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SHAW continued from page 10 person or to hold power over them. The main dif ference for heterosexual couples and homosexual couples caught having sex on tape would be the social ramifications. Had something been captured in my case, I might have been embarrassed and “morally compromised” in some people’s eyes (cer tainly at that Catholic school), but no one would be truly shocked or surprised by my behavior. The fact that a woman snuck me into the men’s wing indicated girlfriends and boyfriends visited frequently. It was a frownedupon, but other wise ignored, transgression of the school’s rules, but not a transgression of societal rules. Dif ferent things were at stake for Clementi. He was not open about his homosexual relationship, and so being caught on film doing something ver y personal exposed him to his residence hall community and a broader anonymous community via the Internet. It not only stole his privacy, but his agency to decide how and when to let others know about his sexual identity. Unfor tunately in today’s society, being labeled “gay” does not have the same repercussions as being labeled “straight.” The label “homosexual” would have forced Clementi to deal with a host of social prejudices that he may not have been ready to face.
The second thing that strikes me, though, is how odd it is that I think of all of these guys as “boys.” I suspect it’s because despite how old they may be and despite their legal status as full adults, I think these people have operated on a child’s maturity level. Besides lacking the decency to acknowledge that it is ethically wrong to secretly tape another person, they lacked the forethought to anticipate the possible consequences of their actions both for themselves and for the person they had targeted. However, I do not think the most reprehensible aspect of these situations is that the boys, or young men, had impulses to do a terrible immature and hur tful thing, though their actions were disturbing and merit punishment. The larger problem is that they seemed to have never learned to stop and think before taking action. Something is terribly wrong in the world if these boys did not realize that mature adults hold themselves morally accountable for their choices not just by apologizing after the fact, but by judging the merit of their decisions before choosing to act on them. These were all intelligent people in their first year of college — at some point, they and the people around them should have stopped to think, maybe this is a bad idea. The tragedy is that not one of them did. Courtney Shaw is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in English and history with a minor in French.
Affordable Care Act restores right for all Letter COREY STRAUSMAN e have come to a crossroads in our republic in which divisive public opinion has entrenched itself in American society. One believes that a government’s founding principle is to provide for the common defense while the other believes in the nullification of the social contract: that our ills should be ignored, and Americans should just go it alone. The passage of the Affordable Care Act two years ago should have marked a historic day in American histor y, another example of forming a more perfect union. Since then, the Af fordable Care Act has been wrapped up in unfounded controversy. The act is not “Obamacare,” reser ved to promote the interests of one, but “Americacare,” to promote the interests of all by pooling ever yone together to assume risk and lower costs, ending the discrimination of coverage based on preexisting conditions and ensuring equal care for all.
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The ACA is not tyranny, but freedom — a positive freedom that gives individuals the tools to better live the American dream, without fear of losing their worth because of costs associated with their health. The United States is the largest industrialized countr y in the world without universal health care and, not coincidentally, spends the most money per capita on costs associated with health care. I support a law that fundamentally restores a balance to the quality of care in our countr y, guarantees that I can remain on my parents’ insurance when I graduate college and am at my most vulnerable financial state and a plan that actually will create jobs and reduce the deficit in the long run. Most importantly I support a law that treats health care based on what it should be: a right for all, not a privilege for some. Corey Strausman is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in political science with a minor in history.
APRIL 2, 2012
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