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R: You Can't Go Home Again

Many different paths lead us to New Haven this weekend, and we come from many geographic and cultural backgrounds.

We will have traveled from far and wide, across mountains and rivers and oceans, to reunite with steadfast friends, engage in lively colloquy, and sing the old familiar songs. After the festivities end, we all go home again—but to where?

Both literally and metaphorically, we have all taken a journey away from home. At one time or another, we left our hometowns behind in favor of Yale and the ivory tower. Whether we desired it or not, we gained “elite” status in the eyes of many, and were accepted into the upper echelon of society. No doubt, many of us are glad we made this choice. Yale offered us vocational opportunities that might otherwise have been out of reach. Here in New Haven, we banded together as Federalists, forging an intellectual community that now celebrates its twelfth year. But in choosing one path, we rejected another.

When we left home and came to Yale, we sacrificed a part of ourselves. We began to pull up our roots, and something died in the process. Finding it impossible to live in both worlds at the same time, to what extent must we abandon our obligations to the place in which we were raised? We left something behind when we left home. Can we ever reclaim our inheritance? When we departed our hometowns to climb the ivory tower, did we leave for good? Or can we return, older, wiser, and more certain in our sense of belonging?

There is a difference between being from some place and being of that place, between growing up in a culture and belonging to that culture. Sometimes we might feel like cultural nomads, wavering between two identities but rejected by both. Where do we belong now? How do we reconcile our conflicting loyalties? More broadly, the same question could be asked of immigrants, cultural transplants, and other sorts of ideological converts. Can a boy from rural Texas move to New York and remain a Texan? If not, can he ever really be a New Yorker?

This may be a case where, the further we journey from home, the more we become strangers to it. Or perhaps the truth is quite the opposite—that we can only really go home after we have seen it from a distance.

R: End Legacy Admissions

For the purpose of this debate, “legacy admissions” refers to any college admissions policy that gives any preference to a given applicant on the basis of his familial relationship to alumni of the college.

We should ask ourselves two questions when considering this resolution. First, what should be the purpose of the college admissions process? Second, does the practice of legacy admissions align with the spirit of this process? According to Yale’s website, the purpose of the admissions process is to identify “students we can help to become the leaders of their generation in whatever they wish to pursue.” Whatever one may think of the appropriateness of this mission statement, it is worth reflecting on. After all, these are the guidelines that selected each of us.

Objectors to the practice of legacy admissions may point to its history, which is hardly without controversy. Many such policies were implemented during the 1920s, as an attempt to preserve the status quo in the face of Irish, Jewish, and Catholic immigration. Even if these policies are not so blatantly discriminatory today, they contribute to a system of elite universities that manufacture exclusivity and measure success by their microscopic acceptance rates.

Legacy students, who have grown up steeped in the tradition of their parents’ school, will tend to have a deeper knowledge of the institution than their non-legacy peers, and will be more familiar with the nuances of the application process. This advantage is generally reflected in the quality of their applications, as Harvard president Lawrence Bacow noted in 2018: “It's a self-selected pool, which, as a group, by almost any metric, looks very, very good relative to the broader applicant pool.” So why should legacy students have their applications “double-privileged,” so to speak? These students have parents who are well-educated (if the university did its job) and who have ostensibly raised them to love learning and strive for great achievement. Why, then, should they be deprived of the privilege of achieving college admission on their own merits? It may well be conservative for a student to follow in her parents’ footsteps, or for parents to instill in their children a love for their alma mater. But these tendencies are in the domain of the family, and the university should not burden itself by intervening in family business.

A complaint often levied against the practice of legacy admissions is that it is anti-meritocratic. This sounds very scary. Surely, we want students to be accepted on the basis of their merit—we find it extremely distasteful when complicating factors, like secret bribes, interfere with the proper execution of the selection process. But why should we strive for meritocracy in college admissions? In practice, “merit” escapes objective standards, and its definition will always be untethered to any principles except the whims of the directors of the process. Whatever the flaws of the legacy standard, with its aristocratic tendencies, is it really better than sham meritocracy?

Another benefit of legacy admissions is that it fosters a sense of community—and not just community as an accident of geography and academic interest, but community through the generations, bonds between the living and the dead. This is exactly the type of community that conservatives claim is fundamental to a properly ordered society.

If we reject legacy preference in college admissions, which is based on accident of birth, must we also reconsider admission preference based on race, family income, or any factor besides “merit,” however defined? Is there a substantive difference between the preference given based on legacy status and that given based on race, class, sex, or other non-academic factors? Can we reasonably abandon legacy preference without proceeding into “pure meritocracy?” Finally, when we speak of reforming a college admissions practice, who holds the sword? Should this decision fall under the domain of private institutions, or does the state have authority to compel or forbid certain types of admissions practices?

Ultimately, we must decide whether the practice of legacy admissions aligns with the spirit of the university. Should we embrace its aristocratic tendencies? Or must we reject its discriminatory wiles?

R: The Classroom Belongs to the State

G.K. Chesterton said that “education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” If this is true, then there are few questions more important than who gets to teach the youth. The Proverb reads, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The education of children, as a biblical imperative, falls under the domain of parenthood. But prudence and tradition have shown that a state strengthens itself by teaching its young members, and a republic of unenlightened citizens would not survive long. Likewise, churches and religious institutions have a duty to instill virtue and instruct their members in the faith. Perhaps, in an ideal state, these three modes of education would perfectly complement each other. But this is not the case, and a child may often receive a lesson in school that directly contradicts what he was taught at home or in church. When this conflict occurs, what is to be done? Can parents require that the school teach according to their wishes? Should they be able to remove their child from the public school system? If the family, the state, and the church all stake a legitimate claim to the education of children, how are we to balance the authority of each? Is it actually true, as residents of Virginia have said in recent months, that parents should have a say in the portion of their children’s education that takes place in public schools? Does the classroom belong to the parents, or to the state?

Those in the affirmative will take a more expansive view of the state’s power to educate, and accordingly, its power to determine what may or may not take place in the classroom. The establishment of justice is one of the express purposes of the United States as laid out in its constitution, and should be the goal of any good government. If Plato is correct that better educated citizens correlate to a more just state, then public education falls under the authority of the state to promote justice. There are other plausible reasons for the state’s power to mandate education (promoting national defense, securing economic prosperity, preparing the next generation to administrate effectively), but the upshot is that if a state has compelling interest to require something of its citizens, it must provide the means by which they may fulfill the requirement. That is the whole premise of public education: the ends being necessary to the state, the means must be provided by the state. Naturally, if the state is providing a public service, it may choose its own method of implementation. Perhaps it would be unjust if the state required all children to attend public school, or if the school day were extended to 10 or 12 hours. But private schooling and homeschooling exist as alternatives, and the 7 hour average school day allows plenty of time for parents to instruct their children without undue government interference. 

Those in the negative might deny that the state has authority to compel education of any kind—yes, it behooves the state for its citizens to be educated, but it requires a logical leap to therefore believe that the state a) has the authority to mandate education and b) can determine precisely what is taught, down to the last jot and tittle of every lesson plan. Theoretically, a representative democracy is strengthened by high levels of voter turnout, and yet voting is not mandatory. By stretching this analogy, one could argue that to compel public education while choosing the substance of the same would be tantamount to requiring, not only that each citizen vote, but that he select the “correct” name on the ballot.

Alternatively, one in the negative might argue that state control of the school system undermines the very definition of education. State-mandated education standards handcuff teachers to prescribed curricula, robbing them of the opportunity to propound truth in creative and beautiful ways. The art of teaching is lost in this manner, and those who are called to teach will quickly find themselves unfulfilled and disillusioned.

Should public education be controlled by the state? If not, should the alternative involve input from parents or religious institutions? Should teachers be free to promulgate their own beliefs in the classroom? Does it matter that we live in a representative democracy, where our political leaders are nominally accountable to us for their choices regarding education? (In a sovereign monarchy, should the classroom belong to the state?)

R: Behold Death

“THE DEAD SHALL BE RAISED.” So proclaims the inscription over the gate of Grove Street Cemetery, designed by Henry Austin in the Egyptian Revival style. This field of graves has rested quietly at the heart of New Haven for over 200 years, and is interwoven with the history of our city and our university. New Haven’s cemetery is prominently located and open to the public, but this is not the case everywhere. Some cities delegate the maintenance of cemeteries to their houses of worship. Some cities, like San Francisco, have no cemeteries at all. But why does it matter?  If we, like Plato, consider the city to be a reflection of the human soul, then the location of our cemeteries takes on more than trivial importance. For this debate, I encourage you to do some “city planning.” Does Death deserve a place in our ideal city? Should cemeteries be walled off and sequestered from the land of the living? As an allegory for the soul, should our city behold Death with trembling, with mirth, or with indifference?

Not only is death inevitable, some might say, but it actually gives meaning to life. As such, confronting our mortality increases our gratitude for earthly life while it lasts and cultivates within us the character of saints. Avoiding reminders of death at all costs is dangerous to our souls and poisonous to our culture. Many societal ills can be attributed to our culture’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of death at its own peril. We misguidedly attempt to sterilize death by relegating it to stuffy white-walled hospital rooms—as if we could deprive death of its sting by removing its grossness; as if we could render ourselves immortal by simply avoiding the places where death besets us. Further, if we believe that society is a contract between the living, the dead, and the yet unborn, then certainly our city should contain cemeteries as physical reminders of the fact. As Joseph Bottum writes in his essay, “The living give us crowds. The dead give us communities.” How are we to remember our place within the historical community unless we are tangibly connected with our ancestors?

Some might argue, however, that public reminders of death are neither good nor healthy. Our actions should not be motivated by fear of death, but by love of life. The ability to make us afraid is one of Death’s cheap aesthetic thrills, and since our culture cannot be trusted to deal with death appropriately, we should avoid its representation in public life and the popular media. If we should not treat death with fearful reverence, then perhaps we should regard it mirthfully—but we should never gaze upon it with indifference, and too much frankness on the subject of death cultivates detachment rather than fervor. In the same way that gory movies desensitize us to violence if we consume too much of them, maybe we should restrict our exposure to the macabre, so as not to rob Death of its mystery.

Does Death belong in the public square? Or should we banish its likeness to the outskirts of the city? In a literal sense, is it healthy to be surrounded by reminders of our inevitable fate, whether in art, architecture, music, or some other form? Allegorically, how should the “city” of our soul countenance Death? With solemnity? With laughter? Or not at all?