Opinion
Thursday October 4, 2018
page 6
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Treat the hearing as a job interview: Kavanaugh shouldn’t get a second round Morgan Lucey Columnist
L
ike many students, I spent Sept. 27, the day of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the U.S. Senate, on edge. I checked my phone at every break between classes, opened my laptop at every chance, and tried to decipher which professors would let me watch the hearing while sitting in seminar. At the end of the day, despite the evidence that Kavanaugh was not fit to be a Supreme Court justice, the national conversations surrounding both of the Kavanaugh hearings were not as punishing as one might have expected. Ford’s story would not necessarily hold up in a court of law, but this hearing was not a court of law. Rather, it was a job interview, for what might currently be the most important job in the country. Thus, the hearing should have focused on whether Kavanaugh is qualified to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, rather than whether he committed the assault. It is clear from his reaction
that he is not qualified. Kavanaugh delivered what has been called a “blistering, scorched-earth” defense. He seemed to be crying, more concerned with how Ford was deconstructing his “good name” than with the truth of Ford’s testimony. He even went so far as to hysterically call the hearing a partisan “frenzy.” Many current and former justices have faced difficult hearings. Take Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an example. She also faced difficult and controversial questions in her confirmation hearings, but she answered honestly about the subjects about which she had already written. Though she refused to answer questions about other subjects, such as the death penalty, as it was something she felt might soon come to a vote, she refused to do so calmly and with grace. This is a far cry from the frustrating avoidance and hysterics demonstrated by Kavanaugh, particularly surrounding the potential for overturning Roe v. Wade, for which he has provided circular answers every time it has come up in the hearing. For example, Kavanaugh may have intentionally downplayed his role in the campaign for a controversial appeals judge before the Senate. Re-
cently released files provide evidence that Kavanaugh was far more involved than he revealed, suggesting that he has committed perjury under oath. This lack of regard for the regulations of the court is troubling. On the other hand, the women who have participated in the Kavanaugh hearings have remained calm and composed, including Amy Klobuchar and Ford, even throughout the most difficult of questions and situations. Ford herself held back tears in favor of composure, and repeatedly emphasized that she was open to more investigation to draw out the details of her accusation. She acknowledged the weaknesses in her case while emphasizing the truth in its strengths. She never once descended into anger or hysterics, which may have in some ways been justified given the difficulty of the circumstances. The same cannot be said for her alleged perpetrator, who is seemingly incapable of portraying either his strengths or weaknesses accurately. When Minnesota representative Amy Klobuchar asked Kavanaugh if he had a ever blacked out from drinking, he responded angrily with “I don’t know. Have you? ” Klobuchar, like Ford, remained calm
throughout this ridiculous line of questioning. This seems like something a middle school boy caught with a beer would ask their parents, not something said by a man who might wield a huge amount of power over the rights American people. By refusing to answer the question, and instead asking an irrelevant question of his own, Kavanaugh failed the job interview, per any reasonable standard. Whether or not Kavanaugh actually committed the crime he was accused of (though in my opinion, he did), this case has still revealed his inability to handle the trials of being a Supreme Court justice. This is a tumultuous time in American politics, and the next several years will be no different. If Kavanaugh attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade and continues to assail disability rights, he will face character assaults far greater than those from Ford. If he cannot calmly and competently handle the Senate hearing, how does he expect to handle one of the most difficult jobs in the country? Morgan Lucey is a senior studying neuroscience from Scottsdale, Ariz. She can be reached at mslucey@ princeton.edu.
Beware: Sleep-deprived zombies
Katie Goldman
Contributing Columnist
H
ave you seen the zombies walking around campus? As workloads begin to escalate, I’ve noticed more and more students turning into sleep-deprived zombies, staying up all night to try and finish their readings and p-sets. In high school, I tried to sleep eight hours every night. The least amount of sleep I could get to still function the next day was about six hours, and if I got any less than that, my productivity level would drop drastically. Honestly, I am terrified for what the next four years hold in regards to my sleep schedule. I have only been at Princeton for about a month, but I have noticed that staying awake until the early morning is something fairly typical for students here, even those students who excel in time management. So why exactly are Princeton students sleeping so little, and why has no one confronted this issue?
Yesterday, my RCA told me that he went to bed “at eight.” I was impressed, and I told him that I wished I could fall asleep that early, but I typically can’t sleep until 10 p.m. However, when he clarified that he went to bed at eight o’clock in the morning, I was astonished. He told me that he was up literally all night working on a p-set. My RCA is a smart guy — he doesn’t seem like someone who would put something off until the last minute. As a freshman, a popular topic of discussion is the dreaded writing seminar. While I will not be taking mine until the spring semester, I have lots of friends who are currently struggling through the class. The night before the rough draft of their first essay was due, I saw frazzled freshmen running around, telling me how they were planning to pull an all-nighter. In high school, “all-nighter” was an exaggeration of staying up until 2 a.m. — maybe 3 a.m. Here, however, “all-nighter” seems to mean quite literally stay-
ing up all night. One of my friends bought two preemptive 5-hour Energies at 10 p.m. — enough to keep him up until 8 a.m. Another one of my friends told me that he did not sleep more than two hours per night for the past four nights. When I expressed major concern for his mental and physical health, he told me not to worry because he “will try to get eight hours on the weekend.” Doctors tend to recommend at least eight hours of sleep each night, but Princeton students view eight hours of sleep as an unthinkable luxury. Why exactly is that? Everyone at Princeton excelled in high school — they had to have in order to be here. To excel in high school, you need to have some concept of time management. I don’t think that time management is the issue; the people who seem to not be sleeping are also the people with meticulously scheduled Google calendars. Rather, the issue lies in the workload given by professors and in the notion that being
sleep-deprived is the norm. Princeton is arguably the most difficult college in the nation. However, no university should encourage a workload that practically forces students to compromise their physical and mental health. During many freshman orientation events, university leaders stressed how much they care for us students. It is clear through organizations like Counseling and Psychological Services, McCosh Health Center, and the residential college staffs, that Princeton does make a strong effort to look out for each of us and our well-being. This is not an issue that is felt only by Princeton students. I have a friend at Dartmouth who told me that she is in the library every night when it closes at 2 a.m. and back waiting at the door when it opens at 8 a.m. I told her that I was concerned for her health and she replied, “I’m concerned for you…. You do realize that your school is still harder than mine, right?” While Princeton may
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 trustees Kathleen Crown Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Lisa Belkin ‘82 Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Michael Grabell ’03 Kavita Saini ’09 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77
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be ranked higher than Dartmouth, both are rigorous schools, and their students deserve to sleep. Her words did cause a sense of fear to swell inside of me. I hope to never stay up all night to finish an assignment; however, it seems as though that is not a foreign phenomenon for most Princeton students. As a university, we need to acknowledge that being sleep-deprived should not be a prerequisite for a Princeton degree.
DANIEL TE
Katie Goldman is a first-year from Western Springs, Ill. She can be reached at kpg3@ princeton.edu.