, his puppeteers would still want him to retain enough credibility for their movement to enact its agenda.

Furthermore, what we know of Trump’s basic psychology supports the conclusion that he will work to keep his promises. Leaks from aides going back to President Barack Obama’s public mockery of Trump in 2011 claim that Trump desperately wants to be taken seriously. If working to advance a destructive and absurd agenda is what it takes to achieve that, he will likely do it.

It is worth pointing out that not taking Trump seriously serves to infantilize him, and the abdication of responsibility for his actions that it implies is absurd when compared to the brutal standard to which the public held Hillary Clinton accountable for her misguided use of a private email server. 

This attitude underestimates the power of words in public life. Until recently the idea of spending billions of dollars building a wall along the Mexican border was absurd, but Trump spoke those words during the election and now the wall is a serious public policy proposal. 

When it comes down to it, the fundamentals of our country are all just words. The U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are words in the mouths of men. If we believe that these words mean something, then they must be defended against any credible threat—even someone we never expected to have to take seriously.

This article is part of the Face Off series. To read the responding article, click here.

Socially-conscious children’s films use artistic platform to educate

Hollywood has always been criticized for trying to engineer American society. For example, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough accused Brokeback Mountain of advancing a “radical [liberal] agenda” in 2005 and Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said the movie was “about mainstreaming certain conduct.” The criticism extends to animated movies, as well. In a 1999 op-ed piece for his radio show, Vice President-elect Mike Pence wrote, “Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her cloddish cohorts. Obviously, this is Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military.”

Assuming that such critics are correct in thinking that a number of Hollywood movies tell their stories from a particular, biased perspective—and overlooking the claim that watching a movie can turn people gay—we are left to wonder, first, whether such movies are capable of affecting social change and, second, whether it is somehow improper or inappropriate or even immoral for them to do so. I argue yes to the former and no to the latter.

Current Hollywood pictures provide plenty of material for conspiracy theorists wary of the liberal agenda. Disney’s Zootopia tells the story of a rabbit fighting other animals’ biases in trying to join the police force in a city where predators and prey of many species try to live together in peace.

Similarly, J.K. Rowling took aim at American society with her first Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Wizards in New York City live under strict rules prohibiting them from befriending or marrying Muggles—people without magic powers—as they tremble in fear of international magical terrorism.

A chief line of criticism against films of this strain is that they advance a liberal agenda, meaning they were created with the conscious purpose of swaying public opinion in a certain direction on a contemporary social issue. These critics find it particularly abhorrent that such movies would be marketed to children, and they stir up anti-Hollywood sentiment with charges of “brainwashing” the younger generation.

Accusations of movies having a particular “agenda” are usually overstated—the most that can be said of the movies is usually that they told their story with a certain moral or perspective in mind. Not only is writing a story from a biased perspective different from writing with an express agenda, but such biases are impossible to avoid.

In general, good artists attempt to reach beyond their own biases in order to reach a deeper truth about their subject, but of course, they can never truly succeed. All artists bring their life experiences and pre-conceived notions to the creative process—just as all audiences do to the viewing process—and it is this subjective position that allows them to create art in the first place.

Do these biases have an effect on society? More often than not, professional writers will laugh at the notion that they are somehow controlling public opinion. Still, a good body of sociological research asserts that popular media have a powerful role in shaping perceptions and forming attitudes. Ironically, the central message of many films accused of liberal bias is that such stereotypes are harmful and must be overcome.

As to whether such biases are ethical, at base they constitute a form of free speech. Stories are a particularly influential form of speech—especially to children—but that is not a reason to boycott or to disparage them. They have a central place in public discourse, and while their limitations should be acknowledged, they should ultimately be embraced for their ability to provide a method for thinking through abstract ideas in a very concrete way.

Bias in art is not something to be disdained or to be avoided. Often, it is the point of art and—more often than not—viewers can learn as much from their own reactions to art as they can from the art itself.

Social media censors reality of U.S. politics

The results of the 2016 United States presidential election shocked many Americans. Every major news outlet—including Fox News—wrongly predicted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s victory. The New York Times reported that President-elect Donald Trump himself was even surprised by his victory. Many have blamed this shock on an increasingly entrenched feature of modern life: the sealed-off nature of our online interactions and the media we consume. While the causes of this problem—frequently referred to as the “echo-chamber” or the “liberal [or conservative] bubble”—are complex and varied, the biggest culprit is Facebook, and that company bears a responsibility to address it.

There was considerable discussion within Facebook about whether or not the company had affected the outcome of the election, according to The New York Times. Several high-level executives voiced concerns, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued on Thursday Nov. 10 that the claim that Facebook influenced the outcome of the election was “a pretty crazy idea.”

The company boasts a membership of 200 million Americans, with a 2016 Pew Research Center Survey indicating 44 percent of American adults get their news from the social media website. Those numbers make Facebook the biggest media company in the U.S.

Thus far, the site has been reluctant to step into that role. In a Saturday Nov. 12 Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote, “I believe we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.” This sentiment’s idealism is admirable, but deeply problematic. When so many Americans are using its product as a news source, Facebook does not have the luxury of pretending not to influence the opinions and quality of information absorbed by the American people.

Facebook could have influenced the election in several ways, but the most important is by locking people into fixed political perspectives. It is far too easy to drown people you disagree with on the platform—two clicks and the person will never appear in your news feed again.

Facebook presents itself as a marketplace of ideas, but a more apt analogy for the way most Americans use Facebook would be that it is an intellectual IMAX theater. It is a place you can enter and select what version of reality you’d like to experience, and then sit back and let others deliver it to you—whatever their agenda.

Facebook must change this situation in order to be consistent with its own values. When the election of Peter Thiel—the prominent Silicon Valley Trump supporter—to the Facebook board was criticized, Zuckerberg defended him and said, “We care deeply about diversity.” Truly caring about diversity would likely not entail allowing millions of people to lock themselves into hermetically sealed echo chambers of opinion.

The degree to which the material users read on Facebook changes their opinions is questionable. But this may be slightly beside the point: most people in the country were surprised by the election’s outcome, and a popped liberal bubble might have spared them the shock. Social media claims to make people more connected, yet in this instance we were systematically ignorant of the views of millions of our compatriots.

Exposing Facebook users to a greater diversity of opinion would not necessarily change their minds, but it might make them more open to doing so. Reading the same point of view over and over again creates the impression that everyone agrees with it, making people on both sides more likely to close their ears and to dig their heels in when they are confronted with opposing points of view.

Social media not only allowed Trump to reach millions of voters without virtually any campaign budget—it also allowed both candidates to make themselves and each other more vehemently unpopular than any other candidates in history. Facebook shares a significant part in this unprecedented public response.

Trump election threatens progressive legislation, policy

Shocking election results have installed Donald Trump as the President-elect of the United States. Republicans earned control of the Senate and the House and will most likely appoint a staunchly conservative Supreme Court Justice. The last time a party had such complete control over the U.S. government was World War II, and it led to a redefinition of the role of government in the New Deal. The last time the Republican Party held this level of power was 1928—and the Great Depression started the next year.

Minorities will be hit hard by this change of power in the White House. Stock in Corrections Corporation of America rose by 47 percent in the first 12 hours of the news, indicating that the market clearly thinks America’s engorged and disproportionately minority-ridden penal system is here to stay.

Women have plenty to worry about as well—conservative media outlets have already begun trumpeting the end of Planned Parenthood funding. Furthermore, a repeal of the Affordable Care Act would end the requirement that insurance companies provide birth control without a copayment.

The concerns of women, people of color, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community are valid, but two considerations are even more pressing. First, there exists the threat of catastrophic war our nation faces from a president so petulant his aides barred him from Twitter in the final days of the election. We can only hope that Vice President-elect Mike Pence—who at least seems to understand America’s relationship with Russia—takes the lead on foreign policy, leaving him little time for domestic policy.

The second tragedy is also calamitous in scale: at every level of government, a party that rejects and mocks the science of climate change now controls the U.S. Trump has promised to exit the Paris agreement, revoke the Clean Power Plan and scrap the Environmental Protection Agency.

All the major progress the U.S. has made against climate change—meaning a large portion of the entire world’s progress—will probably be erased.

The left cannot blame its failures for these looming disasters. Nearly 60 million people voted for Trump, and whatever happens next is what they chose for this country. As much as 100 million people eligible did not register to vote in this election, and that too was a conscious choice. Trump did not win the votes of the majority of Americans or even the majority of Americans who voted, but enough people in enough places supported him for him to win the Electoral College.

One group that cannot entirely escape responsibility, though, is the media. Not having raised enough money to pay for traditional ads or outreach, Trump relied on Twitter and $2 billion of free media advertising to promote his message. Additionally, studies have repeatedly shown that less than 10 percent of the total election coverage focused on policy issues, and it wasn’t until the past few months that journalists began giving critical takes on Trump’s proposals.

While the media can amplify and offset our beliefs and fixations, they are ultimately a reflection of them. The media focused on the sensational and scandalous because our culture uses politics to entertain itself. This should not be the case. Politics are serious––and arguably––are often boring.

Perhaps if we treated it this way, however, we wouldn’t have a reality television star as our president-elect today.

Comey letter threatens ethical fairness of upcoming election

The separation of governmental powers is one of the foundations of modern democracy. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey violated that principle by informing House of Representatives Republicans on Friday Oct. 28 that his department had discovered new emails that “may be significant” to its investigation into former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Inappropriate conduct such as this is common in many parts of the world where the legal system functions as a tool for the government to impose its will on the people. The FBI is an investigative organization, which means that it has a responsibility to handle confidential material carefully and discreetly. Comey’s declarative letter followed neither of these principles.

The FBI is a section of the Department of Justice, which has a longstanding policy of not interfering with elections. This is often interpreted to mean that it avoids releasing pertinent information to the public within 60 days of an election. DOJ officials informed Comey of this, yet his announcement came within 11 days of the presidential election.

Comey’s letter to the United States Congress stated that he felt he had an obligation to report the information “in light of [his] previous testimony,” in which he had promised that the Bureau’s efforts were complete and that he would inform the Committee of any new developments.

The problem with this justification is that nothing has developed in Clinton’s case to the point at which it would be useful to share with the House, let alone the public. The new emails in question are reportedly from a computer shared by Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for sexual misconduct. In other words, these emails likely were not even sent by Clinton. In addition, Comey’s letter led many in the media to declare that the Clinton email case had been “reopened”—even though the case had never been officially closed.

Not only was Comey’s letter misleading, but it appeared to show a bias in his handling of politically sensitive investigations. Though the media doesn’t like to discuss it, the FBI is currently investigating Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s possible connections to recent Russian hacks of U.S. state computers. The FBI has not come forward with preliminary information about this investigation, even though its outcome is just as relevant to voters as that of Clinton’s email scandal.

Comey’s letter does seem to be affecting voters’ minds about the election. Trump is currently at a 23 percent chance of winning—his highest since the beginning of October, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus model.

The FBI is clearly aware of the potential impact of its work on the election, and Comey’s choice about how to deal with these concerns was a mistake. In trying to appear apolitical and thus help salvage the public perception of the American political system, Comey is giving one side inappropriate and more intense public scrutiny than the other.

There is no basis for this behavior in his mandate of assisting the justice system. Many critics of Clinton’s email scandal are not interested in giving her actions a fair and balanced assessment.

The basis of the email scandal claims that Clinton may have recklessly exposed state secrets to hackers. This claim often seems like a curious avenue of political attack against her since her opponent is likely the most reckless figure in modern politics.

But, overall, Clinton’s misuse of a private server certainly doesn’t approach the recklessness of Comey’s public revelation about a confidential case.

Threats to Hong Kong democracy echoed in American election

Hong Kong’s Legislative Council blocked Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching—two newly elected pro-independence lawmakers—from taking oath and assuming office on Wednesday Oct. 19 until the completion of a judicial review of their qualification for office. The first time the two had taken their oaths, they swore allegiance to a “Hong-Kong nation” and mentioned “Shina” instead of “China.” This offended many individuals, and caused the government to declare their oaths invalid. This week, the two were prevented from entering the chamber during session.

As our election season reaches its climax, taking the partisan conflicts of other countries seriously is becoming difficult. This confrontation, however, knocked me out of my Americentrism for a moment.

Tensions have been high between the pro-democracy faction and the Beijing loyalists ever since the 2014 Umbrella Revolution. The loyalists see these legislators’ actions as an insult to China and the nationalism they cherish, while democratic activists see their interests being ground to dust under the heel of the Beijing Politburo.

Still, while both sides can disagree about the interpretation, something objectively serious is happening in this situation: the Hong Kong government—backed undoubtedly by Beijing—is violating the separation of powers and blatantly attempting to prevent its elected political opponents from assuming office.

Since its reacquisition by China in 1997, Hong Kong has been placed on a path away from democracy, but its death is far from inevitable. With every shock like this, they have to wonder if their democracy is ruined. This puts some of the dire warnings about the United States into context—and offers some comparisons to similar threats to democracy.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has refused to say that he would concede the results of our presidential election if he were to lose. He has also promised to, as president, use the legal system to jail his political opponent.

Critics say that these comments constitute an attack on our democracy. They overlook the fact that—like much about Trump—these statements are bluster and he has committed no actions on this front. Not actively being a dictator, however, does not get him off the hook. Trump’s statements may be just the specter of authoritarianism, but the fact that such political stunts actually take place regularly in other parts of the world—such as Hong Kong—make his statements an even more serious offense.

American democracy has survived exactly by avoiding such in-fighting and by trusting in its institutions. President Barack Obama has faced some of the worst partisanship in modern American political history, yet when there was a problem with his 2008 oath, he was allowed to retake it in 2009.

American history is not perfect, of course. We have not always been completely faithful to all the institutions of our government, either. President Abraham Lincoln once had the entire legislature of Maryland arrested and suspended their right to habeas corpus in order to prevent Maryland from seceding from the Union.

The Hong Kong Legislative Council’s move to block pro-independence legislators was similarly a shallowly justified political maneuver. Yet, American democracy survived this encroachment of partisanship on its governing apparatus. If there’s hope for us, there’s still hope for Hong Kong.

Voting is crucial strategy for millennials to enact change

Young people set the agenda for American politics in the 1960s. From the civil rights movement to protesting the Vietnam War, young people made their voices heard and achieved their political goals. In order for our generation to have the same impact, young people have to vote. Political commentators have been deriding young voters throughout this election cycle. First, young peoples’ support for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s was deemed “unrealistic,” and now young people are accused of potentially costing former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the election by voting for third party candidates. While this claim has been shown to be overblown, our generation could still hand Republican nominee Donald Trump the presidency by failing to turn out to vote.

I want everyone to vote in this election—even my Trump-supporting friends. The reason is simple: by voting, we as young people claim political power as a demographic. Under the current status quo, our concerns don’t really matter that much to any politician who can do high school level math. Only 46 percent of millennials voted in the presidential election in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. When we stay home, we allow the political establishment to continue ignoring us.

There is clear evidence that we can make major changes in the political system. This year, the Democratic Party passed the most progressive agenda in at least 60 years. Clinton supporters didn’t cause this—it was caused by the 12 million votes cast by Sanders supporters in the primaries, two million of which came from millennials. The impact we’ve had so far is stunning. In order to match the political values of former Sanders supporters, Clinton pivoted so fast that by the end of the primaries, her pantsuit was practically on backward.

From the 2016 primaries, we can see the effects of young people’s participation on the political process—and that was with most of us not voting at all. We are not even close to maximizing our possible political power, as millennials now constitute roughly 31 percent of the possible electorate in the United States. If we all voted, the political agenda in America would be far different.

If more young people voted, issues that are important to us would become important to the greater political conversation in America. For example, consider the legal drinking age. Most voters do not bear the costs of this policy, and repealing it is currently a political non-starter. But there are 13 million voters between the ages of 18 and 21 today—if we all voted, suddenly politicians and pollsters would start looking at the issues that affect us, and repealing the National Drinking Age Minimum Act could be put on the table.

We have seen the ugly side of older voters’ derision right here in Geneseo. There was a polling site on campus in 2008 and there will be one for this election, but the Geneseo Village Board got rid of it for the 2012 election.

According to March 2016 Lamron article “On student candidates’ campaigns for Village Board,” former Board Trustee Bob Wilcox suggested that students shouldn’t vote in local elections because we don’t pay property taxes. At what point does this disdain become voter suppression?

The American political system is imperfect and this election has shown us exactly how deep the discontent with the establishment runs. But the issues our country faces are more our issues than anyone else’s—we are the people who will serve if our next president takes this country to war, and we are the people who can least afford a candidate who doesn’t believe in climate change.

But the greatest issue of all is the future of our body politic. A country with 46 percent millennial voter participation isn’t a democracy. The political participation of our generation has to go beyond protesting and roasting the establishment on social media and into the realm of voting or else we will say goodbye to the freedom our founding fathers––once young people themselves––won for us.

U.S. food system reevaluation needed to combat health risks

An article published in The New Yorker on Sept. 28 claimed that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have “done more than any other First Couple to confront the problems that plague the American food system.” Perhaps this assertion is not so impressive in a country that has seen its adult obesity rate rise from around 13 percent in 1962 to 36.5 percent today, but some progress has certainly been made.

With support from the president, Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign led to successful changes in nutritional guidelines and nutritional information panels.

The campaign also helped pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which made the National School Lunch program more nutritious and banned the sale of sugar, fat and sodium-heavy snacks in schools.

While these have been admirable changes, the United States food system remains damaged. The next administration needs to propose reforms to begin to rescue our society from the environmental and public health catastrophe that is our food system.

The government should end or seriously reform the “checkoff programs” that exist for most agricultural commodities. In checkoff programs, producers of a product all contribute money toward the research and promotion of that product, with the goal being to boost sales across the board.

Checkoffs are quite profitable for producers, generating up to $38 in sales per dollar spent on the program. These programs are not so good, however, for consumers. They cause us to consume a lot more of some foods than we otherwise would—and when these commodities are beef, dairy and potatoes, what’s at stake isn’t so much the profitability of farming as is the health of our entire country.

The second thing that has to change regards the U.S. Department of Agriculture and how it needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up—it would probably benefit from being split into two or more organizations. Under its current structure, the agency is responsible for both “promoting agriculture production” and administering most of the major government nutritional guidelines and programs such as the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program.

This is a clear conflict of interest, and the reality is that the agriculture industry has the USDA pretty deep in its pocket. The USDA committee that recently set new nutritional guidelines contained nine members with ties to the animal agriculture industry out of a panel of 13. Their problematic loyalties can be seen in their advice to children to drink more milk, despite rising childhood obesity rates and evidence that milk can contribute to weight gain.

The last reform is the most important and will be the most difficult. The current subsidy structure of the U.S. agriculture industry needs to be entirely revamped. It currently favors products like corn, soy, beef and dairy, all of which are used heavily in high glycemic and fatty foods. The total subsidies paid by all levels in American government total $57.3 billion per year—a combination of USDA budget subsidies of $30.8 billion and $26.5 billion in state irrigation subsidies from 2013.

Partly because of this—and partly because of the rise of factory farming—the relative price of eating healthy has risen considerably for consumers. Over the past three decades, the cost of vegetables rose by 41 percent. When faced with expensive choices at the supermarket, Americans will be influenced into making harmful decisions for their health and the environment.

Americans face many problems, but few hit closer to home than our food crisis. The U.S. is the wealthiest nation in history—it should be eating that way, too.

Free trade disproportionately favors international corporations

Free trade is the boogeyman of modern political discourse. As jobs in traditional blue-collar industries become scarce in developed countries, unions and other labor groups have been quick to point to free trade deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement as the culprit. This protectionist fervor has scared former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton––who helped negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership––into opposing its passage, thus feeding the recent rise of populism on the international political stage.

In many cases, the opposition to free trade deals becomes hysterical, and the criticism of them may seem to fall into a repudiation of free trade itself. Basic economics says that free trade makes all participants unambiguously better off; the critics of free trade deals are often cast as ignorant of these basic principles. But modern trade treaties are extremely complex, and many of them contain provisions that reasonable people can object to without opposing free trade in general. The TPP is one of these treaties.

Environmental groups, consumer advocacy groups and health groups have joined the clamoring labor interests in opposing the TPP. Their concerns extend beyond the job losses to a clause included in most free trade agreements: the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system. This clause allows transnational corporations to sue governments for opposing their interests.

ISDS clauses are included in NAFTA and many other free trade deals to prevent member states from discriminating against foreign firms. This is certainly a reasonable thing to protect them from, but the protections offered by ISDS go much further.

To establish standing for an ISDS, a company need not have established any contracts with member states to gain standing to sue in these courts. They can sue a member state for having a regulatory framework that does not match the expectations the company had when it made the investment, and they can sue for unlimited amounts of money. In some cases, they can sue for the expected profits they would have made had their investment gone undeterred.

These protections mean that foreign firms can sue the government on grounds not available to domestic firms. An example is the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was denied a permit by the Obama administration in 2015 on the grounds that it would contribute to climate change. TransCanada—the company responsible for the pipeline—is currently suing the United States for $15 billion under an ISDS clause of NAFTA.

TPP not only contains ISDS clauses, but it actually expands them past those of many previous trade treaties. The TPP would double U.S. ISDS exposure and give more than 5,000 U.S. companies the right to sue the government for passing laws that are not in their interests. It would also allow financial firms to challenge many U.S. regulations, and pharmaceutical companies to claim cash rewards for perceived intellectual property rights violations.

Governments and large international corporations negotiate free trade deals; the concerns of less-powerful interest groups often go unheeded during these agreements. Free trade certainly has the potential to benefit everyone, but if politicians and economists want it to proceed, they have to bring the interests of people other than those in corporations and the economic elite to the table.

Unrelated double majors enhance education outcome

A new semester is upon us, and while sitting through classes of varying levels of interest and going through personal crises about future career goals, I want to encourage students to make their college career more enriching. If students have the time to add multiple minors or a double major, they should do it—but in an area of study completely different from their first major. I am a senior English and economics double major. I knew I wanted to study English when I came to Geneseo, but was overwhelmed by the numerous English and philosophy courses offered my first semester. This frustration inspired a search through 13 different academic departments for other interesting major options.

Some students believe that studying vastly different subjects is useful because it helps develop personal skills in two distinctive fields. What is most important about the double major, however, is the impact it can have on one’s perspective of the world—a double major stimulates intellectual development.

I am interested in studying humanity, an area where my two disciplines could not have more dissimilar views. The majority of literary writers adopt a humanistic understanding of people that values individual emotion, conscience and empathy. On the other hand, economists tend to ignore these characteristics; they believe self-interest is the root of human nature’s motivation.

Being confronted with such conflicting views has forced me to think critically about two incredibly intelligent groups of thinkers. I’ve synthesized both perspectives to understand why some people behave in one way and others behave differently. My understanding of human nature—while certainly not perfect—is more complete as a result.

It is unlikely that I will ever have a job where I use a combination of information about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s use of extended metaphor and the determinants of international exchange rates. But barring those who enter academia, most people don’t end up using most of the knowledge they learn in their undergraduate degree, anyway.

Life does not happen within the confines of a single discipline. Every one of us is affected by sociological factors, political realities, physics formulas, mathematical certainties and artistic genius. Dipping one’s toes into many of these perspectives is useful, and having a sustained relationship with more than one of them better prepares one for the multidimensionality of life.

The goal of a liberal arts education should be to train an open and powerful mind. There is no one more open-minded and powerful than someone who can do two things at once.

Freshmen writing seminar unsuccessful, inconsistent

G

eneseo’s freshmen writing seminar INTD 105 could do better. In my time as a tutor at the Writing Learning Center, I have observed that many students come out of INTD without an understanding of how to form an argument or how to develop their ideas.

Some students were lucky enough to have professors who gave them a lot of helpful feedback and a chance to improve their grades by making progress, but the students who scraped through without understanding the difference between summary and argumentation are done a disservice. They will be unprepared for their required Humanities classes—which together account for seven percent of a degree—and, more importantly, they will enter the real world without being able to properly express an idea or argue a point.

The biggest problem with INTD is simply its immense variability. Professors are given free reign of their classes in order to encourage different methods and to allow the students to pick topics that interest them, and this approach is causing problems. Most courses use the writing handbook They Say, I Say to teach students the basic tactics of persuasion, but I have many students who will walk into a tutoring session and tell me their INTD used no texts on writing at all.

This might not be a problem if the professor is skilled at explaining the basics, but normally this is simply not enough. Writing is a craft students learn by doing and redoing. Furthermore, INTD is a general education requirement, meaning that many students do not want to be there and are therefore reluctant to put forth the effort required for this revision process. As a result, it is imperative that their professors provide clear, thoughtful and constructive feedback. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all professors.

“I think one’s INTD experience depends almost entirely on the professor you get,” biology major freshman Clark Davis said. “Not once did my professor return the previous paper to us before we turned in the next one. This gave us very little opportunity to improve, as we had no idea what we did wrong previously.”

Often, these cases of neglect originate with adjunct professors who may have little incentive to ensure their students’ future success, or from full-time faculty members who are stretched too thin with other obligations. But apart from the nationwide adjunct crisis and the general scarcity of resources at Geneseo, there are some problems with INTD that can be addressed.

The course should be overseen by a central committee, the same way that the Humanities courses currently are. This committee should exercise strict control over what happens in the classroom, ensuring that each class has the benefit of an accessible writing text that students can consult when writing their papers alone late at night. In addition, all INTD teachers should receive training in providing student feedback, so that a baseline standard can be established. The idea that there are many ways of teaching writing is nice—and true in a sense—but constructing our policies around it leads to some students getting left behind.

Writing is the art of thinking elegantly. Messy writing is evidence of messy thinking, and good writing gives a person the ability to convey their thoughts succinctly and eloquently. It is a skill that is useful in education, medicine, social work, pure science, law, business and engineering, which is why all majors have a requirement for a writing intensive course. Good writing is a hallmark of an educated person, and that is what we all should aspire to be.

Sanders campaign exercises admirable, effective tactics

We’ve heard the constant refrain in the media: Sen. Bernie Sanders is not a serious candidate; he’s running to bring attention to the issues on his political agenda rather than to actually win the nomination—and if he isn’t, then he should be. But even if that narrative were entirely true, it does a disservice to voters by undermining the seriousness of the choice they have whenever they are faced with a ballot.

One of the main “unserious” things that Sanders did throughout his campaigning in 2015 was his refusal to engage in character assault against his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the October Democratic debate, his rousing call to “forget about [her] damn emails” drew sharp contrast between the civility of the Democratic race and the raucous mess that was—and is—the Republican race. The incident also confirmed for many what a decent man Sanders is and drew another contrast: his determined transparency and dedication to talking only about the issues with Clinton’s dodging questions on her own record while attacking him over his voting record on guns.

By January, it had become clear that Sanders' movement was here to stay and this dynamic changed when the ruling came down that Goldman Sachs would escape severe penalties for its role in the financial crisis. In their January debate, Sanders smashed Clinton for accepting $675,000 in exchange for giving three speeches to Goldman Sachs executives.

Sanders’ rallies—which were once light-hearted happenings of prosaic policy discussions—became filled with brutal sarcasm: “I figure if she gets $250,000 for a speech, it must be a brilliant, earth-shattering speech. It must be a speech written in Shakespearean prose.”

It is in this environment that Sanders drew criticism for using the word “unqualified” when discussing Clinton. The word set the media on fire for days; a response clearly unwarranted for Sanders’ simple point that the job requirements for president are unconventional and that good judgment is a qualification for high office. But it was the moment the Clinton campaign had been waiting for: Sanders was no longer the morally unimpeachable good boy of the campaign, he had become something else—he had become a politician.

The truth is that Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981 and has been a politician for almost as long as he was an activist. But he is a qualitatively different kind of politician. In stooping to targeting his opponent, Sanders is trying to do right by the millions of people who have voted for him and donated to his campaign by doing everything he can to win. The same can be said of Clinton, but the difference lies in their approaches.

The Clinton campaign’s express purpose is to, in Clinton’s words, “disqualify, defeat, and worry about uniting the party later”—a strategy they have implemented with characteristic calculation and subtlety. While they spent months making damaging insinuations, Sanders was stumping about the issues he has been championing his entire career: affordable healthcare, family leave, climate change and income inequality among others. The results: heading into the New York Primary, Sanders has won 1,087 delegates and Clinton has won 1,307.

When voters are evaluating these candidates’ comments—and when Democrats are making decisions in the voting booth on Tuesday April 19—they should remember how remarkable Sanders’ record against Clinton is in the grand scheme of things. He has not remained the docile angel opponent of 2015, but the strength of character those first seven months displayed remains beneath his furious attempts to seize the chance to make a difference.

The fact that character assault was ever off the table in his campaign shows how wonderfully and painfully averse he is to the methods and machinations of establishment politics. It was never the wrong thing to do.

On student candidates’ campaigns for Village Board

Geneseo students will have an unprecedented opportunity to shift the balance of power in a very constructive direction in the March 15 Geneseo Village Board elections. Freshman Mary Rutigliano and junior Matthew Cook are running as independents to fill the two available positions—and students should turn out in force to support them. Especially noting the currently tense atmosphere following the rollout of the Social Host Law, dialogue between the college and the town is particularly vital for the functioning of our community.

Rutigliano and Cook are strong candidates who seem eager to learn about local issues and to listen to voices from the town and the college in making decisions. Rutigliano grew up in Geneseo and knows firsthand many of the issues the town faces. She and Cook—a political science major—cited the difficulties that Dansville has experienced after the town’s water treatment plant broke down from years of underinvestment as a useful case study. These are two intelligent, curious people who will make good public servants.

They also expressed their belief that the Social Host Law needs to be amended or enforced differently so that students are protected by the law, rather than preyed upon. This law is a case in which it is easy to see how input from students—as well as permanent residents—could lead to policies that are more fair and amenable to all.

Rutigliano and Cook are also much stronger candidates than their opponents. The local Republican Party is running one candidate—Leslie Carson—for the two positions. Carson is married to a local police sergeant, which means that she will be prevented from participating in a number of major votes—including the budget—because they conflict directly with her personal interests.

On the Democratic side, the candidates are Bob Wilcox and Phil Jones. Wilcox was a strong advocate of the Social Host Law and if Rutigliano and Cook win the election, Wilcox will be voted out of office. This would be a welcome development following his recent comments expressing the ignorant opinion that time constraints make students unfit to hold public office.

Additionally, he said that students should not hold public office because they do not pay property taxes—never mind that 44 percent of students live off campus and that decisions about businesses, street repairs and law enforcement affect all of us just as well.

Older generations claim that our generation is politically complacent. The recent presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders challenges this notion, but it is not only for big-time outsider candidates that we can become excited. When we have the opportunity to support qualified, concerned candidates like Rutigliano and Cook, we should seize it because the decisions made at the local level are often the ones that ending up impacting our lives the most.

To vote in the local election, students have to be registered to vote in Livingston County. The deadline to register to vote is Friday March 4 and most students will have to complete an absentee ballot because the election occurs over spring break. The deadline for that is Tuesday March 8.

Both forms can be found online at ny.elections.gov or in the Board of Elections Office in the county government building behind the court building on Court Street.

U.S. environmental policy crucial for sustainability

After the recent death of conservative United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, certain areas of the federal government are in disarray. Our liberal president has not only a right, but a duty to continue to govern in the resulting chaos—even if that means continuing to advance his Democratic agenda. One major cornerstone of the president’s legacy—the Clean Power Plan—is at stake.

The Supreme Court ordered a stay on the Clean Power Plan—Obama’s major environmental initiative—just four days before Scalia’s death. The plan provides regulations on carbon emissions from power plants, which is intended to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

The plan was a major bargaining chip for the U.S. at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. It was the only evidence our nation could put forth of a serious commitment toward taking action to curb climate change. With the stay in place, the commitments to sustainability goals of nations around the world are thrown into question.

With no majority to rule on the plan in its current form, it would likely sit unimplemented. According to Linda Hirshman of The Washington Post, however, if Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a slightly altered version of the rule, the process would start all over again. The circuit courts—which Obama has stacked with his appointees—would again refuse to issue a stay on the order. Without Scalia, there would be no Supreme Court majority to overrule them.

If such a path to implementation exists, Obama should take it, regardless of the calls to rise above partisan agendas in this time of flux. Nations around the world are looking to the U.S.—the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouses gases—for assurance of its commitment to reduce its impact on the planet. There is little hope of keeping the average temperature of the planet from rising two degrees Celsius by 2100—let alone the agreed-upon target of 1.5 degrees—if the U.S. does not cooperate with this international effort.

If there seems to be little chance of meeting the sustainability goals anyway, other nations may give up on their commitments toward these goals as pointless endeavors. Such a lack of leadership would not only be catastrophic to the planet, but would also represent a failure, as the U.S. could not live up to the position we so boastfully promise to the world. If the Clean Power Plan can affirm our commitment to the planet, then saving it will be well worth the accusations of opportunism.

Someone has to govern this country and going an entire year with a hobbled Supreme Court is not conducive to that. If the current situation is allowed to continue, there must be someone willing to step up and do the things that must be done in order to assure our continuing greatness. Future generations will have that person to thank.