Reading Articles - Book 3 (@MultiLevelTop)

ARTICLES
FOR
READING
Book 3
20 Articles – C1 & C2
Level
COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

ARTICLES C1 & C2 LEVEL COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA
CONTENTS:
1. Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms?

2. Homework
3. Fur Clothing Bans
4. Defund the Police
5. Filibuster
6. Private Prisons
7. Employer Vaccine Mandates
8. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
9. Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?
10. Reparations for Slavery
11. Should Medical Marijuana Be Legal?
12. Should Medical Aid in Dying Be Legal?
13. TikTok Bans
14. Is Social Media Good for Society?
15. Should the United States Maintain Its
16. Should the United States Continue Its Use of Drone Strikes Abroad?
17. Saturday Halloween
18. Is There Really a Santa Claus?
19. Space Colonization
20. Is the Internet “Making Us Stupid”?
Articles in this book has been compiled by Mokhida Khakimova

Source: http://www.ProCon.org
TELEGRAM: @MULTILEVELTOP COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

Article 1: Should Students Have to Wear School

Uniforms?
History of School Uniforms
Traditionally favored by private and parochial institutions, school uniforms

are being adopted by US public schools in increasing numbers. According to a
2020 report, the percentage of public schools that required school uniforms
jumped from 12% in the 1999-2000 school year to 20% in the 2017-18 school
year. School uniforms were most frequently required by elementary schools
(23%), followed by middle (18%), and high schools (10%).
The first recorded use of standardized dress in education may have been in
England in 1222, when the Archbishop of Canterbury mandated that
students wear a robe-like outfit called the “cappa clausa.” The origin of the
modern school uniform can be traced to 16th Century England, when the
impoverished “charity children” attending the Christ’s Hospital boarding
school wore blue cloaks reminiscent of the cassocks worn by clergy, along
with yellow stockings. As of Sep. 2014, students at Christ’s Hospital were still
wearing the same uniform, and according to the school it is the oldest school
uniform still in use. When Christ’s Hospital surveyed its students in 2011,
95% voted to keep the traditional uniforms.
Pro & Con Arguments
Pro 1
School uniforms deter crime and increase student safety.

In Long Beach, California, after two years of a district-wide K-8 mandatory
uniform policy, reports of assault and battery in the district’s schools
decreased by 34%, assault with a deadly weapon dropped by 50%, fighting
incidents went down by 51%, sex offenses were cut by 74%, robbery dropped
by 65%, possession of weapons (or weapon “look-alikes”) decreased by 52%,
possession of drugs went down by 69%, and vandalism was lowered by 18%.
One year after Sparks Middle School in Nevada instituted a uniform policy,
school police data showed a 63% drop in police log reports, and decreases
were also noted in gang activity, student fights, graffiti, property damage, and
battery. A peer-reviewed study found that schools with uniform policies had
12% fewer firearm-related incidents and 15% fewer drug-related incidents 1
than schools without uniforms.

School uniforms also prevent students from concealing weapons under baggy
clothing, make it easier to keep track of students on field trips, and make
intruders on campus more visible. Frank Quatrone, superintendent in the Lodi
school district of New Jersey, states, “When you have students dressed alike,
you make them safer. If someone were to come into a building, the intruder
could easily be recognized.”
Further, school uniforms create a level playing field among students, reducing
peer pressure and bullying. When all students are dressed alike, competition
between students over clothing choices and the teasing of those who are
dressed in less expensive or less fashionable outfits can be eliminated.
Research by the Schoolwear Association found that 83% of teachers thought
“a good school uniform… could prevent bullying based on appearance or
economic background.” Arminta Jacobson, Founder and Director of the Center
for Parent Education at the University of North Texas, states that uniforms put
“all kids on the same playing field in terms of their appearance. I think it
probably gives them a sense of belonging and a feeling of being socially
accepted.”
And, school uniforms prevent the display of gang colors and insignia, reducing
gang activity and pressure to join on school property. The U.S. Department of
Education’s Manual on School Uniforms stated that uniform policies can
“prevent gang members from wearing gang colors and insignia at school” in
order to “encourage a safe environment.” Educators in the Long Beach Unified
School District have speculated that the sharp reduction in crime following
the introduction of school uniforms was a result of gang conflicts being
curbed. Osceola County, Florida School Board member Jay Wheeler reports
that the county’s schools had a 46% drop in gang activity after their first full
school year with a mandatory K-12 uniform policy. Wheeler explains that
“clothing is integral to gang culture… Imagine a U.S. Armed Forces recruiter
out of uniform trying to recruit new soldiers; the success rate goes down. The
same applies to gang recruitment.”
Pro 2
School uniforms keep students focused on their education, not their

clothes.
The National Association of Secondary School Principals states, “When all
students are wearing the same outfit, they are less concerned about how they
look and how they fit in with their peers; thus, they can concentrate on their 2
schoolwork.” And a study by the University of Houston found that elementary
school girls’ language test scores increased by about three percentile points
after uniforms were introduced.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocates school uniforms as a

way to help students focus on learning: “Take that [clothing choices] off the
table and put the focus on school, not on what you’re wearing.” Chris
Hammons, Principal of Woodland Middle School in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,
explains that uniforms “provide for less distraction, less drama, and more of a
focus on learning.”
Wearing uniforms also enhances school pride, unity, and community spirit,
which can boost interest in education. A study of over 1,000 Texas middle
school students found that students in uniform “reported significantly more
positive perceptions of belonging in their school community than reported by
students in the standard dress group.” Christopher P. Clouet, former
Superintendent of the New London Public Schools in Connecticut, stated that
“the wearing of uniforms contributes to school pride.” Arnold Goldstein, PhD,
head of the Center for Research on Aggression at Syracuse University, points
out that uniforms help troubled students feel they have the support of a
community: “There is a sense of belonging.” Further, “teachers perceived an
increase in the level of respect, caring, and trust… throughout the school” and
“students are made to feel ‘important’ and as if they are a part of a team by
wearing a uniform,” according to a peer-reviewed study.
Plus, school uniforms can improve attendance and discipline. A study by

researchers at the University of Houston found that the average absence rate
for girls in middle and high school decreased by 7% after the introduction of
uniforms, and behavioral problems lessened in severity. School uniforms
make getting ready for school easier, which can improve punctuality.
When uniforms are mandatory, parents and students do not spend time
choosing appropriate outfits for the school day. According to a national
survey, over 90% of US school leaders believe school uniform or formal dress
code policies “eliminate wardrobe battles with kids,” make it “easier to get
kids ready in the morning,” and create a “time saving in the morning.” Tracey
Marinelli, Superintendent of the Lyndhurst School District in New Jersey,
credits the district’s uniform policy for reducing the number of students
running late. Lyndhurst student Mike Morreale agrees, stating that “it’s so
much easier to dress than having to search for clothes and find out that
something doesn’t match.” A Youngstown State University study of secondary
schools in Ohio’s eight largest school districts found that school uniform
policies improve rates of attendance, graduation, and suspension.
During the first semester of a mandatory uniform program at John Adams 3

Middle School in Albuquerque, NM, discipline referrals dropped from 1,565
during the first semester of the year prior to 405, a 74% decrease. Macquarie
University (Australia) researchers found that in schools across the world
where uniform policies are enforced, students “are more disciplined” and
“listen significantly better, there are lower noise levels, and lower teaching
waiting times with classes starting on time.”
Wasted time in classrooms is reduced because uniform policies save valuable

class time because they are easier to enforce than a standard dress code. Doris
Jo Murphy, former Director of Field Experiences at the University of North
Texas College of Education, states, “As an elementary assistant principal in
two suburban districts, I can tell you that the dress code took up a great deal
of my time in the area of discipline… I wished many times that we had
uniforms because the issue of skirts or shorts being too short, and baggy jeans
and pants on the boys not being pulled up as they needed to be, would have
been a non-issue.” Lyndhurst, NJ school district superintendent Tracey
Marinelli had a similar experience before a uniform policy was introduced:
“Kids were spending time in the office because they were not fulfilling the
dress code… That was time away from class.”
Pro 3
Students’ legal right to free expression remains intact with mandatory

school uniforms.
The 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent
Community School District, which concerned the wearing of black armbands
to protest the Vietnam War, confirmed that students’ constitutional right to
free speech “does not relate to regulation of the length of skirts or the type of
clothing.” Wearing one’s own choice of shirt or pants is not the “pure speech”
protected by the Constitution.
In Canady v. Bossier Parish School Board (3-0, 2001), the US Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld a school board’s right to implement a mandatory
uniform policy, stating that requiring uniforms for the purpose of increasing
test scores and improving discipline “is in no way related to the suppression
of student speech. [Students] remain free to wear what they want after school
hours. Students may still express their views through other mediums during
the school day.”
Besides, students can still express their individuality in school uniforms by

introducing variations and adding accessories. Junior high school student
Amelia Jimenez wrote in her op-ed for the Pennsylvania Patriot-News that
“contrary to popular belief, uniforms do not stop students from being 4
themselves. Uniforms do not silence voices. Students can wear a variety of
expressive items, such as buttons or jewlery.” Students can inject their
personal style into their daily look with hairstyles, nail polish, and colorful
accessories such as bags, scarfs, and fun socks. 54% of eighth-graders said
they could still express their individuality while wearing school uniforms.
Further, students dressed in uniform are better perceived by teachers and

peers. A 1994 peer-reviewed study found that students in uniform were
perceived by teachers and fellow students as being more academically
proficient than students in regular clothes. The study also found that students
in uniform were perceived by peers and teachers as having higher academic
potential, and perceived by peers as being better behaved. Students need to
learn a balance between free expression and working within the confines of
expectations.
Con 1
School uniforms do not stop bullying and can actually increase violent
attacks.
“Overall, there is no evidence in bullying literature that supports a reduction
in violence due to school uniforms, explains Tony Volk, Associate Professor at
Brock University. The oft-quoted improvements to school safety and student
behavior in the Long Beach (CA) Unified School District from 1993-1995 may
not have resulted from the introduction of school uniforms. The study in
which the findings were published cautioned that “it is not clear that these
results are entirely attributable to the uniform policy” and suggests that the
introduction of new school security measures made at the same time may
have been partly responsible.
Further, a peer-reviewed study found that “school uniforms increased the

average number of assaults by about 14 [per year] in the most violent
schools.” A Texas Southern University study found that school discipline
incidents rose by about 12% after the introduction of uniforms. And,
according to the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Office of Education
Evaluation and Management, fights in middle schools nearly doubled within
one year of introducing mandatory uniforms.
Discipline problems increase in part because school uniforms emphasize the

socio-economic divisions they are supposed to eliminate. Most public schools
with uniform policies are in low-income neighborhoods (47% of high-poverty
public schools required school uniforms vs. 6% of low poverty schools),
emphasizing the class distinctions that uniforms were supposed to eliminate.
Even within one school, uniforms cannot conceal the differences between the 5
“haves” and the “have-nots.” David L. Brunsma explains that “more affluent
families buy more uniforms per child. The less affluent… they have one… It’s
more likely to be tattered, torn and faded. It only takes two months [after a
uniform policy is implemented] for socioeconomic differences to show up

again.”
Con 2
School uniforms do not improve attendance, academic preparedness, or

exam results.
A study that analyzed a national sample of 10th graders found “no effects of
uniforms on absenteeism, behavioral problems (fights, suspensions, etc.), or
substance use on campus” and “no effects” on “pro-school attitudes, academic
preparedness, and peer attitudes toward school.” [14][66] Brunsma also
found a “negative effect of uniforms on academic achievement,” and later
found that uniforms were equally ineffective on elementary students and
eighth graders. A peer-reviewed study found “no significant effects of school
uniforms on performance on second grade reading and mathematics
examinations, as well as on 10th-grade reading, mathematics, science, and
history examinations… [I]n many of the specifications, the results are actually
negative.”
The problems arise because focusing on uniforms takes attention away from
finding genuine solutions to problems in education. Spending time and effort
implementing uniform policies detracts from more effective efforts to reduce
crime in schools and boost student performance. More substantive
improvements to public education could be achieved with smaller class sizes,
tightened security, increased parental involvement, improved facilities, and
other measures. Tom Houlihan, former Superintendent of Schools in Oxford,
North Carolina, stated that school uniforms “are a distraction from focusing on
systematic and fundamental transformation to improve our schools.”
That uniform policies are a distraction is most evident when we realize that
the push for school uniforms is driven by commercial interests rather than
educational ones. Americans spend around $1 billion on school uniforms
every year. Retailer J.C. Penney Co. says school uniforms are “a huge,
important business for us.” In one year alone, uniform company Lands’ End
spent $3 million on marketing efforts directed at public schools and districts.
Multiple studies used to promote the effectiveness of uniforms were partly
funded by Lands’ End, and at least one of those studies is “so wholly flawed as
to render itself useless,” according to David L. Brunsma. Reuters reported that
retailers were “sensing their opportunity… stepping up competition in the
uniform aisles and online. Walmart has set up ‘uniform shops’ or temporary 6
boutiques within some stores.”

The commercialization of school uniforms in public schools also undermines

the promise of a free education by imposing an extra expense on families.
Parents already pay taxes, and they still need to buy regular clothes for their
children to wear when they’re out of school and for dress-down days. The
Children’s Commission on Poverty (UK) found that over “95% of parents on
low incomes reported difficulties in meeting school-related costs,” including
uniforms, despite their children attending tuition-free schools. Anderson,
Indiana, parents Laura and Scott Bell argued against their children’s school
uniform policy, saying the $641 for their children’s uniforms broke the
guarantee of a free public education. In York County, Pennsylvania, a local
NBC affiliate reported that some children were missing class because their
families couldn’t afford to purchase the required uniforms. And, all of that is
before the uniform policies themselves are examined. Most operate like dress
codes and are classist, racist, and sexist.
Con 3
School uniforms restrict students’ freedom of expression.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that all individuals
have the right to express themselves freely. The U.S. Supreme Court stated in
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) that “it
can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional
rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
In Sweden, a government agency, the School Inspectorate, determined that

uniforms were a human rights violation because “dress and appearance
should be considered an individual expression, decided by the students
themselves.” Clothing choices are “a crucial form of self-expression,”
according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which also states
that “allowing students to choose their clothing is an empowering message
from the schools that a student is a maturing person who is entitled to the
most basic self-determination.”
Uniforms take away the ability to use clothing as means of expressing support
for social causes. Students at Friendly High School in Prince George’s County,
MD, were not allowed to wear pink shirts to support Breast Cancer Awareness
Month and 75 students received suspensions for breaking the school’s
uniform restrictions. Removing these choices can delay the transition into
adulthood. Adults make their own clothing choices and have the freedom to
express themselves through their appearance. Denying children and 7
teenagers the opportunity to make those choices may make them ill-prepared
for the adult world. Adolescents see clothing choices as a means of

identification, and seeking an identity is one of the critical stages of

adolescence, according to the late developmental psychologist Erik Erikson.
When students have to wear the same outfits, rather than being allowed to
select clothes that suit their body types, they can suffer embarrassment at
school. Child and teen development specialist Robyn Silverman says that
students, especially girls, tend to compare how each other looks in their
uniforms: “As a body image expert, I hear from students all the time that they
feel it allows for a lot of comparison… So if you have a body that’s a plus-size
body, a curvier body, a very tall body, a very short body, those girls often feel
that they don’t look their best.” A study by researchers at Arizona State
University found that “students from schools without uniforms reported
higher self-perception scores than students from schools with uniform
policies.” Some students also find uniforms less comfortable than their regular
clothes, which may not be conducive to learning.
Further, school uniforms promote conformity over individuality. Chicago,

Illinois, junior high school student Kyler Sumter says: “They decide to teach us
about people like Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony and Booker T. Washington…
We learn about how these people expressed themselves and conquered and
we can’t even express ourselves in the hallways.” Troy Shuman, a senior in
Harford County, Maryland, said the introduction of a mandatory uniform
policy to his school would be “teaching conformity and squelching individual
thought. Just think of prisons and gangs. The ultimate socializer to crush
rebellion is conformity in appearance. If a school system starts at clothes,
where does it end?”
In schools where uniforms are specifically gendered (girls must wear skirts
and boys must wear pants), transgender, gender-fluid, and gender-
nonconforming students can feel ostracized. Seamus, a 16-year-old
transgender boy, stated, “sitting in a blouse and skirt all day made me feel
insanely anxious. I wasn’t taken seriously. This is atrocious and damaging to a
young person’s mental health; that uniform nearly destroyed me.” Late satirist
George Carlin asked, “Don’t these schools do enough damage, making all these
children think alike? Now they’re gonna get them to look alike, too?”
Beyond student preference, parents should be free to choose their children’s

clothes without government interference. One of the founders of the Wilson
County (Louisiana) Parents Coalition, Richard Dashkovitz, states: “It’s time we
let the government know that we are fed up with this. Quit dictating to us 8
what my child should wear… [T]he government is intruding into our private
lives, roles as parents and the lives of our children.” According to another
parents’ rights group, Asserting Parental Rights — It’s Our Duty, mandatory
uniform “policies trample parents’ right to raise children without government

interference.”
Did You Know?
1. The first school district in the United States to require all K-8 students to wear
uniforms was Long Beach, CA, in Jan. 1994.
2. Americans spend around $1 billion per year on school uniforms.
3. Students at Eton, one of England's most prestigious schools, were required to

wear black top hats and tails on and off campus until 1972.
4. US schools with a minority student population of 50% or more are four times
as likely to require uniforms than schools with a minority population of 20-49%,
and 24 times more likely than schools with minority populations of 5%-19%.
5. A government agency in Sweden declared that mandatory school uniforms

were a human rights violation, stating that students should decide their dress
and appearance as "a matter of the individual's freedom and integrity."

Article 2: Homework
From dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research
projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and
amount of homework, has been debated for over a century.
While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word
“homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his
followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as
homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks
and other scholars.
In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s

Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This
concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the
United States by Horace Mann, who encountered the idea in Prussia.
In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the

magazine Ladies’ Home Journal, decried homework’s negative impact on
children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for
students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was
portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument
was that kids needed time to do household chores.
Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to

concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances
during the Cold War. And, in 1986, the US government included homework as
an educational quality boosting tool.
A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of

homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth
to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. A 2014-2019 study found that teens
spent about an hour a day on homework.
Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of

homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all
school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked,
“Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?” While
students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question
remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool.
10
Is Homework Beneficial?
Pro 1

Homework improves student achievement.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms
of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.
Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who
spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40
points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported
spending no time on homework each day, on average.”
Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of

students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades.
A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and
72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at
improving academic achievement.
Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that
increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college
attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more
than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.
Pro 2
Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good

study habits and life skills.
Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in
class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby
Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC,
explained, “at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in
class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts…
[And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how
well students understand the curriculum.”
Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and

complete homework,” such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting
study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased
grades and more positive comments on report cards.
Research by the City University of New York noted that “students who engage
in self-regulatory processes while completing homework,” such as goal-
setting, time management, and remaining focused, “are generally more 11
motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these
processes.”

Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout
their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-
direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and
Platzer noted that “homework helps students acquire the skills needed to
plan, organize, and complete their work.”
Pro 3
Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning.

Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their
children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and
weaknesses.
Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that

parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially
among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students.
Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework

process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves
student achievement: “Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher
report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did
non-TIPS students.”
Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning
disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust
learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted,
“Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning
disability until homework revealed it to them.”
Con 1
Too much homework can be harmful.

A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too
much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were “often or always
stressed by schoolwork.” High-achieving high school students said too much
homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as
headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.
Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, “Kids should have a
chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in
12
constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, “More than half of students
say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress
can do on our bodies.”
Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students
and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework,
and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-
of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those
surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them.
Con 2
Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap.

Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as “the gap between
demographics and regions that have access to modern information and
communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now
encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available
technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it
refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology.” For
students, this is often called the homework gap.
30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an
adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance
learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated
(having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a
laptop, for example) or impossible.
A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the
country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported
they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of
access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades.
One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it

“potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who
already experience some privilege in the school system while further
disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.”
Con 3
Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school
13
students.

We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A
2006 study found that “homework had no association with achievement
gains” when measured by standardized tests results or grades.
Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those
who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or
more of homework a night actually did worse.
Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not

the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: “They’re
learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.”
In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie
Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, “I interviewed high school
teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no
downside, it was all upside.” He explains, “just because the same kids who get
more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made
that happen.”
Discussion Questions
1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience,

and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).
2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help

students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).
3. How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework
been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both
sides.
14

Article 3: Fur Clothing Bans

Fur is the “fine, soft, hairy covering or coat of mammals that has been
important to humankind throughout history, chiefly for warmth but also for
decorative and other purposes.”
Of course, the first function of fur is to protect the animal. “True furs” have
both ground hair, a dense undercoat that maintains the animal’s body
temperature, and longer guard hair that protects the ground hair from
weather. Some animal furs that do not contain both components are still sold
as garment furs, including pony and Persian lamb, which have no ground or
guard hair respectively.
Animals used for fur include but are not limited

to: beaver, bobcat, chinchilla, coyote, ermine, fisher, fox, lynx, marten, mi
nk, muskrat, nutria, opossum, rabbit, raccoon, sable, and sheep. More
than 80% of commercial fur is farmed, while about 20% is wild.
Humans have used animal furs as clothing since at least the Pleistocene
Epoch. A Sep. 2021 study reports that bone tools 90,000 to 120,000 years old,
likely used for fur and leather working, have been found in Contrebandiers
Cave, Morocco. The presence of golden jackal, sand fox, and wildcat bones
with tool marks stemming from skinning techniques further confirms
that Homo Sapiens were, at a very early age in human history, using animals
for their pelts. “This new study really pushes back [the date of] the first good
archaeological evidence for the manufacture of clothing,” says Ian Gilligan,
researcher and author of author of Climate, Clothing and Agriculture in
Prehistory, “and it’s coinciding nicely with the beginning of the last Ice
Age about 120,000 years ago, so I think that’s really significant. It’s precisely
at the time when you’d expect to see the first clothing for protection from cold
in context of the glacial cycles.”
By the 10th century, fur was worn as a status symbol in addition to warmth.
To the Vikings, fur from beavers, which are not native to Denmark, were
“exotic.” As Luise Ørsted Brandt of the University of Copenhagen and
colleagues explain, beaver fur was not only “an important trade item in 10th-
Century Denmark” but also ”an obvious visual statement of affluence and
social status, similar to high-end fashion in today’s world.”
Furs have remained a status symbol ever since. Astrakhan fur, for example, is
made from newborn or fetal Karakul lambs of Central Asia; it is named after 15
the Astrakhan traders from the Volga River region who introduced the fur
to Russia. It is one of the most expensive furs in the world. The most desirable
are the black furs culled from fetal lambs killed 15-30 days before birth (the
mother ewe is also killed in the process). Astrakhan fur was popular for
centuries in the Middle East and Central Asia before becoming popular
among Victorians. U.S. First Lady Florence Harding paid approximately
£6,000 for an Astrakhan fur in the 1920s (about $538,413 in 2023 U.S.
dollars). Astrakhan fur was used as recently as 2007 in an Oscar de la
Renta collection that featured “astrakhan coats trimmed with wolverine.”
Though not all fur was or is as expensive as Astrakhan, the exclusivity and
cost of real fur led to the creation and popularity of faux (fake) furs (also
called synthetic or textile furs) in the 1910s. Faux fur was first made
from pile fabric, which has a looping yarn and is used to
make corduroy and velvet. Designers then began making faux fur out
of silk and synthetic pile fabrics, paving the way for furs “made from synthetic
polymeric fibers such as acrylic, modacrylic, and/or polyester, all of which
are essentially forms of plastic; these fibers are made from chemicals derived
from coal, air, water, petroleum and limestone.”
Activism against using real fur gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s with
celebrities like Doris Day, who spoke out against real fur and in favor of faux
fur in a 1971 Timme & Son ad in New York Magazine: “Killing an animal to
make a coat is a sin…. A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything
killed to be put on her back. Then she’s truly beautiful.”
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recruited the band The
Go-Gos for a 1990 campaign in which the women posed nude with a banner
reading: “We’d Rather Go-Go Naked Than Wear Fur.” PETA continued its
“naked” campaign for another 30 years, partnering with an array of celebrities
including Christy Turlington, Pamela Anderson, Tyra Banks, Taraji P.
Henson, Steve-O, Dennis Rodman, and Kim Basinger.
In the late 1980s, the fur industry was worth a record $1.9 billion, but faced
with fierce anti-fur campaigns and declining sales, the industry has since
slumped dramatically. By the mid-1990s production of mink in the United
States had dropped 40%. As documented by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, there were only 351 mink farms in 2000, which was a sharp
decrease from the 2,836 farms recorded in the early 1940s. The COVID-
19 pandemic dealt a further blow to the industry. In 2020, all of Denmark’s 17
million mink were culled due to a coronavirus outbreak, a safety measure that
was duplicated in other countries. As of 2021, only about 100 mink farms
remained in the United States. 16
PETA’s “naked” campaign ended in 2020 with the daughter of former

campaign model Kim Basinger, Ireland Basinger-Baldwin, posing nude behind

“I’d rather go naked than wear fur” banners. As explained by PETA Senior Vice
President Dan Mathews, who created the campaign, “Nearly every top
designer has shed fur, California has banned it, Queen Elizabeth II has
renounced it, Macy’s is closing its fur salons, and now, the largest fur auction
house in North America [Toronto-based North American Fur Auctions
(NAFA)] has filed for bankruptcy.” Hundreds of fashion houses, brands, and
stores have discontinued the use and sale of fur, including: Alexander
McQueen, Banana Republic, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Jimmy Choo, Macy’s,
Tommy Hilfiger, and Zara.
However, as of June 2023, some luxury brands still use real animal fur. These
brands include Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, and Carolina Herrera. Meanwhile,
UGG, maker of the ubiquitous sheepskin boots, and other companies use fur
but do so in a way deemed sustainable, either because the whole animal is
used or other measures are taken, such as not using vulnerable species.
California became the first state to ban the sale of new furs with the passage
of Assembly Bill 44 in 2019. Taking effect on Jan. 1, 2023, the law banned
the sale of new fur garments in the state and into the state from online sales,
but it did not ban the resale of vintage fur, the wearing and ownership of fur,
or the production of animal products like leather or shearling (the materials
used in UGG boots). Penalties include a $500 fine for the first violation, $750
for a second violation, and $1,000 for subsequent violations. The statewide
ban was preceded by local bans in West Hollywood
(2013), Berkeley (2017), Los Angeles (2018), and San Francisco (2018).
While many may believe sunny California is too warm for wearing fur, that
hadn’t been the case prior to the ban. As the Humane Society notes, “U.S. retail
sales of fur garments totaled just over $574 million, with most sales occurring
in California at just under $129 million, followed by New York with almost
$115 million. Together, California and New York made up nearly 43% of all
fur sales in the country in 2017.”
In the U.S., at least 12 cities outside of California have also banned new fur
sales. In 2021, Israel became the first country, and thus far the only one, to
impose a nationwide ban on new fur sales.
Should Fur Clothing Be Banned?
Pro 1
Raising animals for fur is inhumane.

17
“Fur is an example of how we have confined wild animals to small, filthy cages
in their millions in order to produce frivolous fashion items, the production of
which is also destroying the planet. That’s why issues such as fur matter, and

it’s so important that we stop supporting this cruel industry,” says Jenny
Canham of Four Paws UK.
Indeed, animals farmed for fur are kept in cramped cages that are much
smaller than the animals’ natural roaming distances. For example, Arctic foxes
naturally roam within a 12-mile family territory and can migrate nearly 3,000
miles. The cages the foxes are kept in on fur farms are smaller than one square
meter (about 10 square feet).
Animal rights groups say the animals are frequently sick, suffering from
infected eyes and wounds, limb and mouth deformities, obesity, overgrown
nails, and stress behaviors including pacing, repetitive nodding, self-
mutilation, and cannibalism.
Caging animals like Arctic foxes is even more cruel because they “simply don’t
have anything to do. They are predators who haven’t really been
domesticated. They’ve been grown in these conditions for less than a hundred
years, so they have all of their natural instincts left,” explains Kristo Muurimaa
of Justice for Animals.
Fur animals live extraordinarily short lives and are generally killed before the
animals are a year old. Animals might be gassed (which is very distressing for
mink in particular because, as Fur Free Alliance explains, they are “semi-
aquatic and highly evolved physiologically to hold their breath”) or
electrocuted through the mouth and anus. The Humane Society International
has also filmed fur animals being killed with brutal blows to the head, by
having their necks broken, and via other physical attacks.
Even wild-caught fur animals suffer painful deaths after being snared by
rudimentary traps to await, without food or water, the hunter who may then
beat the wounded animal to death.
“The fur trade would prefer that the grim realities of fur farming were out of
sight and out of mind, but… we owe it to these animals not to turn away, and
to stop being complicit in their suffering,” says Claire Bass of the Humane
Society International/UK.
Pro 2
The fur industry contributes to the destruction of the environment.

18
Fur is “an environmental nightmare. Most fur is produced on fur farms that
are factory farms, and factory farms are one of the worst offenders when it
comes to pollution and emissions that cause climate change and producing

toxic chemicals that leach into waterways and soil,” says Ashley Byrne, PETA’s
associate director.
Mink, for example, produce millions of pounds of feces annually, much of

which pollutes local waterways. Feces-polluted water has been linked to eye
infections, digestive ailments, and stunted growth in humans. In Denmark,
killing over 19 million mink for fur annually releases more than 8,000 pounds
of ammonia into the air. Airborne ammonia is linked to human respiratory
disease.
The fur industry is one of the world’s top five worst toxic-metal polluters
thanks to dressing the fur. Dressing is the process of preparing the fur for use,
which can involve a number of toxic chemicals including ammonia,
formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, and bleach. Toxic metals are especially
problematic because they are not biodegradable, accumulate in the human
body, and have been linked to DNA damage in humans.
Further, the fur industry decreases biodiversity. The fur animals themselves
are culled unnecessarily when trapped in the wild, which can lead to
protected status or even extinction. The sea mink was once prized by trappers
and is now extinct because of the fur trade. Plus, up to 67% of what the traps
catch are non-fur animals, which are often discarded as “trash” because they
are not of use to the trapper.
Then there is the situation in Louisiana, in which the nutria, a rodent often
described as an “overgrown guinea pig, with a rat’s tail,” was brought to the
state from South America in the 1930s to increase the fur trapping trade. The
trade did increase for a time, but the nutria literally ate “an area
approximately the size of Delaware,” not only destroying the land but denying
habitats to all of the animals, bugs, and plants that lived on the land. Nutrias
also damage roadways and levees by tunneling under them.
Along with nutria, non-native species were also introduced in Europe for the
fur trade, including American mink, raccoon dogs, and muskrats. American
mink that have escaped from fur farms now account for 80% of wild mink in
Denmark, and they devastate the environment, killing native birds, rodents,
and amphibians.
Pro 3
19
Banning fur clothing, real or fake, will help legitimize humane fashion
alternatives.

Fur farming and wild-trapping are not sustainable or humane; neither is

making faux fur from plastics. Wearing fur, real or fake, vintage or new, simply
perpetuates unsustainable industries and quashes innovation because fashion
isn’t being forced to find sustainable options.
Globally, “fast fashion” produces 80 billion pieces of clothing annually, 85% of

which end up in landfills. In the United States, 20% of clothing is never worn.
In the United Kingdom, that percentage is a whopping 50%. And fashion emits
10% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions along with 20% of
wastewater worldwide.
Fur sales bans are one way to force fashion brands and consumers to make
better choices. Fashion editor Jenna Igneri says it’s easy to “opt for another
sustainable outerwear option, such as a non-animal-fur coat made of recycled
materials or vintage wool. If you can’t resell Grandma’s mink with a good
conscience, arguing that whoever wears it next will be perpetuating the
problem, know that there are plenty of other options than simply keeping it
packed away in the deepest depths of your closet. For example… there are
organizations that repurpose old furs as bedding for rescued wildlife, which is
a great (and… much cuter) option.”
Fashion needs a sustainable overhaul, and fur is a good place to start. “Fashion
is often said to both reflect and lead culture — the industry has a once-in-
history opportunity to demonstrate that creativity and respect for boundaries
can lead to authentic sustainability,” says former Chief Operating Officer of
Timberland Kenneth P. Pucker.
Con 1
Animals raised for fur are treated humanely.

“North America produces the finest quality farmed furs in the world. To
achieve this, farmers must provide excellent nutrition and care for their
animals,” reports Truth about Fur. There are always exceptions and rule
breakers in every industry, but “national codes of practice and certification
programs provide assurance that farmed furbearing animals receive excellent
care. The standards of care for farmed mink and fox are based on many years
of scientific research.”
Animals like mink only travel long distances searching for food and, once food
is found, they like to snuggle in their dens. Because the farmers provide mink 20
with nutritious food all the time, the animals are able to stay cozy without
having to hunt or compete with other animals for scarce food.

Foxes and mink are also protected from parasites and other diseases by wire
mesh floors through which feces can fall. In “natural” enclosures, the animals
were too close to their waste, which spread disease. Even truck tires are
disinfected before the vehicles enter the farmyard to protect the animals.
The American Veterinary Medical Association sets guidelines for the most
humane euthanasia of the animals, and Fur Commission USA follows those
rules. As Truth about Fur explains, “While most farmed animals must
eventually be killed, it is our responsibility to ensure that this is done
humanely, with as little stress as possible to the animals…. From an animal-
welfare perspective, it is important that fur animals can be euthanized in their
barns by people that feed and care for them daily.”
The idea of a steel trap mangling an animal is outdated and wrong. Fur animal
trappers use lethal traps, designed to kill the animal quickly or leg/foot hold
traps, which barely injure the animal while it is held for fewer than 24 hours
before the animal is killed with a small caliber firearm. The restraining traps
are the same ones used by researchers that catch and then release animals
after tagging and studying them.
However, the humane treatment of fur animals is left to the farms. The Animal
Welfare Act, which protects other animals, expressly exempts fur animals.
Instead of regulating or banning sales, governments should simply ensure
animals are treated humanely by the fur farmers.
Con 2
Fur alternatives are bad for the environment, while a humane fur industry
is sustainable.
A well-regulated and humane fur industry is far better than the plastics
industry whose products are used quickly and then dumped in landfills or the
ocean. Faux fur is “typically composed of petroleum-based synthetics and
plastics, which pollute our waterways with micro plastics and end up in
landfills for centuries to come.”
Some producers of faux furs say their products are “developed using recycled
plastic, and that’s great; however, it’s still plastic,” says Mark Oaten, CEO of the
International Fur Federation, who also questioned “how it’s possible for a
chemical-based product [faux fur] to be more sustainable than a natural-
based product.” Furthermore, faux fur sheds, releasing more tiny, plastic 21
fibers into the environment. Real fur also sheds, but the hairs are
biodegradable.

A study comparing natural and faux fur coats concluded that the life cycle of a
faux fur coat had 300% greater risk of damaging the ecosystem, 169% greater
risk of adverse impact on resource consumption, 129% greater risk of
contributing to climate change, and a negligible 3% greater risk of damaging
human health.
The fur industry can also have the positive environmental impact of
controlling the destruction of invasive species. For example, nutrias destroy
up to 25 square miles of land annually, costing billions of dollars in Louisiana
alone where “an area approximately the size of Delaware has already
disappeared into the Gulf of Mexico.” New Orleans designers who use nutria
fur for garments and accessories are thereby helping the environment.
Similarly, some producers are using the fur from roadkill to make garments.
Pamela Paquin of Petite Mort Fur says, “Here is a resource that’s going to be
there, whether or not we use them. We can turn our noses up at them, drive
by, treat them with disgust, disdain or we can stop and treat them with
respect, and use what’s there.” Using culled invasive species or animals killed
on roadways provides a sustainable real fur option for designers and
customers.
Finally, responsible farmers are making sure fur animal farming is sustainable
by feeding the animals leftovers from human food production. They also use
what remains of the skinned animals as well as their bedding and manure for
other products, including mink oil, organic fertilizers, and biofuels.
Con 3
Consumers are opting for non-fur alternatives without bans, which harm
related industries in indigenous communities and the developing world.
Consumers have been moving away from fur without bans. The sales of fur
have naturally fallen as consumers have looked elsewhere for fashion
statements and status symbols. Only about 100 mink fur farms remain in the
United States, down from 2,836 in the 1940s.
“As consumers, all we can do is to put in the work and do our own research
when it comes to our choice in sartorial purchases. When you factor in what
effects an article of clothing can have on the planet, animals, people, and
ourselves, would you still feel good wearing it?” asks fashion editor Jenna
Igneri. 22
Leaving the decision to buy fur to consumers also enables more thoughtful
legislation that considers ethical farming and fur as a byproduct of other legal

industries. Many communities, especially in Africa, China, and Vietnam,

survive by sourcing leather and fur discarded by the meat industry and, in
turn, producing leather and fur garments. Banning fur would remove a
legitimate source of income and work for those communities, while leaving
the fur to rot instead of being used.
Additionally, fur is a crucial product in many indigenous cultures and

economies. The anti-fur activists and others pushing bans are “not thinking
about the damage that they’re doing to… small Indigenous communities
where economic development opportunities are scarce,” says Johanna
Tiemessen, Manager of the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment
in the Northwest Territories of Canada. While many bans exclude indigenous
communities, the bans irreparably harm sales to the non-native population.
Discussion Questions?
1. Should new fur sales be banned? Why or why not?
2. In most conversations about new fur sales bans, indigenous communities

are exempted from the bans. But should they be exempt? Shouldn’t they be
forced to be as environmentally conscious as everyone else? Why or why not?
3. Some argue that vintage real fur and new fake fur send the wrong message
and should also be banned. What do you think? Explain your answer.
23

Article 4: Defund the Police

Amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020, calls to “defund the police” began to
populate protest signs and social media posts.
While there are multiple interpretations of “defund the police,” the basic
definition is to move funding away from police departments and into
community resources such as mental health experts, housing, and social
workers. In the larger scope of the civil rights movement, some advocates
would reallocate some police funding while keeping police departments,
others would combine defunding with other police reforms such as body
cameras and bias training, and others see defunding as a small step toward
ultimately abolishing police departments and the prison system entirely.
According to the most recent data available, departments received about $129
billion nationwide in 2020 from state and local governments, up from $42.3
billion in 1977. Police budgets have made up around 4% of total state and
local budgets since 1977. According to the Urban Institute, “from 1977 to
2020, in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars, state and local government spending
on police increased from $45 billion to $129 billion, an increase of 189
percent.” Individual cities or counties may allocate more (or fewer) funds to
police departments. The 2017 Los Angeles city budget, for example, provided
23% of the budget to police, while 9% of Los Angeles county’s budget went to
policing. About 97% of police budgets go toward operational costs such as
salaries and benefits.
In June 2020, 64% of Americans opposed the abstract idea of defunding the
police, while 34% supported the movement. 60% were against reallocating
police budget funds to other public health and social programs, while 39%
were in favor.
In Oct. 2021, 21% of American adults wanted police budgets “increased a lot”
and 26% wanted budgets “increased a little,” while 9% wanted police budgets
“decreased a little” and 6% “decreased a lot.” 37% said budgets should “stay
about the same.”
In his Mar. 1, 2022 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden declared,
“We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the
police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training.” By
Aug. 31, 2022, the movement was largely quiet, with opinion articles declaring 24
“‘Defund the Police’ Is Dead.”

A Mar. 2023 criminology study found that while police departments have not
been widely defunded, the departments are experiencing between a 2.2% and
16% loss of full-time police officers. The loss has prompted some
departments, including the New Orleans Police Department, to use third party
organizations to respond to some 911 calls including minor traffic accidents.
Ethan Cheramie, founder of On Scene Services (OSS) that hires former police
officers as unarmed responders states, “Citizens still call 911, their call is still
dispatched. However, it is dispatched to our agents…. You’re going to continue
to see alternative police response be divested from guys with guns over to
civilians to respond to these nonviolent calls for service.”
Should Police Departments Be Defunded, If Not Abolished?
Pro 1
Police departments are historically oppressive and violent. Defunding

them could reduce violence against people of color and overall crime.
Paige Fernandez, MPP, Policing Policy Advisor for the ACLU, noted, “American
policing has never been a neutral institution. The first U.S. city police
department was a slave patrol, and modern police forces have directed
oppression and violence at Black people to enforce Jim Crow, wage the War on
Drugs, and crack down on protests.” Police departments are also often
outfitted with surplus military equipment, increasing police firepower and the
attitude that police are at war with communities, which can escalate
situations to violence.
Organizations such as mpd150, which surveyed the Minneapolis Police

Department’s conduct since its inception in 1867, argue that the police system
is actually not broken–it’s working as it always has, because “[t]he police were
established to protect the interests of the wealthy and racialized violence has
always been part of the mission.” mpd150 states that the police system puts
millions of people of color in prison, which limits or deprives them of voting
rights, employment, education, and access to housing, among other privileges
given automatically to white people.
According to an Aug. 20, 2019 study, Black American men are 2.5 times more
likely to be killed by police than white men; Black women 1.4 times more
likely than white women. A 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows
police officers were twice as likely to use force against people of color than
against white people. In 2019, US police officers killed 1,098 people, 24% of
whom were Black despite African Americans representing only 13% of the US 25
population.

The American Public Health Association declared police violence a public

health issue in 2018, stating, “[a]lmost 10 percent of all homicides in the US
are committed by police. Even if some may be ‘lawful,’ it’s not ok that we kill
1,000-1,200 people a year by police.”
Defunding the police could result in fewer crimes and less violence from
police. During several weeks in 2014 and 2015, when New York City police
pulled back on “broken windows” policing that focused on actively patrolling
for low-level crimes, about 2,100 fewer major crimes were reported, which
represents a 3-6% drop in a matter of weeks. If police are not actively
patrolling for minor crimes and are responding to fewer major crimes, there
are fewer opportunities for violence.
Pro 2
Police officer and police department reforms have not worked.

Mariame Kaba, a “prison industrial complex abolitionist,” states, “Enough. We
can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce
contact between the public and the police. There is not a single era in United
States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black
people.”
Kaba notes the first major police misconduct investigation was in 1894 in
New York City, the Lexow Committee, in which over 100 officers were
collectively convicted of 56 charges of third-degree assault, 45 charges of
second-degree assault, as well as multiple charges of criminal neglect,
oppression, and attempted rape. Only four officers were dismissed as a result,
three because they’d assaulted other officers.
Philip V. McHarris, PhD candidate at Yale University, and Thenjiwe McHarris,

from Movement for Black Lives, argue, “Look at the Minneapolis Police
Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The
department offers procedural justice as well as trainings for implicit bias,
mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer
diversity, bans ‘warrior style’ policing, uses body cameras, implemented an
early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training
around mental health crisis intervention, and practices ‘reconciliation’ efforts
in communities of color.”
And still George Floyd and 51 other Black men, along with 15 American Indian 26
men, and 9 Hispanic men were killed by Minneapolis Police Department
officers between Jan. 2000 and May 31, 2020. Further reforms have been

recommended to the Minneapolis Police Department repeatedly to lower use-

of-force violations but none were implemented.
In July 2014, Eric Garner died from a chokehold performed by a police officer
after New York banned the hold in 1993. Austin and Los Angeles police were
shown firing projectiles at people’s heads, which is prohibited in both
jurisdictions. Increased diversity on police forces did little to curb
unnecessary police stops of people of color in Ferguson or Baltimore.
Two 2016 Harvard University studies found that anti-bias techniques meant
to fight stereotypes reduced implicit bias for a few hours to a few days, but not
longer. Such training has little to no effect on racial bias in traffic stops or
marijuana arrests.
Some, including Stuart Schrader, Associate Director of the Program in Racism,

Immigration, and Citizenship at Johns Hopkins University, argue that reforms
are not wholly intended to change the departments for the better, but are an
excuse for the departments to maintain power and acquire a bigger budget.
Reform programs come with more money and little accountability for police
departments, continuing the historical cycle of oppression.
Pro 3
Police are not trained and were not intended to do many of the jobs they
perform. Defunding the police allows experts to step in.
Police currently deal with calls about mental illness, homelessness, domestic
disputes, barking dogs, neighbors playing loud music, and various non-
criminal activities, on top of actual violations of the law ranging from minor
shoplifting by kids to speeding to murder.
In a 2016 interview, former Dallas Police Chief David Brown stated, “We’re
just asking us to do too much. Every societal failure, we put it off for the cops
to solve. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those
problems.”
Alicia Garza, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, stated, “So much of policing
right now is generated and directed towards quality-of-life issues,
homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence. What we do need is
increased funding for housing, we need increased funding for education, we
need increased funding for quality of life of communities who are over-policed 27
and over-surveilled.”

The people who respond to community issues should be those best equipped
to deal with the concern, whether that is a social worker attending a mental
health crisis, an EMT arriving at a domestic dispute, or a housing facilitator
helping an unhoused person. Colin Kaepernick explains, “by abolishing
policing and prisons, not only can we eliminate white supremacist
establishments, but we can create space for budgets to be reinvested directly
into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness and
houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-
based methods of accountability.”
Greg Casar, Austin, Texas, City Council Member, stated, “We should be treating
homelessness not with policing, but with housing. We should be treating
addiction not with policing, but with treatment. We have dedicated so many of
our public dollars simply to policing, and that hasn’t made us actually more
safe.”
Further, defunding the police allows more money to go to community

programs that prevent the need for police. Patrick Sharkey, Professor at
Princeton University, notes, “When neighborhood organizations engage young
people with well-run after-school activities and summer jobs programs, those
young people are dramatically less likely to become involved in violent
activities. When street outreach workers intervene, they can be extremely
effective in interrupting conflicts before they escalate. When local
organizations reclaim abandoned lots and turn them into green spaces,
violence falls. When community nonprofits proliferate across a city, that city
becomes safer.”
He adds, “If we ask community organizations and leaders to take over primary
responsibility for creating a safe community, they should be given equivalent
resources.” Defunding the police would free up budget funds to appropriately
pay community organizations.
Annie Lowrey, staff writer for The Atlantic, explains, “A more radical option …
would mean ending mass incarceration, cash bail, fines-and-fees policing, the
war on drugs, and police militarization, as well as getting cops out of schools.
It would also mean funding housing-first programs, creating subsidized jobs
for the formerly incarcerated, and expanding initiatives to have mental-health
professionals and social workers respond to emergency calls.”
For a World without Police, an abolitionist group, states, “Police violence 28

stems not just from bad apples or bad attitudes, but from what police must be
and do in America. The only way to stop the violence is to abolish the police,
and transform the conditions that gave rise to them.”

Con 1
When police departments’ budgets are cut, violence and civilian injuries
increase, and departments turn to “taxation by citation” to raise money.
Police officers in smaller jurisdictions, or those primarily populated by people
of color, are frequently paid less. In Hillsdale, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri,
new officers earn $13.50 an hour after a probationary period, less than hourly
workers at Target. Low wages force many officers to take extra jobs, leaving
them tired and unprepared to deal with a high-stress police situation. David
Harris, University of Pittsburgh Law Professor, stated, “We should not assume
that the most poorly-paid cops are the worst cops. But the chances increase
that you don’t attract the best officers.”
During the 2008 recession, many police departments were forced to cut
officers as federal funding decreased. In Memphis, use-of-force complaints
almost doubled as officers in an understaffed department were required to
work overtime.
In England and Wales, 2010 police budgets were cut, resulting in 20,592
(14%) fewer officers in 2017, and 20% more gun, knife, and serious violent
crimes. The homicide rate also rose 39% from Mar. 2015 and 2019. In Mar.
2020, the Home Office acknowledged a correlation and committed to hiring
20,000 officers.
Illinois State Police Director Jonathon Monken reported an increase in fatal

car accidents due to a decrease in motorcycle traffic officers after 2010 budget
cuts. In order to raise funds for the department, Monken implemented a policy
wherein $15 for each citation (such as a speeding ticket) written goes to the
state police.
Called “citation taxation,” departments taking a cut of each citation written is

a common fund-raising strategy. Such tickets often cost residents more than
expected: a $100 traffic ticket cost a California resident $100 in state
assessment fees, $70 in county assessment fees, $50 in court construction
fees, $20 for emergency medical fees, among other fees resulting in an almost
$500 ticket for rolling through a red light. While no one wants to pay a $500
traffic violation ticket, communities of color are especially hard hit and ill-
equipped to pay such tickets.
Officers also write more tickets when department revenue is at stake. In St. 29
Ann, a St. Louis suburb, speeding tickets almost tripled while the suburb’s
population decreased. In New Miami Village, Ohio, 45,000 tickets were issued

in 15 months to a population of about 2,000 people. If appropriately funded,

police could focus on crime rather than fundraising.
Con 2
The level of police misconduct is overstated, more (not fewer) police are
being called for in crime-ridden areas, and reforms are both possible and
supported by a majority of Americans.
In Camden, New Jersey, the local police department was disbanded due to
police corruption and rising crime rates. The county now runs the
department, and implemented de-escalation training, defined chokeholds as
deadly force, and required that officers step in if a colleague is using excessive
force. Officers were tasked with patrolling on foot, introducing themselves to
residents, and hosting community barbecues. Violent crime dropped 42%
between 2012 and 2019. In comparison, the FBI estimates nationwide violent
crime fell 9% from 2009 to 2018.
Sam Sinyangwe, co-founder of We the Protestors, explained, “if you look at the
30 largest cities, police shootings have dropped about 30 percent, and some
cities have seen larger drops. In some of these cities, like Chicago and Los
Angeles, activists with Black Lives Matter and other groups have done a lot of
work to push for de-escalation, stricter use-of-force policies and greater
accountability.”
Contrary to the publicly asserted “war” on Black people by white police

officers, few are actually murdered by white officers each year. An analysis of
the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police department found white officers were
least likely to shoot an unarmed Black person, with a threat perception failure
(TPF) rate of 5.2% with black suspects. Black officers had an 11.4% rate, and
Hispanic officers a 16.7% rate.
According to a June 2020 poll, 82% of Americans agree that police use of
chokeholds should be banned. 83% support racial profiling bans. 92% agree
that police should wear body cameras. 89% agree on requiring officers to give
their name, badge number, and a reason for the stop during police stops. 91%
support independent investigations of misconduct in departments. And 75%
support allowing police misconduct victims to sue departments for damages.
If police departments were reformed to focus on policing BLack

neighborhoods the same way they police wealthy white neighborhoods, police 30
violence would decrease. Black neighborhoods suffer from underpolicing as
police officers focus on traffic and drug stops.

Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, explains

that police focus “on nuisance and vice—the cheap and easy, low-hanging fruit
of the trade,” while murders in predominantly Black neighborhoods go
unsolved: “From 1988 to 2002, the number of unsolved homicides in the L.A.
Police Department’s South Bureau was 41 per square mile. Even as many
white neighborhoods remained untouched by killings during this period,
some predominately black ones had three unsolved cases per block—seven at
the especially violent intersection of South San Pedro and East 84th streets.”
Amid the George Floyd protests in May 2020, Chicago registered the city’s
most deadly weekend in six decades: 110 shootings (85 wounded, 25 killed).
Nearly all of the victims and shooters were Black. Michael Pfleger, a Roman
Catholic priest and social activist in the South Side of Chicago, stated, “On
Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s
no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing.’”
Con 3
Police departments should not be disbanded, but held to standardized

national regulations, which should comply with international human
rights laws.
President Obama formed the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
after the Aug. 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The
May 2015 final report suggested that the Department of Justice should
“[e]stablish national benchmarks and best practices for federal, state, local,
and tribal police departments,” among 58 other nationally standardized
requirements.
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) suggests many federal reforms, including
ending the transfer of military equipment to police departments, a national
comprehensive policy on use-of-force, a law banning lethal force, a
requirement that police departments acknowledge their racial inequalities
and injustices, mandatory racial biases training, and eliminating qualified
immunity, which protects officers from being sued for wrongful death. EJI
states these reforms can help to “change the culture of policing to build trust,
legitimacy, and accountability.”
Ed Pilkington, Chief Reporter for The Guardian US, stated, “The need for
restrictions on police power has been recognized in international law for 40
years. Two basic human rights are involved: the right to life and personal 31
security, and the right of freedom from discrimination. Those rights have also
been enshrined in core United Nations standards. All 193 member nations of

the UN, including the US, have signed up to a code of conduct for law
enforcement officials adopted in 1979.”
A review of police departments in 20 of the largest American cities in 2017

and 2018 found that “not one met the minimum standards established by
human rights law.” No state had a human rights compliant use-of-force law,
only 12 cities had policies restricting use-of-force to an immediate threat, and
only two cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, had the necessary external reporting
requirements to meet international human rights standards.
Data compiled by The Guardian found that 59 people in the US were shot and
killed by police in the first 24 days of 2015, compared to 55 people fatally shot
by police in England and Wales in the past 24 years. 97 people in the US were
fatally shot by police in Mar. 2015, compared to 94 in Australia between 1992
and 2011.
“Across the political spectrum, there’s a consensus for requiring officers to

wear body cameras, mandating independent investigations of officer-involved
shootings, and creating a national registry of police misconduct records. By 2
to 1, the public supports banning chokeholds and no-knock search warrants.
In a survey of more than 1,800 Americans, conducted in April and May by the
Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 60 percent of
respondents said police supervisors should be penalized for racially biased
conduct by their officers; only 15 percent disagreed,” author Will Saletan
summarizes.
Police in other countries do not routinely carry guns, choke-holds are banned,
and use-of-force policies are stricter than in the United States. In Finland, an
officer must get supervisor approval before using deadly force and, in Spain,
officers must fire a warning shot or shoot a non-vital body part before using
lethal force. Officers in Europe train for an average of three years, compared
to about 19 months for Americans. These policies result in fewer citizen
deaths in those countries.
32

1. Should police departments be defunded? Why or why not?
2. Are any police reform efforts helpful? Which reforms? Explain your
answers.
3. Do you think abolishing police departments would resolve or create more

problems for communities of color? Explain your answer.
4. Do you think defunding or eliminating police departments would lead

to greater violence in our cities? Explain your answer.
33

Article 5: Filibuster
A filibuster is a parliamentary means for blocking a legislative body’s vote on
an issue. As Encyclopaedia Britannica explains, a filibuster is “used in
the United States Senate by a minority of the senators—sometimes even a
single senator—to delay or prevent parliamentary action by talking so long
that the majority either grants concessions or withdraws the bill.” The
strategy is only used in the Senate because “unlike the House of
Representatives, in which rules limit speaking time, the Senate allows
unlimited debate on a bill. Speeches can be completely irrelevant to the
issue.”
Two tactics can be used to defeat the filibuster: by invoking cloture (thereby
limiting or ending debate and mandating a vote on the issue at hand) or by
maintaining around-the-clock sessions to tire those using the filibuster.
Perhaps the most famous depiction of a marathon filibuster, and the various
tactics used to fight it, is the climactic scene in the classic 1939 movie Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington, when the star of the film, an idealistic freshman
senator played by Jimmy Stewart, finally collapses on the Senate floor from
exhaustion.
The word “filibuster” itself emerged from piracy. Derived from Dutch and
Spanish, the term first appeared in English in 1591 as “flee-booters,” referring
to people who raided the Caribbean Spanish colonies. The word gained a
syllable along the way, and by the 1850s “filibusters” were Americans who
traveled to the Spanish West Indies and Central America to encourage
revolution. When applied to Senate speechifying, as NPR host Melissa Block
has explained, “Filibustering senators were, by extension, pirates raiding the
Congress for their own political gain.”
Ironically, the first instance of “talking a bill to death” happened during the
very first session of Congress, on Sep. 22, 1789. As Anti-Administration Party
Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania wrote in his journal, the “design of
the Virginians and the Carolina gentleman was to talk away the time, so that
we could not get the bill passed.” Despite the proto-filibustering, the bill was
passed 31-17, wrote Maclay.
In 1789, both the House and Senate had a rule allowing for a simple majority
to end debate: the “previous question motion.” The House rulebook still has
that motion. The Senate eliminated it in 1805 when Vice President Aaron
Burr (who had just been indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton) 34
told the Senate to clean up their rulebook, specifically to get rid of this tactic.

The Senate did so in 1806, eliminating the Senate’s ability to end debate with
a simple majority, thereby enabling the filibuster.
According to the US Senate, the term “filibuster” first came into congressional
use when Mississippi Democrat Senator Albert Brown noted his “friend
standing on the other side of the House filibustering” on Jan. 3, 1853, and
when North Carolina Whig Senator George Badger bemoaned “filibustering
speeches” in February of the same year. Other sources state “filibuster” didn’t
take on its Senate meaning until 1889 or 1890.
The debate over eliminating the filibuster is almost as old as its appearance in
the Senate. As early as 1841, Kentucky Whig Senator Henry Clay, frustrated
with filibustering Democrats, threatened to limit debate. Alabama Democrat
Senator William King countered that Clay might as well “make his
arrangements at his boarding house for the [entire] winter” in preparation for
even longer debates to maintain the filibuster.
But as the Senate grew in members and the amount of work it had to do, so
did frustrations with the filibuster, as long speeches could derail work for
days. President Woodrow Wilson made his displeasure known when, at the
end of the 64th Congress on Mar. 4, 1917, the Senate’s work had not been
completed: the “Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the
world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of
willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great
government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
At Wilson’s urging, in a special congressional session, Senate Rule 22 was

adopted on Mar. 8, 1917. The rule meant that senators could file a motion to
invoke cloture, which would prompt a vote on whether to end the debate
two business days after the motion was filed, allowing up to 30 additional
hours of debate. Two-thirds of the Senate was required to end a filibuster with
cloture until 1974 when the rule was changed to three-fifths (meaning 60 US
senators). If the motion is approved during the cloture vote, then cloture has
been invoked and the Senate will vote on the item in question without further
delay and debate.
The first invocation of cloture occurred on Nov. 15, 1919, and ended debate
on the Treaty of Versailles. Between 1917 and Aug. 8, 2022, US Senators
have filed 2,591 cloture motions, voted on cloture 2,062 times, and
successfully invoked cloture in 1,361 cases. At first used sparingly, cloture 35
recently became a more popular tool during the 113th Congress (2013-2014)
when its use jumped to 187 from 41 clotures in the 112th Congress (2011-
2012).

The longest individual filibuster on record occurred in 1957, when

US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina talked for more than 24
hours as part of an unsuccessful attempt by Southern senators to
obstruct civil rights legislation.
Key to the current debate over filibusters is the political parity that exists in
the US Congress. With the US Senate almost evenly split between Democrats
and Republicans, at a time when the parties share little ideological overlap
and seldom agree on anything, the filibuster has become a prime tool for
hindering the presidential and congressional agendas of the majority party,
whose control over the Senate is slight and tenuous and far from a large
mandate, making legislation almost impossible to pass.
Additionally, senators no longer have to actually talk for hours to filibuster.

Just the threat of a filibuster (also called a “virtual filibuster”) is enough to
effectively block legislation. William Galston, Cofounder of the Congressional
reform group No Labels, describes the tactic as a “sort of a ‘Look ma, no hands’
way of avoiding accountability” and the sweat equity that once required
senators to talk for hours.
An Apr. 29, 2021, Monmouth University poll found 38% of Americans want to
keep the filibuster with no changes, 38% believe the Senate should reform
filibuster rules, and 19% would get rid of the filibuster entirely. However, only
19% of Americans stated they were “very familiar” with how the filibuster
functions, while 12% were “not too familiar” or “not at all familiar” with the
strategy and 29% had never heard of the filibuster.
The unfamiliarity with the filibuster creates a difficulty among Americans in

thinking about how to reform the Senate procedure. According to the Brennan
Center for Justice, the filibuster has been modified more than 160 times since
its introduction. Recently, the “nuclear option” has been used in 2013 and
2017 to eliminate the use of the filibuster for presidential executive and
judicial appointments and US Supreme Court nominees. The “nuclear
option” allows senators to change Senate rules with a simple majority vote.
Following this option, senators could mandate the elimination of the filibuster
for specific key party platform legislation such as voting rights.
nother possible reform would be to change the threshold for invoking cloture
from 60 to a higher or lower number of senators in order to strengthen or
weaken the filibuster. One version is an “inverted filibuster” in which only 41 36
votes (instead of 60) would be needed to invoke cloture and end a filibuster,
thereby shifting the burden to the dissenting senators instead of the senators
promoting the legislation in question. Also suggested is to require three-fifths

of “present and voting” senators to invoke cloture and end a filibuster instead
of the current requirement of three-fifths of “duly chosen and sworn”
senators, many of whom may not be present or voting, thereby making it
easier to kill a filibuster.
Should The US Senate Keep The Filibuster?
Pro 1
The filibuster promotes compromise and protects the voice and mandate
of the minority party.
The filibuster provides a way for minority opinions (and therefore the voices
of the constituents of the minority parties) to be heard on the Senate floor,
fulfilling the senators’ mandate to govern.
“Far from being simply a weapon of obstruction, the filibuster actually forces
compromise. The framers designed the Senate to be a consensus-driven body.
If a majority party knows they need to garner 60 votes to end debate on a bill,
the necessity of working across the aisle, negotiating, and finding areas of
agreement becomes imperative, rather than optional. Without the filibuster as
a tool of negotiation, the Senate becomes little more than a smaller version of
the House of Representatives where legislation reflects the priorities of the
majority, with little regard to concerns of the minority,” explained Rachel
Bovard of the Heritage Foundation.
Without the filibuster, the crucial tradition of debate is quashed, leaving the
majority party to enact its will without checks or balances. As Thomas Jipping
of the Heritage Foundation explained, “World history is full of examples of
governments that unless they have limits and controls and checks get really
out of control. And the extended debate, the filibuster, that’s part of that
system of checks and balances. So it’s a very important part of limiting
government at least in the Senate…. [A]fter the 2020 election, the Senate is
50/50. Even before that, it was very closely divided. That narrow majority
should not be able to force its will on the very large minority anytime that it
wants. So it’s part of that design for our government and I think it’s a very
important one.”
Protecting the filibuster is also a case of “what comes around, goes around.”
While one party has a slim majority, they may want to eliminate the filibuster
to enact their policies. However, as Senator John Thune (R-SD) pointedly
remarked, “I encourage my colleagues to think about that time when they will 37
be in the minority again – and to ask themselves whether they really want to
eliminate their voices, and the voices of their constituents, in future policy
battles.”

Pro 2
The filibuster protects the intended purpose of the Senate: purposeful

debate.
The intentionally slow movement of legislation through the Senate not only
creates a mandated space for deliberation, but it also allows American citizens
to read the bills and communicate their policy views to their Senators, which,
in turn, should allow Senators to write and pass legislation that best
represents the will of their constituents.
Eliminating the filibuster would fast-track legislation, making the Senate

operate like the House, which is neither what the chamber is intended to do
nor a productive part of the democratic process.
As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1833, “[Division of legislative

power into two houses] is of little or no intrinsic value, unless it is so
organized, that each can operate, as a real check upon undue and rash
legislation. If each [chamber] is substantially framed upon the same plan, the
advantages of the division are shadowy and imaginative; the visions and
speculations of the brain, and not the walking thoughts of statesmen, or
patriots…. Each will act, as the other does; and each will be led by the same
common influence of ambition, or intrigue, or passion, to the same disregard
of the public interests, and the same indifference to, and prostration of private
rights. It will only be a duplication of the evils of oppression and rashness,
with a duplication of obstructions to effective redress. In this view, the
organization of the senate becomes of inestimable value…. No system could, in
this respect, be more admirably contrived to ensure due deliberation and
inquiry, and just results in all matters of legislation.”
According to Senate history, George Washington remarked to Thomas

Jefferson that the Senate was created to “cool” House legislation, as a saucer
cools hot tea. To extend the metaphor, without the Senate and rules including
the filibuster, the American people would be burned by hot, rash legislation.
Pro 3
The filibuster is an important safeguard against political extremism and

corporate influence.
The Senate has always purposefully been the slower chamber of Congress, the
one that “was not going to simply ride popular waves when considering 38
legislative action.” The filibuster “frankly is one of the last safeguards against
extremist legislators from either side of the aisle pushing through laws that

the vast majority of the country would oppose,” according to Pete Weichlein,
CEO of The Former Members of Congress Association.
Eliminating “the filibuster would only ramp up partisan acrimony and

increase the level of fear and anxiety around American elections,” argued
David French, Senior Editor of The Dispatch. The filibuster protects against
both minoritarian rule, in which the minority party takes and keeps control
contrary to the wishes of the majority of citizens, and majoritarian
domination, in which the voices and liberties of the minority of citizens could
be eliminated. In both cases, the more extreme end of each party would likely
be in control, rather than those willing to work across the aisle. While working
through compromise may be more difficult, that is the work of democracy.
David Super, Law Professor at Georgetown University, explained another

advantage of maintaining the current rule: “The filibuster also serves as a
crucial counterweight against big-money politics. Holding a majority to block
legislation backed by the corporate elite is difficult when millions of dollars in
campaign contributions tempt legislators to vote with irresponsible banks,
avaricious petrochemical companies or reckless lumber interests. Forty-one
votes to block radical deregulation [by preventing a block of 60 senators from
enacting cloture and ending a filibuster] is a much more achievable goal.”
Thus, the filibuster protects citizen voices against powerful corporations and
unscrupulous Senators who might bow to the influence of corporate lobbyists
rather than represent their constituents faithfully.
Con 1
The filibuster promotes obstructionism and partisanship, allowing the

minority party to rule without a national mandate.
The 117th Senate (2021–2023) is composed of 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats,
and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats, making the Senate split
evenly in terms of broad politics. The tiebreaker is Vice President Kamala
Harris, a Democrat.
However, the 50 liberal senators represent 41.5 million more Americans than
the 50 conservative senators.
Because ending a filibuster requires a 60-senator majority vote, just 41

conservative senators (the number of senators needed to protect a filibuster)
in the 117th Senate who represent just over 20% of the American population 39
can kill any and all legislation brought by the party voted in to control the
Senate, House, and White House.

One estimate predicts that by 2040, about 30% of the American population
will live in 35 states represented by 70 senators, while about 70% of the
population will live in 15 states represented by 30 senators. That 30% will be
older, less racially diverse, and more rural than the majority of the country.
Therefore, the possibility of a stark minority of senators filibustering and
killing legislation supported by the majority of the country only stands to
grow worse.
That dynamic is exacerbated when the venom of partisanship is factored into

the equation. “We’re finally seeing, I think, a level of frustration, over the
misuse of the filibuster, not as an infrequently applied tool by a minority on an
issue about which they feel very, very strongly, but as a cynical weapon of
mass obstruction…. And it means if you don’t have more than 60 of your own
party members, you’re just dramatically limited in what you can do in policy
terms. And it’s basically because you have a minority party that’s not looking
to solve problems, but to figure out how to block anything of significance in…
[the majority party’s] agenda, and make sure problems fester so that they
have more traction to gain political advantage,” according to Norm Ornstein,
political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute.
Con 2
The filibuster prevents meaningful debate and slows the work of the
Senate.
In 1957, Senator Strom Thurmond (then D-SC, though he would switch to the
Republican party in 1964) filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes on Aug.
28 and 29, the longest filibuster on record. Thurmond spent valuable Senate
time reciting the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and President
George Washington’s farewell address, among other historical documents and
state election laws. The effort was in vain: no senator changed their vote and
the act passed 60-15 a mere two hours after Thurmond stopped speaking.
In Sep. 1981, Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) filibustered for 16 hours and
12 minutes (the fifth-longest filibuster), halting debate about raising the debt
ceiling, an action he opposed. His filibuster kept the senate chambers open
overnight, costing taxpayers “$47,500 for the extra Congressional Record,
$6,500 in police overtime and $10,500 in building maintenance costs,” over
$64,500 in 1981 dollars (about $205,065.02 in 2022 dollars). Those figures
did not include “incalculable extra man hours from personnel on fixed
salaries.” The Senate passed the debt ceiling increase the next day in a 64-34 40
vote.

Moreover, a Jan. 2022 study found that not only do filibusters not increase
meaningful debate as defenders claim, but they serve to dampen debate. The
study showed that in 2007 when Senate Republicans increased use of the
filibuster, there was a fairly immediate 14% decline in debate. Three
legislative sessions later, debate had declined 28%.
Study co-author William Howell, Chair of the Political Science department at

the University of Chicago, explained the filibuster use “was not because those
who were using the filibuster were particularly interested in scrutinizing the
merits of policy changes to a greater extent, it’s because they wanted to block
policy change. What they wanted to do was grind things to a halt.”
Con 3
The filibuster is a Jim Crow relic used to block meaningful legislation.

President Barack Obama, in his July 30, 2020, eulogy for Representative John
Lewis (D-GA), referred to the filibuster as “another Jim Crow relic.”
Between 1917 and 1995, half of the 30 bills killed in the Senate, despite
support from majorities in the House and Senate and White House support,
were civil rights protections including those to ban poll taxes, employment
and housing discrimination, and lynching.
In fact, an anti-lynching bill, despite over 240 attempts in 122 years, was not
passed until Mar. 7, 2022, when it passed the Senate unanimously.
Southern Democrats, unable to kill legislation with votes, delayed civil rights
progress for years with filibusters, even though the legislation was supported
by a majority of Americans, including those living in the South.
The threat of filibuster has also killed several contemporary initiatives that
disproportionately impact communities of color, including climate change,
universal healthcare, and gun control.
For example, the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed the House
but was never brought up in the Senate for certainty the bill would be
quashed by filibuster. The act “would have set new renewable fuel standards
and established a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.”
Kevin Kruse, historian of race and American politics at Princeton University, 41

stated that the filibuster has “been a tool used overwhelmingly by racists…. It
is the preferred choice of Southern conservatives, in whatever era and

whatever party, who are trying to slow down civil rights and trying to deny
equal protection for African Americans.”
1. Should the US Senate eliminate the filibuster? Explain your answer.
2. If the Senate keeps the filibuster, should the rules be reformed? If yes, how
and why? If no, why not?
3. Consider a cloture motion from the Senate’s history. If you were a Senator,
would you have filibustered the bill or nomination? Would you have
submitted a cloture motion? Do you agree with the outcome of the cloture
motion and the final fate of the bill or nomination? Explain your answers.
42

Article 6: Private Prisons

Prison privatization generally operates in one of three ways: 1. Private
companies provide services to a government-owned and managed prison,
such as building maintenance, food supplies, or vocational training; 2. Private
companies manage government-owned facilities; or 3. Private companies own
and operate the prisons and charge the government to house inmates.
In the United States, private prisons have their roots in slavery. Some
privately owned prisons held enslaved people while the slave trade continued
after the importation of slaves was banned in 1807. Recaptured runaways
were also imprisoned in private facilities as were black people who were born
free and then illegally captured to be sold into slavery. Many plantations were
turned into private prisons from the Civil War forward; for example, the
Angola Plantation became the Louisiana State Penitentiary (nicknamed
“Angola” for the African homeland of many of the slaves who originally
worked on the plantation), the largest maximum-security prison in the
country. In 2000, the Vann Plantation in North Carolina was opened as the
private, minimal security Rivers Correctional Facility (operated by GEO
Group), though the facility’s federal contract expired in Mar. 2021.
Inmates in private prisons in the 19th century were commonly used for labor
via “convict leasing” in which the prison owners were paid for the labor of the
inmates. According to the Innocence Project, Jim Crow laws after the Civil
War ensured the newly freed black population was imprisoned at high rates
for petty or nonexistent crimes in order to maintain the labor force needed for
picking cotton and other labor previously performed by enslaved people.
However, the practice of convict leasing extended beyond the American South.
California awarded private management contracts for San Quentin State
Prison in order to allow the winning bidder leasing rights to the convicts until
1860. Convict leasing faded in the early 20th century as states banned the
practice and shifted to forced farming and other labor on the land of the
prisons themselves.
What Americans think of now as a private prison is an institution owned by a

conglomerate such as CoreCivic, GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, or
Management and Training Corporation. This sort of private prison began
operations in 1984 in Tennessee and 1985 in Texas in response to the rapidly
rising prison population during the war on drugs. State-run facilities were
overpopulated with increasing numbers of people being convicted for drug
43
offenses. Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic) first promised
to run larger prisons more cheaply to solve the problems. In 1987, Wackenhut
Corrections Corporation (now GEO Group) won a federal contract to run an
immigration detention center, expanding the focus of private prisons.
In 2016, the federal government announced it would phase out the use of
private prisons: a policy rescinded by Attorney General Jeff Sessions under the
Trump administration but reinstated under President Biden. However,
Biden’s order did not limit the use of private facilities for federal immigrant
detention. 20 US states did not use private prisons as of 2019.
In 2019, 115,428 people (8% of the prison population) were incarcerated in

state or federal private prisons; 81% of the detained immigrant population
(40,634 people) was held in private facilities. The federal government held the
most (27,409) people in private prisons in 2019, followed by Texas (12,516),
and Florida (11,915). However, Montana held the largest percentage of the
state’s inmates in private prisons (47%).
According to the Sentencing Project, “[p]rivate prisons incarcerated 99,754

American residents in 2020, representing 8% of the total state and federal
prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private
prisons has increased 14%.
On Jan. 20, 2022, the federal Bureau of Prisons reported 153,855 total federal
inmates, 6,336 of whom were held in private facilities, or about 4% of people
in federal custody.
Should Prisons Be Privatized?

Pro 1
Privatizing prisons can reduce prison overpopulation, making the

facilities safer for inmates and employees.
According to Emily Widra, staff member at the Prison Policy Initiative,
overpopulation is “correlated with increased violence, lack of adequate health
care, limited programming and educational opportunities, and reduced
visitation.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, the risks have been even higher as
the infection rates were higher in prisons operating at 94% to 102% capacity
than in those operating at 84% capacity.
In 2020, nine state prison systems were operating at 100% capacity or above,
with Montana at the highest with 121%. Another nine state systems were
operating at 90% to 99% capacity or above. The Bureau of Prisons (the US
federal system) was operating at 103% capacity.
Austill Stuart, Director of Privatization and Government Reform at the Reason 44

Foundation, explained, “As governments at every level continue to face
financial pressures and challenges delivering basic services, contracting
provides a tool that enables corrections agencies to better manage costs,
while also delivering better outcomes. Performance-based contracts for

private prisons, especially contracts tied to reducing recidivism rates, have
the possibility of delivering significant improvements that, over the long-term,
reduce the overall prison population and help those who are released from jail
stay out for good.”
Private prisons can offer overcrowded, underfunded, and overburdened

government prisons an alternative by simply removing prisoners from
overpopulated state and federal prisons and housing the inmates in a private
facility. As prisoner populations lower, so too will the dangers correlated with
overcrowding.
Pro 2
Private prisons can transform the broken government-run prison system.

As Adrian Moore, PhD, Vice President of policy at Reason Foundation,
explained, “private prisons are a tool, and like all tools, you can use them well
or use them poorly.”
Examples of using private prisons well include some private prisons in

Australia and New Zealand that have performance-based contracts with the
government, The prisons earn “bonuses for doing better than government
prisons at cutting recidivism. They get an even bigger bonus if they beat the
government at reducing recidivism among their indigenous populations. And
prison companies are charged for what the government deems as
unacceptable events like riots, escapes and unnatural deaths.”
As the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown

University explained, by implementing those sorts of contracts, “the private
sector was responsible for designing the solution that would achieve the
desired social outcome.”
Oliver Brousse, Chief Executive of the John Laing Investment Group, which
built a prison in New Zealand with such a contract, explained, “The prison is
designed for rehabilitation. The strength of these public-private partnerships
is that they bring the best practices and innovation from all over the world,
allowing local authorities to benefit from not only private capital but also from
the best people and best practices from other countries.”
Pro 3
45
Private prisons offer innovative programs to lower the rates of re-

imprisonment.

Recidivism is the tendency of those who have committed a criminal act to

commit another criminal act, likely landing them back in prison.
GEO Group Inc., an American private prison conglomerate, offers individual

treatment plans, drug abuse education and treatment, adult education GED
preparation, life skills courses, parenting and family reintegration, anger
management, and work readiness vocational skills. The programs are offered
as in-custody, residential, and non-residential options, allowing people to
access the programs while in prison, out on parole or probation, and while
reintegrating into their communities.
Rachael Cole, former Public-Private Partnership Integration director for the

New Zealand Department of Corrections, argued, “If we want to establish a
prison that focuses on rehabilitation and reintegration, we have to give the
private sector the space to innovate. If we don’t give them the opportunity to
do things differently, we will just get back what we already have.”
A New Zealand prison operated by Serco, a British company, has men make
their own meals, do their own laundry, schedule their own family and medical
appointments, and maintain a resume to apply for facility jobs. The prison also
responds to the job market: opening cafes to train the men as baristas when
coffee shop jobs soared outside prison. Another prison in New Zealand
includes a cultural center for Maori inmates, designed to reduce recidivism
amongst indigenous populations.
Programs that focus on inmate reentry into society and deal with drug and
other abuses can lower recidivism rates, which in turn can lower prison
populations and lessen overcrowding and related dangers.
Con 1
Private prisons exploit employees and prisoners for corporate gain.

Private prisons paid staff $0.38 less per hour than public prisons, $14,901 less
in yearly salaries, and required 58 fewer hours of training prior to service
than public prisons, leaving staff less prepared to do their jobs, contributing to
a 43% turnover rate compared to 15% for public prisons. Several private
prisons have been fined for understaffing, and leaving too few guards and staff
to maintain order in the facilities.
Ivette Feliciano, PBS NewsHour Weekend producer and reporter, explained

46
that a report from Michael Horowitz, JD, Justice Department Inspector
General, found that “per capita, privately-run facilities had more contraband
smuggled in, more lockdowns and uses of force by correctional officers, more

assaults, both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates of correctional

officers, more complaints about medical care, staff, food, and conditions of
confinement, and two facilities were housing inmates in solitary confinement
to free up bed space. The findings also highlighted chronic understaffing as
the root of many problems.”
The use of private prisons resulted in 178 more prisoners per population of
one million. Each prisoner costs about $60 per day, resulting in $1.9 to $10.6
million in gains for private prisons for new prisoners. And, when private
prisons are used, sentences are longer.
In prison, private companies can charge inflated prices for basic necessities
such as soap and underwear. Communications, including phone calls and
emails, also come at a steep price, forcing inmates to work for pennies ($1.09
to $2.75 per day at private prisons, or $0.99 to $3.13 in public prisons), or to
rely on family to pay hundreds of dollars a month.
Con 2
Privatizing prisons is costly and leaves the most expensive prisoners to

public prisons.
A 2019 study of prisons in Georgia found state prisons cost approximately
$44.56 per inmate per day. Private prisons cost about $49.07 per inmate per
day.
A 2014 study found the cost to incarcerate a prisoner for one year in a private
prison was about $45,000, while the cost in a public prison was $50,000. The
$5,000 savings is deceptive, however, because inmates in private prisons
serve longer sentences, negating at least half of the savings, and recidivism
rates are largely the same as in public prisons, further negating any savings.
In Arizona, a 2011 audit found medium-security state inmates cost 8.7% less
per day (between $1,679 and $2,834 per inmate) than those at private
prisons. Even a 1999 meta-study of prisons concluded, “private prisons were
no more cost-effective than public prisons.”
The lack of per-prisoner savings is striking considering most private prisons

only house minimum- and medium-security prisoners, who are less expensive
to incarcerate than death row inmates, maximum-security inmates, or those
with serious medical conditions whom the state has to house. 47
Private prisons also often charge governments for empty prison beds,
resulting in excess costs for the governments.

Con 3
All prisons—not just privately operated ones--should be abolished.

Author Rachel Kushner explained, “Ninety-two percent of people locked
inside American prisons are held in publicly run, publicly funded facilities, and
99 percent of those in jail are in public jails. Every private prison could close
tomorrow, and not a single person would go home. But the ideas that private
prisons are the culprit, and that profit is the motive behind all prisons, have a
firm grip on the popular imagination.”
Following that logic, Holly Genovese, PhD student in American Studies at the
University of Texas at Austin, argued, “Anyone who examines privately owned
US prisons has to come to the conclusion that they are abhorrent and must be
eliminated. But they can also be low-hanging fruit used by opportunistic
Democrats to ignore the much larger problem of — and solutions to — mass
incarceration… Private prisons should be abolished. But if the problem is the
profit — institutions unjustly benefiting from the labor of incarcerated people
— the fight against private prisons is only a beginning. Political figures and
others serious about fighting injustice must engage with the profit motives of
federally and state-funded prisons as well, and seriously consider the
abolition of all prisons — as they are all for profit.”
As Woods Ervin, a prison abolitionist with Critical Resistance, explained, “we

have to think about the rate at which the prison-industrial complex is able to
actually address rape and murder. We’ve spent astronomical amounts of our
budgets at the municipal level, at the federal level, on policing and caging
people. And yet I don’t think that people feel any safer from the threat of
sexual assault or the threat of murder. What is the prison-industrial complex
doing to actually solve those problems in our society?” Abolitionists instead
focus on community-level issues to prevent the concerns that lead to
incarceration in the first place. Eliminating private prisons still leaves the
problems of mass incarceration and public prisons.
1. Should prisons be privatized? Explain your answer.
2. Should immigration detention centers be privatized? Explain your answer.
3. Take the debate about private prisons a step further and consider prison
48
abolition. What are the pros and cons? Which side of the debate do you most
agree with? Explain your answers.

Article 7: Employer Vaccine Mandates

While the current debate about employer vaccine mandates in the United
States centers upon COVID-19 requirements, mandates and the debate about
them are as old as the country itself.
The first American “vaccine” mandate was issued by then General George
Washington in 1777. Washington ordered Continental Army troops to be
inoculated against smallpox with the precursor to the smallpox vaccine
during the Revolutionary War. According to Andrew Wehrman, Associate
Professor of History at Central Michigan University, the soldiers themselves
“were the ones calling for it.… There’s no record that I have seen — and I’ve
looked — of any soldier turning it down, protesting it.”
Continental Army soldiers may have welcomed inoculation, but plenty of

other people did not. After the Reverend Cotton Mather promoted and
introduced smallpox inoculation in Boston in 1721 to battle a deadly outbreak
of the viral disease, a man threw a bomb through a window of his home with
the note: “Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I’ll inoculate you with this; with a
pox to you.” In fact, most of the doctors in Boston were against inoculation;
they even formed an organization called the “Society of Physicians Anti-
Inoculators.” Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse introduced a smallpox vaccine into
the country in 1800, courtesy of his friend, the British discoverer of the
vaccine, Edward Jenner. The Founding Fathers welcomed the innovation,
though too late in the case of Benjamin Franklin, who initially battled
inoculation until his un-inoculated four-year-old son died from smallpox. “I
long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it [a preventative
dose of smallpox] to him by inoculation,” admitted Franklin in his 1771
autobiography.
Most early vaccine mandates were implemented by state and local

governments. For example, Massachusetts was the first state to
mandate vaccines for school children in the 1850s. By 1900, half of the US
states had school vaccine mandates; by 1980, all US states had them.
The debate about mandates had taken full form by the end of the 1800s, with
dissenting opinions looking much like contemporary arguments: “Some
Americans opposed mandates on the grounds of personal liberty; some
because they believed lawmakers were in cahoots with vaccine makers; and
some because of safety concerns.”
49
In 1905, the US Supreme Court entered the debate, ruling in Jacobson v.
Massachusetts that compulsory vaccination laws enacted by state and local
governments were constitutional and enforceable. Justice John Marshall
Harlan, who wrote the majority opinion, argued that individual liberty is not
absolute: “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does
not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all
circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.… [T]he fundamental principle of
the social compact… [is] that all shall be governed by certain laws for the
protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people, and not for the
profit, honor or private interests of any one man, family or class of men.” The
ruling allowed for medical exemptions, and it has been considered the
authority on the subject ever since. School vaccine mandates were
subsequently upheld by the US Supreme Court in Zucht v. King (1922).
During World War II, the US military began mandating a host of vaccines for
service members, including typhoid, yellow fever, and tetanus. As of 2021, the
US military required service members to get 18 vaccines, including
adenovirus, COVID-19, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, flu, meningococcal, MMR
(measles, mumps, and rubella), polio, tetanus-diphtheria, and varicella
(chicken pox). Members can be required to be vaccinated against other
diseases based on service location: anthrax, haemophilus influenzae type B,
Japanese encephalitis, pneumococcal disease, rabies, smallpox, typhoid fever,
and yellow fever. Civilian military employees are also subject to vaccine
mandates, including the COVID-19 vaccine. The US military allows
administrative, medical, and religious vaccine exemptions, though they are
rare.
Other than the US military, healthcare facilities are the most common type of
employer to mandate vaccines. For years, some healthcare workers have been
required to have multiple vaccinations including: hepatitis B, influenza, MMR
(measles, mumps and rubella), pertussis, pneumococcal disease, and varicella
(chickenpox).
Healthcare workers, among employees in other industries, are also

increasingly required to have COVID-19 vaccinations. A Dec. 2, 2021, survey
found that 25% of employers planned on implementing a COVID-19 vaccine
mandate, regardless of a federal mandate. 32% only planned to implement a
mandate if the federal government required employee vaccination. And 33%
said they would enforce a testing protocol rather than mandate COVID-19
vaccines.
Many states and DC have implemented COVID-19 vaccine or vaccine-or-test

mandates as employers. The mandates may cover executive branch staff, 50
teachers at state schools and pre-schools, state-run healthcare facility
employees, and other state government employees. Conversely, several states
have enacted laws banning employers from implementing vaccine mandates.
The US Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 13, 2022, that the Biden Administration
does not have the authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate.
The White House mandate would have required people who work for
employers with 100 or more employees to either be vaccinated or tested
weekly and wear a mask indoors if unvaccinated. The Court allowed the White
House COVID-19 vaccine mandate to stand for medical facilities that take
Medicare or Medicaid payments.
In the wake of this ruling, many large companies were rethinking the
implementation or enforcement of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Many
companies, including Carhartt, CitiGroup, and United Airlines, maintained
their mandates, while others, including Boeing, GE, and Starbucks, did not.
Whatever the status of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, many employers have

legally required certain employees to be vaccinated against other diseases.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission explained that employers
may require employees to be vaccinated as long as the businesses “comply
with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the ADA [Americans with
Disabilities Act] and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other EEO
considerations.” Those accommodations include but are not limited to medical
and religious exemptions.
Should Employers Be Able to Mandate Vaccinations?
Pro 1
Vaccine mandates have a history of effectively reducing the spread and

health consequences of communicable disease.
Mandates increase vaccination rates, and high vaccination rates lower disease
infection rates overall, as well as the severity of diseases in vaccinated people.
This is proven by data related to American school kids. States with stricter
school vaccine mandates had a higher percentage of vaccinated children and a
lower rate of vaccine-preventable diseases in children.
The history of vaccine mandates effectively curbing the spread and

consequences of disease date to the first US “vaccine” mandate. The smallpox
mortality rate during the US Revolutionary War was about 50%. Both sides
were losing troops at an alarming rate. The British Army did not inoculate
their troops. However, once General George Washington ordered all
Continental Army troops be inoculated against smallpox, the mortality rate for 51
Washington’s troops dropped to 2%–a feat some historians say won the
Revolutionary War.

For a more current example, journalist Dan Gorenstein, summarized a 2020

study on hospital employee vaccine mandates: “So in the case of the California
hospitals, the [flu vaccine] mandates increased uptake of the flu shot by about
10%. But… what makes this paper really interesting is that… [t]here was a
40% drop in the number of people who entered the hospital and caught the
flu inside the facility… [and] a 20% drop in the number of people coming to
the hospital with flu-like symptoms. So here’s the big idea: Increasing
vaccination rates made the hospitals themselves safer and it meant fewer
people in the community were getting sick. So for employers who are thinking
about whether to institute the [vaccine] mandate or not, they could ask
themselves, is my business a social hub the way, like, a hospital is? And the
bigger your business is a social hub, the more a vaccine mandate could curb
spread.”
Pro 2
Vaccine mandates are time-tested policies, proven successful in the

workplace.
The CDC found that when healthcare employers required the flu vaccine, 85%
of employees complied. When employers did not mandate the flu vaccine, only
43% got the flu vaccine.
Essentia Health, a hospital chain in the US Midwest, had a 70% flu vaccination
rate among employees from 2012 to 2015. When employees had to report
whether they were vaccinated with a simple “yes” or “no” in 2016, the
vaccination rate rose to 82%. And, when a vaccine mandate with exemptions
was implemented in 2017, the compliance rate rose to 99.5%.
Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University,

explained, “Many business and educational mandates fall into the ‘hard’
[mandate] category—that is, students or workers cannot attend classes or the
workplace unless they are fully vaccinated. ‘Soft’ mandates ‘nudge’ people to
get vaccinated. When getting a vaccine is the ‘easier’ or ‘default’ option, most
opt for the [vaccination] jab. Thus, when given the choice between getting a
vaccine or having to undergo one to two SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] tests weekly
and masking up, most people will eventually roll up their sleeves. How do we
know? Well, in states that have wide and easy exemptions for childhood
vaccines, a significant number of parents opt out. But if a state makes getting
the exemption hard, such as requiring a written declaration, a doctor’s
certificate or attending vaccine literacy classes, vaccine hesitancy melts 52
away.”

Pro 3
Vaccine mandates are reasonable conditions of employment, and most

employees agree.
While headlines abound proclaiming the firing of workers who have refused
vaccination, most workers comply with mandates to keep or start a job.
For example, a Jan. 25, 2022, headline in The Hill stated, “73 San Diego school
workers terminated over vaccine mandate.” Buried in the article is the fact
that 99% of San Diego school workers were vaccinated or received an
exemption.
When Essentia implemented a flu vaccine mandate across their Midwest

hospital chain in 2017, only 50 of almost 14,000 employees were fired for
non-compliance with the mandate, or about 0.35% of the workforce.
A Dec. 2, 2021, survey found that 31% of employers worried vaccine

mandates would result in employee resignations. However, only 13% of
employers reported resignations connected to vaccine mandates.
A Jan. 2022 poll completed after the US Supreme Court struck down the
federal vaccine mandate found 56% of those surveyed supported employer
COVID-19 vaccine mandates, with 33% opposed to such mandates and the
other 10% saying they had no opinion. Even 23% of unvaccinated employees
supported a mandate.
Con 1
Employer vaccine mandates violate personal privacy and may exacerbate

intolerance and discrimination in the workplace.
Employees may have health or other reasons for not being vaccinated. While
employers are required to allow exemptions, the paperwork may require an
employee to disclose sensitive personal information that could, unfortunately,
be used against the employee.
Religious intolerance has been on the rise in the US, particularly antisemitism
and Islamophobia. If a person declares a sincerely held religious belief as a
reason for non-vaccination, an employer could discriminate against the
employee either by not accommodating a vaccine waiver or other actions.
53
Vaccine mandates force employees to disclose religious beliefs they may have
otherwise kept secret if their workplace is an intolerant environment.

Some people with less visible disabilities or medical conditions who do not
require other accommodation may prefer not to divulge medical information
to their employers. A medical waiver often requires “medical evidence” for the
exemption, exposing private information to an employer. While such
discrimination is illegal, several healthcare providers have recently been
successfully sued by employees who claimed their sincerely held religious
beliefs and medical conditions were not accommodated as vaccine mandate
exemptions.
Further, exemptions often require that the employee wear a mask, be tested
daily, or work from home, which broadcasts vaccination status to coworkers
who may ask intrusive questions or discriminate, straining employee
relationships. Google employees wrote, “barring unvaccinated Googlers from
the office publicly and possibly embarrassingly exposes a private choice as it
would be difficult for the Googler not to reveal why they cannot return.”
Con 2
Vaccine mandates are not the most effective workplace policy; offering
alternatives to vaccinations works better.
Journalist Yasmeen Serhan noted, “In the United States, being vaccinated is
more common than drinking coffee, owning a television cable box or satellite
dish, or even watching the Super Bowl.”
Because a high percentage of employees will already be vaccinated, or

agreeable to additional vaccines, employer policies are necessarily directed
toward people who are under- or unvaccinated and who may be vaccine
hesitant.
A 2019 study found vaccine hesitant people “far outnumbered” vaccine

refusers and recommended counseling and education because mandates are
not the best way to change peoples’ minds about vaccines.
As lawyers Charlene A. Barker Gedeus and Alexis Aloi Graziano explained, “In
an effort to increase employee immunization, employers may choose to
educate and incentivize vaccinations. Employers opting out of mandatory
vaccines should educate staff about how to prevent disease and the benefits of
vaccination, sponsor vaccination sites at work, and institute policies that
encourage employees to remain at home if they aren’t feeling well. Providing
employees with credible information from the CDC is a necessary and 54
meaningful step toward ensuring a safe work environment.” Offering
alternatives, including testing, masking, and working offsite, may be more
effective for the few who refuse vaccination.
Con 3
Employer vaccine mandates can doubly harm marginalized communities.

People of color and LGBTQ+ people have high rates of healthcare distrust due
to current and historical medical mistreatment and discrimination, which can
translate into vaccine hesitancy.
As the Commonwealth Fund explained, “The medical establishment has a long

history of mistreating Black Americans — from gruesome experiments on
enslaved people to the forced sterilizations of Black women and the infamous
Tuskegee syphilis study that withheld treatment from hundreds of Black men
for decades to let doctors track the course of the disease.” These concerns
have continued into the modern medicine era and are applicable to other
communities of color, including Hispanics and Native Americans.
LGBTQ+ people frequently face discrimination, refusal of care, assault, and

other hurdles when accessing healthcare, and they therefore often forgo or
delay medical care.
Additionally, these communities face pay gaps, high rates of unemployment,

and job insecurity. In Feb. 2021, Black (9.9%) and Hispanic (8.5%) workers
had higher unemployment rates than white workers (5.6%). A 2020 report
indicated 17% of LGBTQ+ people lost jobs due to the pandemic, compared to
13% of the general population. Combining a legitimate, historical distrust of
institutionalized healthcare with a threat of job loss is not good policy.
Disccusion Questions
1. Should employers mandate vaccines? Consider specific types of employers

(healthcare, the military, schools, restaurants, etc), as well as various diseases
(COVID-19, the flu, or measles, for example). Explain your answer(s).
2. Should employers be involved in employee health in other ways? Consider

incentives to stop smoking or lose weight, for example. Explain your
answer(s).
3. What policies—from mandates to educational and incentivizing measures–

are best to contain a communicable disease like COVID-19 or the flu? Consider
various kinds of employers. Explain your answer(s). 55

Article 8: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the use of “computers and machines to mimic
the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind,”
according to IBM.
The idea of AI goes back at least 2,700 years. As Adrienne Mayor, research
scholar, folklorist, and science historian at Stanford University, explained:
“Our ability to imagine artificial intelligence goes back to the ancient times.
Long before technological advances made self-moving devices possible, ideas
about creating artificial life and robots were explored in ancient myths.”
Mayor noted that the myths about Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention
and blacksmithing, included precursors to AI. For example, Hephaestus
created the giant bronze man, Talos, which had a mysterious life force from
the gods called ichor. Hephaestus also created Pandora and her infamous box,
as well as a set of automated servants made of gold that were given the
knowledge of the gods. Mayor concluded, “Not one of those myths has a good
ending once the artificial beings are sent to Earth. It’s almost as if the myths
say that it’s great to have these artificial things up in heaven used by the gods.
But once they interact with humans, we get chaos and destruction.”
The modern version of AI largely began when Alan Turing, who contributed
to breaking the Nazi’s Enigma code during World War II, created the Turing
test to determine if a computer is capable of “thinking.” The value and
legitimacy of the test have long been the subject of debate.
The “Father of Artificial Intelligence,” John McCarthy, coined the term

“artificial intelligence” when he, with Marvin Minsky and Claude
Shannon, proposed a 1956 summer workshop on the topic at Dartmouth
College. McCarthy defined artificial intelligence as “the science and
engineering of making intelligent machines.” He later created the computer
programming language LISP (which is still used in AI), hosted computer chess
games against human Russian opponents, and developed the first computer
with ”hand-eye” capability, all important building blocks for AI.
The first AI program designed to mimic how humans solve problems, Logic
Theorist, was created by Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw, and Herbert Simon in
1955-1956. The program was designed to solve problems from Principia
Mathematica (1910-13) written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell. 56
In 1958, Frank Rosenblatt invented the Perceptron, which he claimed was

“the first machine which is capable of having an original idea.” Though the
machine was hounded by skeptics, it was later praised as the “foundations for
all of this artificial intelligence.”
As computers became cheaper in the 1960s and 70s, AI programs such as

Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA flourished, and US government agencies
including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began
to fund AI-related research. But computers were still too weak to manage the
language tasks researchers asked of them. Another influx of funding in the
1980s and early 90s furthered the research, including the invention of expert
systems by Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg. But progress again
waned with a drop in government funding.
In 1997, Gary Kasparov, reigning world chess champion and grand master,
was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue AI computer program, a huge step for AI
researchers. More recently, advances in computer storage limits and speeds
have opened new avenues for AI research and implementation, such as aiding
in scientific research and forging new paths in medicine for patient diagnosis,
robotic surgery, and drug development.
Now, artificial intelligence is used for a variety of everyday implementations

including facial recognition software, online shopping algorithms, search
engines, digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, translation services, automated
safety functions on cars (and the promised self-driving cars of the future),
cybersecurity, airport body scanning security, poker playing strategy, and
fighting disinformation on social media, among others.
Amid the field growing by leaps and bounds, on Mar. 29, 2023, tech giants
including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, as well as leaders in other
industries including Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images, author Yuval Noah
Harari, and politician Andrew Yang, published an open letter calling for a six-
month pause on AI “systems more powerful than GPT-4.” The letter states,
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that
their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable…. AI research
and development should be refocused on making today’s powerful, state-of-
the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust,
aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.” The letter, which was open for additional
signatures, garnered 1380 signatures by Mar. 30, 2023, from other industry
leaders as well as professors, artists, and grandmothers.
On Oct. 30, 2023, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on artificial 57
intelligence that “establishes new standards for AI safety and security,
protects Americans’ privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for
consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances

American leadership around the world, and more.” Vice Presiden Kamala
Harris stated, “We have a moral, ethical and societal duty to make sure that
A.I. is adopted and advanced in a way that protects the public from potential
harm. We intend that the actions we are taking domestically will serve as a
model for international action.” Experts noted that many of the new standards
would be difficult to enforce.
Is Artificial Intelligence Good for Society?
Pro 1
AI can make everyday life more convenient and enjoyable, improving our
health and standard of living.
Why sit in a traffic jam when a map app can navigate you around the car
accident? Why fumble with shopping bags searching for your keys in the dark
when a preset location-based command can have your doorway illuminated
as you approach your now unlocked door?
Why scroll through hundreds of possible TV shows when the streaming app
already knows what genres you like? Why forget eggs at the grocery store
when a digital assistant can take an inventory of your refrigerator and add
them to your grocery list and have them delivered to your home? All of these
marvels are assisted by AI technology.
AI-enabled fitness apps boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic when gyms
were closed, increasing the number of AI options for at-home workouts. Now,
you can not only set a daily steps goal with encouragement reminders on your
smart watch, but you can ride through the countryside on a Peloton bike from
your garage or have a personal trainer on your living room TV. For more
specialized fitness, AI wearables can monitor yoga poses or golf and baseball
swings.
AI can even enhance your doctor’s appointments and medical procedures. It

can alert medical caregivers to patterns in your health data as compared to
the vast library of medical data, while also doing the paperwork tied to
medical appointments so doctors have more time to focus on their patients,
resulting in more personalized care. AI can even help surgeons be quicker,
more accurate, and more minimally invasive in their operations.
Smart speakers including Amazon’s Echo can use AI to soothe babies to sleep 58
and monitor their breathing. Using AI, speakers can also detect regular and
irregular heartbeats, as well as heart attacks and congestive heart failure.

Pro 2
AI can offer accessibility for people with disabilities.

Artificial intelligence is commonly integrated into smartphones and other
household devices. Virtual assistants, including Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, can
perform innumerable tasks from making a phone call to navigating the
internet. Those who are deaf and hearing impaired can access transcripts of
voicemails or other audio, for example.
Other virtual assistants can transcribe conversations as they happen, allowing

for more comprehension and participation by those who are
communicationally challenged. Using voice commands with virtual assistants
can allow better use by people with dexterity disabilities who may have
difficulty navigating small buttons or screens, or turning on a lamp.
Apps enabled by AI on smartphones and other devices, including VoiceOver

and TalkBack, can read messages, describe app icons or images, and give
information such as battery levels for visually impaired people. Other apps,
such as Voiceitt, can transcribe and standardize the voices of people with
speech impediments.
Wheelmap provides users with information about wheelchair accessibility.

And Evelity offers users indoor navigation tools that are customized to the
user’s needs, providing audio or text instructions and routes for wheelchair
accessibility.
Other AI implementations such as smart thermostats, smart lighting, and

smart plugs can be automated to work on a schedule to aid people with
mobility or cognitive disabilities lead more independent lives.
More advanced AI projects can combine with robotics to help physically

disabled people. HOOBOX Robotics, for example, uses facial recognition
software to allow a wheelchair user to move the wheelchair with facial
expressions, making movement easier for seniors and those with ALS or
quadriparesis.
Pro 3
Artificial intelligence can improve workplace safety.

AI doesn’t get stressed, tired, or sick, three major causes of human accidents
59
in the workplace. AI robots can collaborate with or replace humans for
especially dangerous tasks. For example, 50% of construction companies that

used drones to inspect roofs and other risky tasks saw improvements in
safety.
Artificial intelligence can also help humans be more safe. For instance, AI can
ensure employees are up-to-date on training by tracking and automatically
scheduling safety or other training. AI can also check and offer corrections for
ergonomics to prevent repetitive stress injuries or worse.
An AI program called AI-SAFE (Automated Intelligent System for Assuring

Safe Working Environments) aims to automate the workplace personal
protective equipment (PPE) check, eliminating human errors that could cause
accidents in the workplace. With COVID-19 and more people wearing more
PPE to prevent the spread of the virus, this sort of AI could protect against
outbreaks.
In India, AI was used in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic to reopen

factories safely by providing camera, cell phone, and smart wearable device-
based technology to ensure social distancing, take employee temperatures at
regular intervals, and perform contact tracing if anyone tested positive for the
virus.
AI can also perform more sensitive harm-reduction tasks in the workplace

such as scanning work emails for improper behavior and types of
harassment.
Con 1
AI will harm the standard of living for many people by causing mass
unemployment as robots replace people.
AI robots and other software and hardware are becoming less expensive and
need none of the benefits and services required by human workers, such as
sick days, lunch hours, bathroom breaks, health insurance, pay raises,
promotions, and performance reviews, which spells trouble for workers and
society at large.
48% of experts believed AI will replace a large number of blue- and even
white-collar jobs, creating greater income inequality, increased
unemployment, and a breakdown of the social order.
The axiom “everything that can be automated, will be automated” is no longer

60
science fiction. Self-checkout kiosks in stores like CVS, Target, and WalMart
use AI-assisted video and scanners to prevent theft, alert staff to suspicious
transactions, predict shopping trends, and mitigate sticking points at

checkout. These AI-enabled machines have displaced human cashiers. About

11,000 retail jobs were lost in 2019, largely due to self-checkout and other
technologies. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a self-checkout
manufacturer shipped 25% more units globally, reflecting the more than 70%
of American grocery shoppers who preferred self or touchless checkouts.
An Oct. 2020 World Economic Forum report found 43% of businesses

surveyed planned to reduce workforces in favor of automation. Many
businesses, especially fast-food restaurants, retail shops, and hotels,
automated jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Income inequality was exacerbated over the last four decades as 50-70% of
changes in American paychecks were caused by wage decreases for workers
whose industries experienced rapid automation, including AI technologies.
Con 2
AI repeats and exacerbates human racism.

Facial recognition has been found to be racially biased, easily recognizing the
faces of white men while wrongly identifying black women 35% of the time.
One study of Amazon’s Rekognition AI program falsely matched 28 members
of the US Congress with mugshots from a criminal database. 40% of the errors
were people of color.
AI has also been disproportionately employed against black and brown

communities, with more federal and local police surveillance cameras in
neighborhoods of color, and more social media surveillance of Black Lives
Matter and other black activists. The same technologies are used for housing
and employment decisions and TSA airport screenings. Some cities, including
Boston and San Francisco, have banned police use of facial recognition for
these reasons.
One particular AI software tasked with predicting recidivism risk for US

courts–the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative
Sanctions (Compas)–was found to falsely label black defendants as high risk at
twice the rate of white defenders, and to falsely label white defendants as low
risk more often.
In China, facial recognition AI has been used to track Uyghurs, a largely

Muslim minority. The US and other governments have accused the Chinese
61
government of genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang where a large population
of Uyghurs live.

Beyond facial recognition, online AI algorithms frequently fail to recognize

and censor racial slurs, such as a recent incident in an Amazon product
description for a black doll. AI is also incapable of distinguishing between
when the N-word is being used as a slur and when it’s being used culturally by
a black person. AI algorithms have also been found to show a “persistent anti-
Muslim bias,” by associating violence with the word “Muslim” at a higher rate
than with words describing other religions including Christians, Jews, Sikhs,
or Buddhists.
Con 3
Artificial intelligence poses dangerous privacy risks.

Facial recognition technology can be used for passive, warrantless
surveillance without knowledge of the person being watched. In Russia, facial
recognition was used to monitor and arrest protesters who supported jailed
opposition politician Alexei Navalny]. Russians fear a new facial recognition
payment system for Moscow’s metro will increase these sorts of arrests.
Ring, the AI doorbell company, partnered with more than 400 police
departments as of 2019, allowing the police to request footage from users’
doorbell cameras. While users were allowed to deny access to any footage,
privacy experts fear the close relationship between Ring and the police could
override customer privacy, especially when the doorbells frequently record
others’ property.
AI also follows you on your weekly errands. Target used an algorithm to

determine which shoppers were pregnant and sent them baby- and
pregnancy-specific coupons in the mail, infringing on the medical privacy of
those who may be pregnant, as well as those whose shopping patterns may
just imitate pregnant people.
Moreover, artificial intelligence can be a godsend to crooks. In 2020, a group

of 17 criminals defrauded $35 million from a bank in the United Arab
Emirates using AI “deep voice” technology to impersonate an employee
authorized to make money transfers. In 2019, thieves attempted to steal
$240,000 using the same AI technology to impersonate the CEO of an energy
firm in the United Kingdom.
62

1. Is artificial intelligence good for society? Explain your answer(s).
2. What applications would you like to see AI take over? What applications
(such as handling our laundry or harvesting fruit and fulfilling food orders)
would you like to see AI stay away from. Explain your answer(s).
3. Think about how AI impacts your daily life. Do you use facial recognition to
unlock your phone or a digital assistant to get the weather, for example? Do
these applications make your life easier or could you live without them?
Explain your answers.
63

Article 9: Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be

Increased?
History of Minimum Wage
The federal minimum wage, introduced in 1938 during the Great

Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was initially set at
$0.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress
22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. Most states plus
DC have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage, though
several states do not have minimum wage laws (which means workers in
those states default to the federal minimum wage).
Pro 1
Raising the federal minimum wage would not only allow minimum wage
workers to afford basic living expenses, but would also reduce income,
gender, and racial inequalities.
The current minimum wage is not high enough to allow people to afford
housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “In 2022, a
full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $25.82 on average to afford
a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This… is $18.57 higher than
the federal minimum wage of $7.25…. A full-time worker needs to earn an
hourly wage of $21.25 on average in order to afford a modest one-bedroom
rental home in the U.S.”
Further, 35% of families with full-time year-round employment do not earn

enough to pay for essentials including food and childcare. 59% of Hispanic
families, 52% of Black families, 25% of white families, and 23% of Asian
families that work full-time year-round cannot cover basic needs. Overall,
families would need to earn $11 more an hour to cover basic costs, with Black
and Hispanic families needing $12 more an hour.
Approximately 91% of workers who would benefit from a raised minimum

wage are over 20 years old, with 68% over the age of 25. Most are the primary
wage earners for their families, averaging about 52% of their family’s income,
and most are women and people of color. The current federal minimum wage
prevents these individuals and families from meeting basic needs like shelter
and food, as well as creating significant obstacles to healthcare, finances for an
emergency, and other expenses such as car upkeep. 64
Thus, the unaffordability of basic needs drives income, gender, and racial
inequality. Workers who have to pinch pennies do not have the money, time,
or other resources to invest in more education or job training for themselves

and their families, meaning they remain stuck in low-paying jobs with few to
no benefits such as sick days, health insurance, or retirement plans. Minimum
wage workers are then also subjected to irregular schedules that can make
the rest of life, such as picking up kids from school, difficult or impossible.
Increasing the minimum wage would not only bring relief to workers
struggling to make ends meet, it would also raise the incomes of people who
make slightly more than minimum wage. The Brookings Institution found that
increasing the minimum wage would result in higher wages for the 3.7 million
people earning minimum wage and up to 35 million workers who make up to
150% of the federal minimum wage.
The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) found that an increase
to just $10.10 an hour would raise wages for 28 million Americans–about nine
million of those due to the ripple effect.
Pro 2
Raising the minimum wage to match inflation and productivity would

benefit the economy by increasing consumer activity and spurring job
growth while lowering the federal deficit.
Because the federal minimum wage is not indexed for inflation, its purchasing
power (the number of goods that can be bought with a unit of currency) has
dropped considerably, hitting the lowest mark since 1956.
As journalist Megan Cerullo summarizes, “The federal minimum wage of $7.25

buys less today than it has at any point over the past 66 years…. The current
value of the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since February
1956, when the lowest U.S. wage was 75 cents — the equivalent of $7.19 in
June 2022 dollars.” Raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation
would ensure that low-wage workers could adopt a standard of living
commensurate with the current economy.
Further, while the estimates of how much the minimum wage should be
increased vary, many economists agree that if the wage had kept pace with
rising productivity and incomes, it would be higher than the current $7.25 an
hour.
If the minimum wage matched inflation as well as worker productivity and 65

other incomes, worker productivity would increase while employee turnover
decreased. Alan Manning, Professor of Economics at the London School of

Economics, explains, “As the minimum wage rises and work becomes more
attractive, labor turnover rates and absenteeism tend to decline.”
In turn, economic activity would increase, spurring job growth. The Economic
Policy Institute stated that a minimum wage increase from the current rate of
$7.25 an hour to $10.10 would inject $22.1 billion net into the economy and
create about 85,000 new jobs over a three-year phase-in period. And
economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago predicted that a $1.75
rise in the federal minimum wage would increase aggregate household
spending by $48 billion the following year, thus boosting GDP and leading to
job growth.
With an economic boom and more securely employed workers, the federal
deficit would decrease. According to James K. Galbraith, Professor of
Government at the University of Texas in Austin, “[b]ecause payroll- and
income-tax revenues would rise [as a result of an increase in the minimum
wage], the federal deficit would come down.”
Further, raising the minimum wage would help reduce the federal budget
deficit “by lowering spending on public assistance programs and increasing
tax revenue. Since firms are allowed to pay poverty-level wages to 3.6 million
people — 5 percent of the workforce — these workers must rely on Federal
income support programs. This means that taxpayers have been subsidizing
businesses, whose profits have risen to record levels over the past 30 years,”
according to Aaron Pacitti, Associate Professor of Economics at Siena College.
Pro 3
Increasing the minimum wage would have numerous social benefits

including reducing poverty and crime, and increasing school attendance
and the healthy population.
A 2022 Urban Institute study found that “[i]ncreasing the federal minimum
wage to $15 an hour would lift 7.6 million people in the United States out of
poverty.” A higher minimum wage would also reduce government welfare
spending. If low-income workers earned more money, their dependence on,
and eligibility for, government benefits would decrease. The Economic Policy
Institute determined that by increasing the minimum wage to $10.10, more
than 1.7 million Americans would no longer be dependent on government
assistance programs. They report the increase would shave $7.6 billion off
annual government spending on income-support programs. 66
Raising the minimum wage also lifts children out of poverty, increasing their
school attendance and decreasing dropout rates. One study found that raising
the California minimum wage to $13 an hour would increase the incomes of
7.5 million families, meaning fewer would live in poverty. Teens who live in
poverty are twice as likely to miss three or more days of school per month.
The study found that “recent experimental studies show that increasing
income can improve school performance.” Increasing the minimum wage
would also allow teens to work fewer hours for the same amount of pay,
giving them more time to study and reducing the likelihood that they would
drop out of high school. Alex Smith, Assistant Professor of Economics at the
United States Military Academy at West Point, found that “an increase in the
minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 (39%)… would lead to a 2-4 percentage
point decrease in the likelihood that a low-SES [socio-economic status] teen
will drop out.”
Raising the minimum wage would lead to a healthier population and prevent
premature deaths. California study found that those earning a higher
minimum wage would have enough to eat, be more likely to exercise, less
likely to smoke, suffer from fewer emotional and psychological problems, and
even prevent 389 premature deaths a year. [38] Because minimum wage
workers are more likely to report poor health, suffer from chronic diseases,
and be unable to afford balanced meals, “policies that reduce poverty and
raise the wages of low-income people can be expected to significantly improve
overall health and reduce health inequities.”
A society with less poverty, fewer school attendance and health issues, and a
higher minimum wage correlates to lower crime rates. According to one
study, “higher wages for low-income individuals reduce crime by providing
viable and sustainable employment… raising the minimum wage to $12 by
2020 would result in a 3 to 5 percent crime decrease (250,000 to 540,000
crimes) and a societal benefit of $8 to $17 billion dollars.” A study of crime
rates and the minimum wage in New York City over a 25-year period found
that “[i]ncreases in the real minimum wage are found to significantly reduce
robberies and murders… a 10 percent increase in the real minimum wage
results in a 6.3 to 6.9 percent decrease in murders” and a 3.4 to 3.7 percent
decrease in robberies.
Con 1
Raising the minimum wage would increase housing and consumer goods
costs for everyone and greatly disadvantage minimum wage workers.
In a study of minimum wage raises from 2000 to 2009, researchers found that 67
three months after a raise, housing rents increased. Lucas Hall, founder of
Landlordology.com, explains, “Raising the minimum wage causes a temporary
spike in spending power… but landlords raise rents as tenants are willing and
able to pay more.” As a result after “rents went up in response to the increase
in income, people still had some additional income compared to before. But it
wasn’t as big of a surplus as people would like to think raising the minimum
wage leads to,” according to Brent Ambrose, Jason and Julie Borrelli Faculty
Chair in Real Estate at Pennsylvania State University.
Plus that small surplus may end up covering the increased costs of everyday
items instead of going into a savings account or paying for additional
education. James Sherk, Research Fellow in Labor Economics at the Heritage
Foundation, argues, “Most minimum-wage employees work for small firms in
competitive markets. These companies have small profit margins. They can
only pay higher wages if they raise prices. Customers—not business owners—
pay that cost.” For example, NBC News found that the price of a cup of coffee
went up by 10 to 20% in Oakland, California, after a 36% minimum wage hike,
while coffee prices in Chicago rose 6.7% after the minimum wage rose to $10.
Raising the minimum wage could decrease employee benefits and increase tax
payments, further costing the employees. According to James Sherk, MA,
Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a single mother working full
time and earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would be over
$260 a month worse off if the minimum wage were raised to $10.10: “While
her market income rises by $494, she loses $71 in EITC [earned income tax
credit] refunds, pays $37 more in payroll taxes and $45 more in state income
taxes. She also loses $88 in food stamp benefits and $528 in child-care
subsidies.”
Raising the minimum wage also creates more jobs for more skilled workers,
disadvantaging teenagers, young adults, and those with less education and
experience. If employers have to pay an employee more, they will expect the
employee to have a more experienced skill set, essentially removing the job
from the tier of jobs available to minimum wage workers.
This dynamic also makes it more difficult for minimum wage workers to gain
upward mobility. Don Boudreaux, Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute,
explains, “the minimum wage cuts off the first rung of the employment ladder,
and it’s that first lowest paying rung that provides the skills and experience
workers need to reach the next rung and to continue climbing their way to a
better life.” Increasing minimum wage decreases entry-level jobs that are the
“route to the top” of the job ladder.
68
Con 2

Raising the minimum wage, instead of allowing the free market to

determine an appropriate rate, will decrease employee compensation,
while forcing businesses to close, use automation, or outsource jobs.
Increasing the minimum wage increases costs for businesses. If a business

cannot or will not support the increased cost, the first method of cost
correction is to cut hours or lay off employees. Researchers found that “For
every $1 increase in the minimum wage, …the total number of workers
scheduled to work each week increased by 27.7%, while the average number
of hours each worker worked per week decreased [sic] by 20.8%. For an
average store in California, these changes translated into four extra workers
per week and five fewer hours per worker per week — which meant that the
total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California
store actually fell by 13.6%.” The decrease in hours also meant erratic
schedules that are difficult for employees to maintain and a decrease in
eligibility for benefits such as retirement packages and healthcare.
If a business cannot afford to pay an appropriate amount of employees, the

business may be forced to close. Jamie Richardson, Vice President of fast food
chain White Castle, said that the company would be forced to close almost half
its stores and let go thousands of workers if the federal minimum wage were
raised to $15. Forbes reported that an increase in the minimum wage has led
to the closure of several Wal-Mart stores and the cancellation of promised
stores yet to open.
Businesses that cannot or will not pay a higher minimum wage may also turn
to more robots and automated processes to replace service employees. Oxford
University researchers explain “robots are already performing many simple
service tasks such as vacuuming, mopping, lawn mowing, and gutter cleaning”
and that “commercial service robots are now able to perform more complex
tasks in food preparation, health care, commercial cleaning, and elderly care.”
Or, businesses may choose to outsource jobs to countries where costs would
be lower. According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2,382,000 US
jobs were outsourced in 2015 with 44% of companies saying they did so to
reduce or control costs. A survey of 400 US Chief Financial Officers (CFOs)
found that 70% of CFOs would “increase contracting, outsourcing, or moving
actual production outside the United States” if the minimum wage were raised
to $10 an hour.
69
To avoid all of those problems, the free market should determine minimum
wages, not the federal government. 82% of small businesses agreed that “the
government should not be setting wage rates.” According to Mark J. Perry of

the American Enterprise Institute, government-mandated minimum wages

“are always arbitrary and almost never based on any sound economic/cost-
benefit analysis… [I]n contrast market-determined wages reflect supply and
demand conditions that are specific to local market conditions and vary
widely by geographic region and by industry.” Perry said market-determined
wages result in more employment opportunities for unskilled workers,
increased profits for companies, and lower prices for the consumer.
Con 3
Raising the federal minimum wage would exacerbate income disparities

and the cycle of poverty.
Cost of living varies wildly in the United States. For example, living in New
York, California, and Hawaii costs significantly more than living in Mississippi,
Kansas, or Montana. If the federal government raises the minimum wage
significantly, the wage will be proportionately much higher in lower income
states, meaning employers will not be able to afford the costs of paying
employees and residents will not be able to afford the cost of living increases
necessary to make up the difference. Small rural communities would
especially suffer from the disparity.
Further, a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that
although low-income workers see wage increases when the minimum wage is
raised, “their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these
changes is a decline in earned income… minimum wages increase the
proportion of families that are poor or near-poor.”
As explained by George Reisman, Professor Emeritus of Economics at

Pepperdine University, “The higher wages are, the higher costs of production
are. The higher costs of production are, the higher prices are. The higher
prices are, the smaller the quantities of goods and services demanded and the
number of workers employed in producing them.” Thus, raising the minimum
wage would actually increase poverty among minimum wage workers.
The increase in poverty combined with an increase in minimum wages could

entice high school students with limited opportunities to drop out of school to
begin earning. Students from impoverished backgrounds may also drop out of
school in order to increase their family’s income. As Mark J. Perry, of the
American Enterprise Institute, explains, the students are then further
disadvantaged: “the attraction to higher wages from minimum wage 70
legislation reduces high school completion rates for some students with
limited skills, who are then disadvantaged with lower wages and career
opportunities over the long-run if they never finish high school.”
Similarly, raising the minimum wage would increase crime. According to a

study by Boston College economists, increasing the minimum wage leads to
reduced employment which leads to an increase in thefts, drug sales, and
violent crime. Their results indicate that “crime will increase by 1.9
percentage points among 14-30 year-olds as the minimum wage increases.”
Researchers found that between 1977 and 2012 increases in the minimum
wage resulted in “no significant change” in the rates of violent crime or
property crime.
Did You Know?
1. America's minimum wage law was signed in 1938. The minimum wage was
set at 25 cents, which is equivalent to $5.19 in 2022 dollars.
2. 44% of minimum wage earners are under 25 years old.
3. 30 states and DC have set minimum wages above the federal minimum of
$7.25 an hour. As of Jan. 12, 2023, the highest is DC, at $16.50 an hour,
followed by Washington state at $15.74 an hour.
4. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most
recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.
5. The first state minimum wage laws, introduced between 1912 and the early
1930s, only covered women and minors. The first to cover men was
introduced in 1937 in Oklahoma.
71

Article 10: Reparations for Slavery

Reparations are payments (monetary and otherwise) given to a group that
has suffered harm. For example, Japanese-Americans who were interned in
the United States during World War II have received reparations.
Arguments in favor of reparations for slavery date to at least Jan. 12, 1865,
when President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and
Union General William T. Sherman met with 20 African American ministers
in Savannah, Georgia. Stanton and Sherman asked 12 questions, including:
“State in what manner you think you can take care of yourselves, and how can
you best assist the Government in maintaining your freedom.” Appointed
spokesperson, Baptist minister, and former enslaved person Garrison Frazier
replied, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn
it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have
something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it
and make it our own.”
On Jan. 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 that authorized
400,000 acres of coastal land from Charleston, South Carolina to the St.
John’s River in Florida to be divided into forty-acre plots and given to newly
freed enslaved people for their exclusive use. The land had been confiscated
by the Union from white slaveholders during the Civil War. Because Sherman
later gave orders for the Army to lend mules to the freedmen, the phrase
“forty acres and a mule” became popular.
However, shortly after Vice President Andrew Johnson became president

following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on Apr. 14, 1865, he worked to
rescind the order and revert the land back to the white landowners. At the end
of the Civil War, the federal government had confiscated 850,000 acres of
former Confederates’ land. By mid-1867, all but 75,000 acres had been
returned to the Confederate owners.
Other efforts and arguments have been made to institute or deny reparations
to descendants of enslaved pwopl since the 1860s, and the issue remains
divisive and hotly debated. An Oct. 2019 Associated Press-NORC Center for
Public Affairs Research poll found 29% of Americans overall approved of
reparations. When separated by race, the poll showed 74% of Black
Americans, 44% of Hispanics, and 15% of white Americans were in favor of
reparations.
72
While Americans generally think of reparations as monetary, Michelle
Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the office’s June 1, 2021
annual report, states: “Measures taken to address the past should seek to
transform the future. Structures and systems that were designed and shaped
by enslavement, colonialism and successive racially discriminatory policies
and systems must be transformed. Reparations should not only be equated
with financial compensation. They also comprise measures aimed at
restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition,
including, for example, formal acknowledgment and apologies,
memorialization and institutional and educational reforms. Reparations are
essential for transforming relationships of discrimination and inequity and for
mutually committing to and investing in a stronger, more resilient future of
dignity, equality and non-discrimination for all. Reparatory justice requires a
multipronged approach that is grounded in international human rights law.
Reparations are one element of accountability and redress. For every
violation, there should be repair of the harms caused through adequate,
effective and prompt reparation. Reparations help to promote trust in
institutions and the social reintegration of people whose rights may have been
discounted, providing recognition to victims and survivors as rights holders.”
President Obama outlined the political difficulty of reparations on his podcast

with Bruce Springsteen, “Renegades: Born in the U.S.A.” He said, “So, if you
ask me theoretically: ‘Are reparations justified?’ The answer is yes. There’s
not much question that the wealth of this country, the power of this country
was built in significant part — not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of
it — but a large portion of it was built on the backs of slaves. What I saw
during my presidency was the politics of white resistance and resentment, the
talk of welfare queens and the talk of the undeserving poor and the backlash
against affirmative action… all that made the prospect of actually proposing
any kind of coherent, meaningful reparations program struck me as,
politically, not only a non-starter but potentially counterproductive.”
In May 2023, Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) introduced a bill to pay $14
trillion in reparations to Black Americans. She states, “The United States has a
moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of
Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people…. We
know that we continue to live under slavery’s vestiges. We know how slavery
has perpetuated Jim Crow. We know how slavery’s impacts live on today.”
An Oct. 2021 Gallup Center on Black Voices survey found 62% of American
adults believe the federal government has an obligation to reduce the effects
of slavery; 37% believe the government has no such obligation. Of those who
support government action, 65% believe all Black Americans should benefit, 73
while 32% believe only the descendants of enslaved people should benefit.

Should the Federal Government Pay Reparations to the Descendants of

Enslaved People?
Pro 1
Slavery led to giant disparities in wealth that should be addressed with

reparations.
The wealth of the United States was largely built on the backs of enslaved
people. As Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and correspondent for The Atlantic,
explains, “by 1836 more than $600 million, almost half of the economic
activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton
produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were
emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America: $3 billion in
1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined.”
African Americans were not compensated for their economic contribution,

leading to decades of financial struggle. The most recent data available shows
that Black Americans held about 2.6% of US wealth while being 13% of the
population. On average, white households had a net worth of $80,000 more
than Black households.
William A. Darity Jr., Duke University economist, and Kirsten Mullen,

folklorist, state, “The origins of this gulf in Black and White wealth stem from
the immediate aftermath of slavery when a promise made to provide the
formerly enslaved with 40 acres in land grants went unmet—while many
White Americans were provided substantial ‘hand outs’ (typically 160 acres)
of land in the west.”
Experts from the Hamilton Project, the Federal Reserve, and the Brookings
Institute note, “Efforts by Black Americans to build wealth… have been
impeded in a host of ways, beginning with 246 years of chattel slavery and
followed by Congressional mismanagement of the Freedman’s Savings Bank
(which left 61,144 depositors with losses of nearly $3 million in 1874), the
violent massacre decimating Tulsa’s Greenwood District in 1921…, and
discriminatory policies throughout the 20th century including the Jim Crow
Era’s ‘Black Codes’…, the GI bill, the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act…,
and redlining. Wealth was taken from these communities before it had the
opportunity to grow.”
As Darity and Mullen conclude, “Public policy has created the Black–White 74
gulf in wealth, and it will require public policy to eliminate it.” Reparations is
one such public policy.

Pro 2
Slavery left African American communities at the mercy of the “slave

health deficit,” which should be addressed with reparations.
Health Policy Research Scholar Brittney Butler explains, “The health effects of
slavery and racism in the U.S has transcended generations and laid the
foundation of poor health for Black families in the U.S…. The connection
between health disparities and racism dates back to slavery. The Slave trade
introduced European diseases to African and Indigenous populations, and
prior to arriving to these shores, the long journey to North America and the
horrible ship conditions increased risk for disease and mortality with the
leading cause of death being dysentery. If they survived the treacherous
journey, they were forced to live and work under inhumane conditions that
further exacerbated their risk for chronic and respiratory diseases. During
slavery, white physicians experimented on, exploited and discarded Black
bodies under the auspice of advancing medicine … once the enslaved people
were free, they had minimal access to health care and other basic necessities.”
Post-slavery, health disparities continued in terms of differences in access to

and care within the health care system, as well as higher levels of disease due
to higher rates of exposure and differing life opportunities. Black Americans
are more likely to be underinsured or uninsured, and less likely to have a
primary care physician. High blood pressure, asthma, strokes, heart disease,
cancer, and diabetes are more prevalent among African Americans than white
Americans.
Oliver T. Brooks, President of the National Medical Association, states, “It is

known that the social determinants of health (SDoH) play as important a role
in a person’s health as genetics or medical treatment. There are broadly six
SDoH categories: economic stability, physical environment, education, food
community and social content and healthcare systems. African Americans are
adversely affected in this arena.”
Brooks continues, in terms of COVID-19, “with poorer housing we cannot

generally socially isolate at home each in a different wing of the house; in
some instances, there may be six people in a 2-bedroom apartment. We work
in types of employment that will not allow us to work from home; going out to
work puts one at a higher risk of acquiring the infection. Many of these jobs
also do not provide healthcare coverage.” Reparations could bolster African
American healthcare as well as the underlying social conditions that have 75
resulted in the health disparity.

Pro 3
There is already precedent for the paying of reparations to the

descendants of slaves and to other groups by the US federal government,
US state and local governments, and international organizations.
The US federal government paid reparations to victims of Japanese

internment camps via the Japanese-American Claims Act of 1948 ($38 million
between 1948 and 1965), and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (a $20,000
payment to each survivor for a total of $1.6 billion by 1998).
Victims of the Tuskegee Study, which infected 399 Black men with syphilis
and left them untreated, were paid $10 million in reparations and they and
their families were given lifelong medical care by the US government.
Not only has the US paid reparations to victimized groups, but around 900
Washington, D.C., slaveholders were paid about $23 million in 2020 dollars to
free 2,981 slaves in Apr. 1862 through the Compensated Emancipation Act in
DC, which Lincoln also tried in several states where the acts failed.
North Carolina set up a $10 million reparations program for the estimated
7,600 people the state forcibly sterilized between 1929 and 1974. Virginia
paid $25,000 to each of the living survivors of about 8,000 people forcibly
sterilized by the state. Florida passed a $2 million reparations plan for victims
of the 1923 Rosewood race riot. Chicago, Illinois, passed an ordinance to pay a
minimum of $20 million in reparations to victims of police brutality from
1972 to 1991 under Police Commander John Burge.
As of 2012, the German government had paid $89 billion to victims of the
Nazis through a reparations program begun in 1952. The country continues to
pay reparations. In 2003, South Africa paid $85 million in reparations to 19,00
victims of apartheid crimes.
Georgetown University offered reparations to descendants of the 272

enslaved people the Jesuits sold in 1838. Students voted for a $27.50 increase
in fees to raise about $400,000 per year for a reparations fund. Virginia
Theological Seminary ($1.7 million) and Princeton Theological Seminary
($27.6 million) have followed suit, and at least 56 colleges and universities
have joined Universities Studying Slavery to explore the legacy of slavery at
the institutions.In 2018, the Society of the Sacred Heart, an organization of
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Catholic nuns, paid reparations to descendants of people enslaved by the
organization.

In 1998, German electronics company Siemens created a $11.9 million fund

for slave labor used in World War II, following a similar announcement by
German automaker Volkswagen.
If reparations can be paid to groups other than the descendants of enslaved

people by the government, and to the descendants of enslaved people by
independent groups, then reparations can be paid by the federal government.
Con 1
No one currently living is responsible for righting the wrongs committed

by long dead slave owners.
Over 150 years ago, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865,
ending slavery in the United States. The first enslaved African arrived on
American soil more than 400 years ago in 1619. The last living survivor of the
transatlantic slave trade, Matilda McCrear, who arrived in Alabama in 1860,
died in Jan. 1940.
As of Apr. 2020, millennials are the largest living adult age group in the United
States. Born in 1981 or later, the 72.1 million American millennials would
have to go back at least five or six generations to find a slave or slave owner in
their lineage, if there were any at all.
Should people so far removed from slavery be held accountable for the
damage?
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) states, “I don’t think reparations for
something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living
are responsible is a good idea…. We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of
slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We
elected an African American president.”
McConnell continues, “I think we’re always a work in progress in this country

but no one currently alive was responsible for that and I don’t think we should
be trying to figure out how to compensate for it.”
Steven Greenhut, Western Region Director for R Street Institute, also notes,
“White Americans whose families arrived after the segregation era will
wonder why they must pay for the sins of other people’s ancestors. Instead of
solving problems, everyone will fight over money. It will end up only being
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about the money. This is not how to help a nation reckon with its past.”
Scott Reader, a reporter, summarizes, “The fact of the matter is I don’t believe
in collective guilt. I don’t believe all Muslims can be blamed for the 9-11
terrorist attacks, that all gun owners are to blame for violence in our cities or
that all Americans are responsible for the injustice of slavery.”
Con 2
The idea of reparations is demeaning to African Americans and would

further divide the country along race lines.
Reparations require the country to put a literal price on the generational
traumas of slavery. How much is one slave’s suffering worth to the country?
What is the compensation for several generations of enslaved ancestors?
Determining those numbers could insult descendants and other Americans
alike.
Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, stated in 2019 testimony

before Congress: “If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide
the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required
to solve the problems facing black people today; we would insult many black
Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors; and we would
turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a
coalition into a transaction — from a union between citizens into a lawsuit
between plaintiffs and defendants.”
Hughes continues, “[P]aying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a

mistake … [because] the people who were owed for slavery are no longer
here, and we’re not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations, by
definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations,
you’ve made me into a victim without my consent.”
Former NFL player Burgess Owens expands on the idea of victimhood: “At the
core of the reparation movement is a divisive and demeaning view of both
races. It grants to the white race a wicked superiority, treating them as an
oppressive people too powerful for black Americans to overcome. It brands
blacks as hapless victims devoid of the ability, which every other culture
possesses, to assimilate and progress. Neither label is earned…. It is their
divisive message that marks the black race as forever broken, as a people
whose healing comes only through the guilt, pity, profits and benevolence of
the white race.”
Meanwhile, if reparations were paid, the country’s problems with racial

inequality would not be solved and may actually be exacerbated. 78
Columnist Ron Chimelis explains, “Angry white Americans will say, ‘Stop
whining about racism in modern America. Stand for the flag of the country

that just sent you a check. We paid you, that’s it and we’re done.’ But we
wouldn’t be done, because racism certainly does still exist in America. It’s
more subtle than slavery, and it won’t be solved only through legislation
because you can’t entirely legislate basic human respect.”
Con 3
Reparations would be too expensive and difficult to implement.

While the potential cost of reparations is abstract without a definite plan, one
estimate figured by William A. Darity Jr., an economist at Duke University, and
Kirsten Mullen, a folklorist, based on Sherman’s “40 acres and a mule” order
put the 2019 cost at $80,000 per African American descended from enslaved
people, or approximately $2.6 trillion taxpayer dollars if estimating for about
30 million descendants of enslaved people. That estimate is about 55% of the
$4.7 trillion US budget for 2019.
Financial writer Brett Arends, took another approach to calculations, using

the values assigned to generations of enslaved people in 1800, 1830, and 1860
and adding interest, resulting in a $16 trillion price tag for reparations. At the
time of this 2019 calculation, the entire US national debt was $22 trillion.
Beyond the financial difficulty of implementing reparations, there is the

question of who would receive payments. Oprah Winfrey can trace her lineage
to 19th-century slaves, but she’s worth an estimated $2.6 billion. Does her net
worth negate a reparations payment?
Then there is the trouble of determining who is a descendant of enslaved

people. Barack Obama, though African American, does not have Black
American ancestry because his father was Kenyan and his American mother
was white.
Many biracial people or more recent Black immigrants, though not

descendants of American enslaved people, may have suffered the societal
leavings of slavery but may not be included in reparations payments.
Further, Ancestry.com notes the unique difficulties of tracing African

American ancestry in the South to prove slave ancestors, including “family
members’ name and nickname changes, the passage of enslaved people from
one family member to another without a deed of sale, and the dispersion of
family members who were sold away from the rest of their families.”
79
The article continued, “When slaves arrived on American shores, they often
were given the surname of their first owner, if they had a surname at all.
Others did not take the slave owner’s name until after Emancipation. As
former slaves grew accustomed to their freedom in the years after the Civil
War, many rejected their former owners’ names and created new surnames
for themselves.” Simply proving one is a definitive ancestor of slavery may be
difficult.
Finally, as Joe Biden asked of reparations in 2020, “[W]ill it include Native

Americans as well”? According to one estimate, reparations to indigenous
Americans would cost another $35 trillion.
Simply determining who is eligible for reparations could come with a hefty
price tag.
1. Should the federal government pay reparations to the descendants of

enslaved people? Why or why not?
2. Should the federal government, state or local governments, or individual

businesses offer contrition for slavery in other ways? If so, what ways and
why? If not, why?
3. Would paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved people help or

hurt race relations in the United States?
80

Article 11: Should Medical Marijuana Be Legal?

History of Medical Marijuana
The use of medical marijuana dates to ancient civilizations, though historians

are undecided about whether the first medical use of cannabis was in China,
where the plant is indigenous.
Archaeologists unearthed traces of cannabis with high levels of THC (the main
psychoactive component of cannabis) in wooden bowls dating to 500 BCE in
the Jirzankal Cemetery in China, marking the earliest instance of marijuana
use found to date.
Pro & Cons Arguments
Pro 1
Marijuana is beneficial as a medicine with fewer risks than opioids and

other prescribed drugs.
Medical marijuana is most commonly used for pain in the US. “While
marijuana isn’t strong enough for severe pain (for example, post-surgical pain
or a broken bone), it is quite effective for the chronic pain that plagues
millions of Americans, especially as they age,” explains primary care physician
and cannabis specialist, Peter Grinspoon.
Marijuana also offers pain relief for patients who are suffering the pain of
multiple sclerosis or general nerve pain. In contrast with marijuana, the
commonly prescribed drugs for these ailments are often heavily sedating,
which can impair quality of life.
Marijuana, particularly CBD (the main nonpsychoactive component in

cannabis), has also shown potential to treat high blood pressure,
inflammation and related neuropathic pain, anxiety disorders (including
generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and post-
traumatic stress disorders), gastrointestinal (GI) disorders (including irritable
bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s, and
ulcerative colitis), epilepsy and other seizure syndromes, as well as the
prevention of drug and alcohol addiction relapse and alleviation of the effects
of chemotherapy.
“Medical marijuana” also includes drugs chemically derived from marijuana, 81

rather than only preparations of the plant itself. According to the National
Institutes of Health, “THC itself has proven medical benefits in particular
formulations.”
In the US, the FDA approved THC-based Marinol and Cesamet to treat nausea
in chemotherapy patients and for appetite stimulation in AIDS patients. Also
FDA-approved is the CBD-based Epidiolex, which treats Dravet and Lennox-
Gastaut syndromes in children. Sativex, a THC- and CBD-based drug
for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, is approved for use in the UK, Canada,
and some European countries.
The bottom line: marijuana has been used as medicine for thousands of years.
The drug should be legalized and studied to reap the full benefits.
Pro 2
Marijuana is safer than some legal drugs and preferred by patients.

Many patients prefer marijuana for pain because it is less addictive and
carries less risk of overdose than opiates.
Three researchers from the University of British Columbia BC Centre on

Substance Use in Vancouver, argue: “Although cannabis use is neither risk free
nor a panacea, the risks it poses of physical dependence and accidental
overdose compared with opioid use are substantially lower—indeed, fatal
overdose with cannabis has never been documented and is thought to be
impossible. Especially in the era of the opioid overdose crisis, the
common sequelae [results] of opioid use disorder (e.g., fatal overdose,
acquisition or transmission of blood-borne diseases) are hardly comparable
to those of cannabis use disorder at either individual or population levels. The
lower relative risks associated with cannabis are reflected in substantially
lower rates of cannabis-associated morbidity, mortality and societal costs
compared with opioids in Canada, despite much higher levels of exposure.
Simply put: it is not perception that cannabis has fewer relative harms than
opioids; it is evidence.”
Marijuana can also be used instead of NSAIDs (Advil and Aleve, for example)
if someone has kidney problems, ulcers, or gastroesophageal reflux
disease (GERD), making it potentially safer for people with those conditions.
Studies also show many patients prefer to use marijuana instead

of lorazepam, clonazepam, and alprazolam for anxiety disorders and
instead of sertraline, trazodone, or bupropion for depression.
Pro 3
82
Americans have agreed for decades that medical marijuana should be

legal.

Widespread American approval of marijuana is seen in the many states that

have legalized its use. Since California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, 36
states and DC have followed suit as of December 2022.
Of those living in the United States, 83.5% live in a state (or DC) with legal
medical marijuana. Only 16.5% live in one of the 13 states without legal
medical marijuana.
Additionally, polls and elections for more than 20 years have shown
Americans united on the legalization of medical marijuana.
Of 96 polls and elections collected by ProCon between 2000 and 2022, only
three had less than 50% support for legalizing medical marijuana. Two were
elections in South Dakota (Nov. 2006 and Nov. 2010); however, South Dakota
legalized medical marijuana in 2020.
The third was a poll of 960 physicians nationwide by researchers at Rhode

Island Hospital for presentation to the American Society of Addiction
Medicine in Apr. 2001. The doctors were split fairly evenly: 36% believed they
should be able to legally prescribe medical marijuana, 26% were unsure, and
38% were against the practice.
However, a 2021 study found 70.7% of physicians at the 2019 American

College of Emergency Physicians’ Annual Conference “believed that cannabis
has medical value,” and, further, that 79.6% of the physicians would choose
marijuana over opioids if cannabis were found to be more effective, and
52.3% would choose marijuana if it were found to be equally as effective as
opioids.
Approval of legalization crosses party lines as well as age and race

demographics in what Pew Research Center deemed “overwhelming support”
in an Apr. 16, 2021, poll. Among Democrats, 95% believed medical marijuana
should be legal, joined by 87% of Republicans.
92% of white Americans would legalize medical marijuana, along with 91% of
Black Americans, 89% of Asian Americans, and 87% of Hispanic Americans.
The largest support among age groups for medical marijuana comes from
those aged 18-29 (94%) and 65-74 (93%). However, no age group dropped
below 85% approval (those aged 75+).
83
Medical marijuana enjoys so much support among Americans that many now
approve of the legalization of recreational marijuana as well.

Con 1
Medical legalization of marijuana makes a drug that is dangerous to

children, teenagers, and young adults more readily available.
Whether medical marijuana is legalized for everyone or only adults,
legalization provides everyone more access to the drug. [38]
“An ‘unintended consequence’ of marijuana legalization is the impact on the

pediatric population. From prenatal exposure to unintentional childhood
exposures, through concerns of adolescence abuse and marijuana use for
medicinal indications in children, marijuana exposure can affect pediatric
patients at every stage in childhood. Regardless of the stage or reason of
exposure, concerns exist about short-term and long-term consequences in a
child’s physical and mental health,” argues Sam Wang, Associate Professor of
Pediatrics-Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of
Medicine.
Adult use of marijuana, medical or otherwise, during pregnancy can cause

child development problems during and after pregnancy. If exposed to
marijuana before birth, children may be more susceptible to “increased
hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention symptoms” and problems with
“visual-motor coordination, processing speed, [and] visual memory.”
Any drug at home poses potential risks for children, but medical marijuana
edibles look like regular treats (gummy bears, hard candies, and chocolate
bars, to name a few), yet are infused with potent marijuana. And, unlike a
regular treat, a marijuana infused edibles should be carefully portioned for
the correct dosage. A child accidentally eating an entire marijuana candy bar
could overdose and end up in serious medical distress. Within just five years,
accidental cannabis exposures in kids aged one to six who ate edibles
increased 1,375% from 207 cases in 2017 to 3,054 in 2021.
The danger does not decrease as children age. According to the National
Institutes of Health, “heavy chronic marijuana consumption in young people
under the age of 25 has been associated with decreased cognitive and
executive function.” Researchers are not yet certain whether the damage is
permanent, but one New Zealand study found teens who smoked marijuana
heavily and developed a marijuana use disorder lost 8 IQ points on average
between ages 13 and 38.
84
Con 2
Marijuana has dangerous side effects.

The National Institutes of Health offers a litany of negative mental side

effects, including “altered senses (for example, seeing brighter colors), altered
sense of time, changes in mood, impaired body movement, difficulty with
thinking and problem-solving, impaired memory, hallucinations (when taken
in high doses), delusions (when taken in high doses), [and] psychosis (risk is
highest with regular use of high potency marijuana).”
Physical side effects include breathing problems such as “daily cough and
phlegm, more frequent lung illness, and a higher risk of lung infections,” an
increased heart rate (which, in turn, increases the risk of heart attack), and
Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (“regular cycles of severe nausea,
vomiting, and dehydration, sometimes requiring emergency medical
attention”).
Further, between 9% and 30% of people who use marijuana are at risk of
developing a substance use disorder. And, with THC levels steadily increasing,
the potential for addiction only grows as users need more and more
marijuana to feel the desired effects.
Colorado legalized medical marijuana in 2000 and recreational marijuana in

2012. The state saw a 40% increase in cannabis-related emergency room (ER)
visits between 2012 and 2014. Colorado hospitals have seen a 50% increase
in marijuana-related cyclic vomiting syndrome. Burn admissions also
increased.
However, these are the known side effects. Because the drug has not been
studied as thoroughly as other drugs, there may be unexpected consequences
to medical marijuana use.
Con 3
Recreational marijuana only should be decriminalized while researchers

properly study the medicinal effects of the drug.
Decriminalizing recreational marijuana means possession of a small amount
for personal use does not carry the risk of arrest, jail time, or a criminal
record, but instead are ticketed like a minor traffic violation, according to
NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), which
reports 26 states have partially or fully decriminalized recreational
marijuana.
85
However, the medical benefits and safety of marijuana have not been studied
enough to determine if the benefits outweigh the risks associated with the
drug. Additional study also allows more specific-use analysis (for example,

does a particular marijuana derivative help a particular ailment, and does

marijuana treat a condition not yet associated with the drug?).
Sarah C. Hull, cardiologist at Yale School of Medicine, explains why we should

not rush into legalization of medical marijuana: “Decriminalization of
marijuana will create significant opportunities to conduct this research, but
common-sense regulation based on science must be implemented
simultaneously to create an ethical policy framework. This should aim to
promote public health through comprehensive education programs and
protection of vulnerable populations such as adolescents, while recognizing
the right of autonomous adults to make decisions about their own health but
not to act in a way that might compromise the health of others.
Hull argues further that “significant criminal penalties” should not be attached
to adult possession or use of marijuana as such punishments have
“entrench[ed] systemic racism.”
She concludes, “There is substantial need for more research to guide specific
policy development going forward, and in the meantime, recreational use
(though not medicinal use) should be generously taxed to fund research
efforts as well as addiction treatment in order to enhance benefits to society.”
As with any drug, marijuana should be thoroughly studied for medical

applications before being widely used as medicine. “Once we understand on
the brain level what effect it is having on cognition, then we can see how it can
be applied for all sorts of purposes, but first we need to know exactly what it’s
doing. If it’s going to be introduced to society in a big way, we need to know
what the potential harms and benefits are,” argues Earl Miller, cognitive
neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower
Institute for Learning and Memory.
86

Article 12: Should Medical Aid in Dying Be Legal?

History of Medical Aid in Dying (MAID)
Medical aid in dying (MAID) is also called medical assistance in dying,

physician-assisted suicide (PAS), physician-assisted death/dying (PAD), and
self-determination in dying. The New York State Bar Association defined
MAID as “when a terminally ill, mentally competent adult patient, who is likely
to die within six months, takes prescribed medicines, which must be self-
administered, to end suffering and achieve a peaceful death.”
MAID differs from euthanasia, which is when a healthcare provider

administers a fatal drug, and from passive euthanasia, which is when artificial
life support is withheld or stopped (such as feeding tubes and ventilators).
Euthanasia is illegal in the United States but legal in some countries,
including Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Pro 1
MAID allows terminally ill people to choose a “good death.”

The word “euthanasia” comes from the Greek word euthanatos, which means
“easy death” or “good death.”
In English, “euthanasia” has meant a good death since Francis

Bacon described it as “after the fashion and semblance of a kindly & pleasant
sleepe” in the early 17th century. The phrase “good death” has been
associated with medical aid in dying ever since.
While individual definitions of a “good death” may vary, a literature review

found 94% of reports about what makes for a good death placed “preferences
for dying process (94% of reports), pain-free status (81%), and emotional
well-being (64%)” at the top of the lists from patients, family members, and
healthcare providers.
Many opponents of MAID define the practice as suicide, and thus not a good
death. However, the American Association of Suicidology asserted that
“suicide and physician aid in dying are conceptually, medically, and legally
different phenomena.”
87
Anita Hannig, Associate Professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, also
distinguishes MAID from suicide: “Terminally ill patients who seek an assisted
death aren’t suicidal. Absent a terminal prognosis, they have no independent
desire to end their life…. Patients who pursue medical aid in dying are no
longer looking at an open-ended life span either. To qualify for an assisted
death in states with these laws they must already be on the verge of dying –
that is, within six months of the end of their life. These patients don’t face a
meaningful decision between living and dying, but between one kind of death
and another.”
Moreover, because of the waiting periods enforced by MAID laws, the patients
have had time to carefully consider their choices for medical care and their
own moral or spiritual obligations. Patients who choose medical aid in dying
are typically surrounded by family, friends, and other loved ones when they
die in a peaceful and comfortable environment. The patients have had time to
say goodbye to other people in their lives.
Medical anthropologist Mara Buchbinder has amplified on the benefits of

MAID, especially for patients facing a drawn-out physical and mental decline
punctuated by incessant medical interventions and a painful and heavily
sedated death: “MAID renders not only the time of death but also the broader
landscape of death open to human control. MAID allows terminally ill patients
to choreograph their own deaths, deciding not only when but where and how
and with whom. Part of the appeal is that one must go on living right up until
the moment of death. It takes work to engage in all the planning; it keeps one
vibrant and busy. There are people to call, papers to file, and scenes to set
[turning]… dying into an active extension of life.”
Pro 2
MAID is a matter of bodily autonomy, a right everyone should have.

Autonomy is “the state or condition of self-governance, or leading one’s life
according to reasons, values, or desires that are authentically one’s own.”
Bodily autonomy, in turn, is control over one’s physical being.
MAID laws are written “to offer agency and autonomy at the end of life in lieu
of suffering, indignity, and shame.”
We should protect the “personal autonomy people should have to decide that
they don’t want to continue living to the end of a condition from which they
will die after many months, weeks, or days of suffering, both physically and
existentially–that is, when there is no longer purpose in their lives,” according
to lawyer Lamar W. Hawkins. 88
“Our own [US] Supreme Court, nearly 30 years ago, found that we all have the
right to decide what medical care we are willing to accept,” adds Hawkins.

“We should also have a right to decide what suffering we are willing to endure
and receive medical assistance necessary to avoid the suffering we want to
avoid. Our essential right to take our own lives when faced with unwanted
suffering is undeniable–no state prohibits it. What we don’t yet have
everywhere is the right to receive assistance in doing so, an omission that
discriminates against the too feeble, the too ill, and the too disabled, who
nevertheless know their own minds and deserve the assistance necessary to
exercise that essential right.”
For many terminally ill patients who are interested in MAID and go through
the process to qualify and obtain a prescription, just having the lethal
medication on hand relieves anxieties and fears about not only their
potentially excruciating deaths but the lives and good moments they have left.
Many find support from family, friends, and medical professionals to continue
their lives for a while longer. In fact, many do not take the prescription
medication and instead die from the terminal illness itself, but they die more
peacefully having had the option of ending their lives and suffering on their
own terms.
Pro 3
MAID ensures thoughtful regulation of the practice.

American death with dignity laws are based on Oregon’s 1994 law, which was
the first such American law enacted. The laws all have “stringent eligibility
requirements” and “safeguards that [d]ata and studies show… work as
intended, protecting patients and preventing misuse.” The safeguards include
but are not limited to: being an adult with a terminal illness and fewer than six
months to live, mentally competent, and able to self-administer the drugs.
Each state requires the patient to make several requests to several doctors in
person with witnesses and waiting periods between requests. And the patient
may stop the process at any time before taking the lethal medication.
Healthcare providers are under no obligation to participate in MAID but, if

they do, they have to stop the process for mental health evaluations if needed
or if coercion is suspected. Each state also has strict reporting protocols.
Even Catholic priests have recognized the need for regulated death without
agreeing morally with MAID. “And of the two possibilities, assisted suicide is
the one [versus euthanasia] that most restricts abuses…. [So] it is a question of 89
seeing which law can limit evil,” argues Father Renzo Pegoraro, Chancellor of
the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Many consider medical aid in dying laws a slippery slope to the abuse of
vulnerable groups. But as journalist George Will pointed out, “Life is lived on a
slippery slope: Taxation can become confiscation, police can become
instruments of tyranny, laws can metastasize suffocatingly. However, taxation,
police and laws are indispensable. The challenge is to minimize dangers that
cannot be entirely eliminated from society…. MAID, enveloped in proper
protocols, can and should be a dignity-enhancing response to especially
harrowing rendezvous with the inevitable.”
Rather than denying terminally ill people the grace of a good death because
the law might go awry, society should work to strengthen protections for
vulnerable groups and enforce laws that already make actions such as elder
abuse illegal.
Con 1
MAID dangerously normalizes suicide.

Suicide is “the act of intentionally taking one’s own life.” Medical aid in dying
is the act of taking a fatal dose of medication to end one’s own life.
“The more a society becomes pro some suicides, the more normalized suicide
will become. Indeed, unless we recognize that the proper answer to suicide
ideation is suicide prevention—for everyone, not just some—the ‘right’ to
commit suicide could become as fundamental as the right to life,” according to
Wesley J. Smith, Chair and Senior Fellow at the Center on Human
Exceptionalism.
Legalizing some suicides via medical aid in dying sends the message to those
who are not terminally ill but who may be struggling with mental or physical
illness, drug addiction, or other hardships that suicide is an acceptable
solution available for them.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 700,000 people die from
suicide every year globally.
In 2020, suicide was the twelfth leading cause of death in the United States,
bumped down from the number 10 spot held in 2019 due to COVID-19 deaths
and an increase in chronic liver disease and cirrhosis deaths. The overall rate
of suicide increased 30% between 2000 and 2020.
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Suicide was the second leading cause of death for people aged 10-34 and the
fifth for people aged 35-54, making suicide “a major contributor to premature
mortality,” according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

In addition to the 45,900 Americans who died by suicide in 2020, some 12.2
million other adults reported serious thoughts of suicide, 3.2 million adults
made plans to die by suicide, and 1.2 million adults actually died by suicide.
Steven Wade, Executive Director of the Brain Injury Association of New

Hampshire, highlights as well the many “populations, including veterans,
teens, people with disabilities, brain injury survivors and the elderly who are
‘pre-disposed’ to suicide for reasons including depression, lack of autonomy
and inability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable.” Those
populations, he argues, are especially endangered by the “dangerous
precedent” of legalizing some suicides, as well as by others who could exploit
MAID laws “to steer vulnerable members of our society — who are not
necessarily dying — in the direction of death instead of care.”
“A taboo (not stigma) against suicide is an instrumental piece of suicide

prevention,” according to psychiatrist Mark Komrad. Thus, instead of
promoting any kind of suicide, governments should focus on suicide
prevention, effective healthcare, and compassionate palliative care.
Con 2
MAID endangers vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities, the

elderly, and people of color.
Among the dangers of legalizing medical aid in dying is the potential to exploit
the laws to kill vulnerable people.
The Center for Disability Rights points to the troubling reality that many
disabled people are at the mercy of unscrupulous caregivers, medical
providers, and insurance companies. Legal MAID endangers a community “at
grave risk of coercion and abuse while creating an opportunity for insurance
companies to enhance their bottom line.”
Legalizing MAID “invites coercion,” according to attorney Margaret Dore,

because abusive or impatient heirs and caregivers can shepherd the elderly
toward suicide by helping them complete the necessary steps, picking up their
medication, and potentially even administering the lethal drug because no
witnesses are required at the time of death.
“BIPOC [Black Indigenous and People of Color] Disabled people are at greater
risk from assisted suicide laws because of racial disparities in health care,” 91
says Ayishetu Salifu Mamudu, Deaf Systems Advocate at the Regional Center
for Independent Living. “Although privileged white people present this as a
rights issue, the reality is that BIPOC are in the cross hairs of this bad policy. I

urge policy makers to recognize that and understand that in establishing this
rights [sic] for some people, BIPOC individuals – and others – will die before
their time. That is unacceptable.”
Instead of facilitating suicide, palliative care is an effective, compassionate

solution that does not imperil vulnerable groups. Zach Garafalo, Manager of
Government Affairs at the Center for Disability Rights, points out that “anyone
dying in discomfort that is not otherwise relievable, already may legally
receive palliative sedation, wherein the patient is sedated to the point that the
discomfort is relieved while the dying process takes place. We already have a
legal solution to any uncomfortable deaths that does not endanger others the
way an assisted suicide law does.” Legal hospice organizations already
provide this end-of-life care and comfort.
Con 3
MAID is a slippery slope to legal euthanasia and worse.

Describing legal MAID as a “moral cliff” rather than a slippery slope, John
Stonestreet and Shane Morris, both of the Colson Center for Christian
Worldview, highlight the fact that the “patient may request to die, but the
doctor is still the one who determines whether the patient is competent and
eligible. Small wonder that wherever medical aid in dying has been legalized,
doctors and lawmakers have quickly begun asking why they need [a] patient’s
permission before exercising ‘compassion’…. Once death is a treatment option,
patients can no longer trust their doctors, their insurance companies, or even
their families to have their best interests at heart. ‘Terminal illness’ quickly
broadens to include ‘intolerable suffering’ which soon broadens to include
‘mental suffering.’”
While the laws may be written with good intent, time chips away at the
restrictions that might protect people. For example, in 2022, Oregon
eliminated the requirement that patients requesting MAID be state residents.
In 2021, Canada, which legalized MAID and euthanasia simultaneously,

removed the criterion that the patient be dying or have a terminal illness; now
any patient with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” may request
MAID or euthanasia.
In 2002, Belgium extended euthanasia to children over 12, and recent health
ministers have even tried to extend the law to all children. 92
“As the world’s pioneer, the Netherlands has also discovered that although
legalising euthanasia might resolve one ethical conundrum, it opens a can of

others – most importantly, where the limits of the practice should be drawn,”
says journalist Christopher de Bellaigue. Specifically, “the idea that a measure
introduced to provide relief to late-stage cancer patients has expanded to
include people who might otherwise live for many years, from sufferers of
diseases such as muscular dystrophy to sexagenarians with dementia and
even mentally ill young people.”
As MAID becomes more common globally, the ethical and moral concern we
should have over issues as serious as doctoring, death, and euthanasia is
dangerously weakened.
93

Article 13: TikTok Bans

TikTok is a “social media platform designed for creating, editing, and sharing
short videos between 15 seconds and three minutes in length. TikTok
provides songs and sounds as well as filters and special effects that users can
add to their videos.” The app, launched in 2018, is owned by
the Chinese company ByteDance. For more on the history of TikTok,
visit Encyclopaedia Britannica.
As noted by Britannica, “Regulators in the United States and the European

Union have expressed privacy, safety, and security concerns about TikTok.”
Specifically, there are concerns that the company could share sensitive user
data with the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP), track the videos watched
by Americans, and even manipulate the information seen by Americans to
sway public opinion about China and influence American elections, serving, in
a sense, as a propaganda and spying arm of the CCP. Some observers see this
mission as part of China’s “Digital Silk Road” initiative, launched in 2015.
These concerns have led to debates about whether to ban the app on
government devices and, further, for everyday citizens.
On Aug. 6, 2020, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order

13942 that banned transactions between ByteDance (TikTok’s parent
company) and U.S. citizens, effectively banning the app altogether. However,
on Nov. 12, 2020, citing a court case brought by three TikTok stars–Douglas
Marland (comedian), Cosette Rinab (fashion influencer), and Alex Chambers
(musician)–the U.S. Department of Commerce stated it would not enforce
the ban. President Joe Biden then went one step further, signing Executive
Order 14034 on June 11, 2021, that overturned Trump’s Executive Order
13942 (as well as two other Trump executive orders that focused on Chinese
social media companies) and ordered a review of foreign-owned apps by
government agencies.
Further restrictions on TikTok, however, followed in 2022. The Consolidated

Appropriations Act, signed on Dec. 29, 2022, included the No TikTok on
Government Devices Act championed by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). The act
requires TikTok to be removed from all U.S. government devices and bans
government employees from downloading the app on government devices as
of Mar. 29, 2023 (30 days after the memorandum), instructing the heads of
executive departments and agencies to enact the change). Other efforts to ban
the app have been considered in Congress, including the DATA Act and
94
the RESTRICT Act, both introduced in 2023, but no legislation had passed as
of May 24, 2023.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations have tried to force ByteDance to
sell TikTok, or to sell TikTok’s American operations. Thus far, ByteDance has
refused to do so, though TikTok has reportedly taken steps to secure
American data on servers in the United States.
Concerns about the app intensified in Mar. 2023 when reports that
the FBI and Department of Justice were investigating TikTok for allegations
that its employees had inappropriately accessed American journalists’ data.
Many observers worried that the app was spying on journalists for the
Chinese government.
Following the federal lead, a majority of states have also banned TikTok on
government devices and networks. Only 17 states and D.C. did not have a
statewide ban of TikTok on government devices as of May 24, 2023, and four
of those 17 have partial bans. For a list of these states, click here.
Montana has gone a step further. On Apr. 14, 2023, legislators in that state
passed SB0419 that would ban TikTok in Montana and prohibit online stores
from offering the social media app as of Jan. 1, 2024. The ban includes a
$10,000 penalty per violation per day for TikTok and the app store providing
the platform. However, individual users would not be subject to the fine. If
TikTok were sold to “a company that is not incorporated in an adversarial
nation,” the ban would be lifted. Montana governor Greg Gianforte sent the bill
back to the legislature with amendments that would expand the ban to all
social media apps that provide “certain data to foreign adversaries” and
remove penalties for app stores. Gianforte signed the amended bill into law on
May 17, 2023, banning TikTok in Montana. The next day, five TikTok content
creators filed a lawsuit and TikTok filed a lawsuit against the state on May 22,
2023, both lawsuits claim the law violates the First Amendment.
To the dismay of many students, some college campuses have banned TikTok
from college WiFi networks or on college-owned devices (many colleges are
state-run, meaning college WiFi networks and devices are state-owned).
Among those with bans are Auburn University, Arkansas State University,
Boise State University, the University System of Georgia, Idaho State
University, University of Idaho, University of Iowa, Iowa State University,
University of Northern Iowa, Montana University System, Oklahoma State
University, The University of Central Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma,
South Dakota state universities, University of Texas at Austin, University of
Houston System, and Texas A&M University. 95
Beyond U.S. borders, TIkTok was banned on NATO-issued devices on Mar. 31,
2023. Australia, Canada, Denmark, the European

Union, France, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,

and Taiwan have banned TikTok from government
devices. Bangladesh, Belgium, Indonesia, and Pakistan have had temporary
bans on the social media app, while Afghanistan (2022) and India (2020)
have banned the platform altogether. China has retaliated by prohibiting the
U.S. version of TikTok and all other American social media apps.
50% of Americans support a TikTok ban by the U.S. government, with 22%
opposed and 28% unsure. However, only 19% of TikTok users themselves
support a ban, with 56% opposed and 24% unsure, according to a Mar. 31,
2023, poll by the Pew Research Center.
The question remains, with 150 million monthly American active users,
should the U.S. government or state governments enact TikTok bans?
Should TikTok Be Banned?
Pro 1
TikTok poses a threat to U.S. national security, serving as a propaganda

arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
While TikTok may seem filled with innocuous cat videos and dance
challenges, Chinese law requires that Chinese companies share information it
gathers with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including users’ private
data. “The CCP’s laws require Chinese companies like ByteDance to spy on
their behalf. That means any Chinese company must grant the CCP access and
manipulation capabilities as a design feature,” explains U.S. Representative
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).
Should Chinese government officials gain access to TikTok user data,

intelligence opportunities could be uncovered to recruit a spy, blackmail a
target, or otherwise influence American culture to its benefit. The issue is not
that the site collects personal data—many online sites do that—but that the
country widely perceived as a competitor if not an enemy of the United States
can see the information if not also manipulate content for nefarious, political
purposes.
Further, the Chinese government could manipulate TikTok’s algorithm or

other operations to expose Americans to communist propaganda, which could
be used to influence elections, domestic and international policy, and other 96
political processes.

“The US government cannot ignore TikTok as a potential national security

threat, even if efforts to crack down on the company alienate a generation of
future voters…. Republicans [and] Democrats agreed this is a threat…. We
have to deal with it before it’s too late,” implores U.S. Representative Mike
Gallagher (R-WI).
Pro 2
TikTok is rife with dangerous misinformation that the government can

and should rightly ban.
“TikTok is a misinformation minefield,” says journalist Queenie Wong.
19.4% of TikTok videos contain misinformation according to a Sep. 2022

report. From “tutorials” to make dangerous drugs at home to extremist false
political claims to misleading clips of speeches to “deep fake” videos, TikTok
not only contains but promotes dangerous, inaccurate, and inappropriate
information.
While misinformation is a problem in and of itself, the concern is magnified

significantly because, according to Google data, TikTok is being used as the
primary search engine of Gen Z, so much so that the Wall Street Journal called
the app the “new Google.”
Researchers from the University of Regina note that TikTok is an especially

difficult case because the platform only hosts videos: “misinformation videos
may pose a uniquely difficult target for debunking attempts because they
often appear highly immersive, authentic, and relatable, which might cause
people to process videos more superficially and believe them more readily.”
“We shouldn’t be playing Whac-a-Mole with every individual piece of content,

because it feels like we’re playing a losing game and there are much bigger
battles to fight. But this stuff is really dangerous, even though it feels like a fact
checker or reverse image search would debunk it in two seconds. It’s
fundamentally feeding into this constant drip, drip, drip of stuff that’s
reinforcing your worldview,” says Claire Wardle, Co-director of the
Information Futures Lab at Brown University. Banning TikTok is much more
effective than the “Whac-a-Mole” approach to misinformation.
Further, TikTok is unique in promoting challenges that are dangerous and

deadly. The “Tide Pod challenge” put TikTok on the radar in 2018 with an 97
increase in calls to poison control centers, The dangerous and deadly
challenge asked users to bite down on a laundry detergent packet, which lead

to the consumption of toxic chemicals that seriously burn the mouth,

esophagus and respiratory tract.
Despite at least six deaths from the laundry pod challenge, TikTok persists in
promoting dangerous challenges from daring people to shave down their
teeth with nail files to the “Coronavirus challenge” in which users licked
public toilet seats and subway hand grips to see who could contract COVID-19
first (not to mention any number of other communicable diseases).
The “Borg challenge” called for mixing alcohol with caffeine, electrolytes, and
water and led to the hospitalization of many college students. The “Blackout
challenge” dared kids to choke each other to the point of unconsciousness and
resulted in at least 20 deaths. The “Beezin’ challenge” asked young people to
put menthol or peppermint lip balm on their eyelids under the mistaken
impression that doing so would increase their alcohol or drug “buzz;” though
the act could also cause blindness.
No matter how many fact-checking and safety notices companies release to

consumers, click-hungry and impressionable people will be misinformed and
endanger themselves on TikTok. Taking away the platform is the only answer,
and the American government has the authority to ban platforms linked to
foreign adversaries.
Pro 3
A “tough on China” approach is needed to safeguard the United States and

its citizens.
China is a growing national security concern for the United States. The FBI
cautions that the “counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts
emanating from the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party
are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the
United States.”
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who sponsored the Bipartisan RESTRICT Act,
explains, “Congress has recognized that the Chinese Communist Party is not
our dear friend. Any question about what China intends to do and what
authoritarians intend to do, is able to be seen by their treatment of the people
in Hong Kong, the Uyghur people in China. You can see what authoritarians
want to do [by] watching what Russia is doing in Ukraine. We have to
recognize that we face geopolitical adversaries that are serious and threaten 98
our security, our prosperity, and even the peace and freedom that we enjoy.”

“One thing that is a lot worse than having our government infringe on our
privacy is having the Chinese Communist Party infringe on our privacy and be
able to track us and follow us. Whether it is with social media or other
technologies—communication technologies or the hardware that they devise
over the coming years—we have to make sure we have the resources in place
and the authorities in place to stop those things before they endanger us,”
concludes Romney.
While the threat may seem abstract to those who just want to participate in
the #booktok or #musictok communities, China has been amping up
espionage activities. A Chinese spy balloon operated over the United States
from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, 2023, collecting “intelligence from several sensitive
American military sites” including electronic signals from weapons systems
and communications from those on the military sites. And two New York
residents were arrested for operating an “illegal overseas police station… for a
provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC)” in Apr. 2023.
TikTok is but one crucial piece to a tough stance on China.
Con 1
TikTok is no more a threat than American-owned social media sites that

collect and sell user data.
The Washington Post and Pellaeon Lin, researcher at the University of
Toronto’s Citizen Lab, both examined TikTok independently and came to the
conclusion that TikTok “does not appear to collect any more data than your
typical mainstream social network.” In fact, Facebook and Google both collect
more personal data from users than TikTok.
As Lin argues, “Governments around the world are ignoring their duty to
protect citizens’ private information, allowing big tech companies to exploit
user information for gain. Governments should try to better protect user
information, instead of focusing on one particular app without good
evidence…. What I would call for is more evidence-based policy.”
Further, data security issues are endemic to the industry: “At Twitter, internal
controls were so lax that an ex-employee was convicted of using his access to
spy on Saudi dissidents, and a whistleblower said that the company had hired
an employee in India who had used his access to spy on Indian dissidents.” 99
Rather than make TikTok a scapegoat for the social media industry, the U.S.
government should better regulate the industry as a whole.

Con 2
TikTok has no more dangerous information than other social media sites,
and attempts to ban it are unconstitutional.
“For the average user, TikTok appears no more risky than Facebook. That’s
not entirely a compliment,” explains technology columnist Geoffre Fowler.
“No government, as far as we know, has ever told Americans what they can or
can’t download from an app store or access on the web,” TikTok states in a
response to Montana’s ban.
Banning TikTok would violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
As activist Evan Greer explains, “The US government can’t ban you from
posting or watching TikTok videos any more than they can stop you from
reading a foreign newspaper like the Times of India or writing an opinion
piece for The Guardian.”
“Do we really want to emulate Chinese speech bans? We don’t ban things that
are unpopular in this country,” states Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). [22]
Further, banning TikTok amounts to the government criminalizing specific

businesses without evidence of wrongdoing. Not only would TikTok itself
suffer, but the many businesses that use the platform could also be decimated.
TikTok estimates “nearly 5 million businesses seeking expansion and success,
including countless small businesses,” use the app. Many small businesses rely
solely on TikTok for promotion and sales.
The government shouldn’t be allowed to remove a legitimate revenue stream

from TikTok influencers, whether the additional income is a small boost
(small accounts report between $9 to $38 a day) or a large brand deal like that
of Jon Seaton, football player for Elon University, who earned $250,000
through TikTok deals with Meta and Dr. Pepper.
The bottom line: banning speech and legal jobs is discriminatory, un-
democratic, un-American, and unconstitutional.
Con 3
Singling out China and TikTok for recriminations is xenophobic and rank
political theater.
100
Xenophobia is the “fear and contempt of strangers or foreigners or of anything
designated as foreign, or a conviction that certain foreign individuals and

cultures represent a threat to the authentic identity of one’s own nation-state

and cannot integrate into the local society peacefully.”
In other words, TikTok bans are being considered solely because the U.S. and
state governments fear China.
Herb Lin, senior researcher at Stanford University’s Center for International

Security and Cooperation, explains, “Nobody would be paying this kind of
attention if it were British. It’s because it’s Chinese.”
“This is xenophobic. And it’s part of another Red Scare,” explains U.S.
Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Far more dangerous, he says, was the
2016 Russian disinformation campaign, the amplification of toxic rhetoric
preceding the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and the organization of Jan. 6,
2021 insurrectionists on Facebook—all were more dangerous than TikTok
and its Chinese owner.
Plus, banning TikTok would give preference to American companies who

commit the same data collection sins. Journalist Kara Swisher notes the bans
will help other social media sites, primarily Facebook.
“Twitter,” she explains, “is no Nirvana garden party, it’s a very toxic place –
and so this is a bigger issue that they [the U.S. government] should be dealing
with, but in this case, they’re going to aim at TikTok because of the Chinese
government.”
“I’m not at all saying TikTok is innocent, but focusing specifically on one app
from one country is not going to solve whatever problem you think you’re
solving. It truly misses the point. Do we really think that Facebook or Google
are not capable of being influenced by the Chinese government? They know a
market when they see one. I think the pressure that’s building is basically a
race to be seen as tough on China,” concludes David Kahn Gillmor of the
ACLU.
The chance of an everyday person being specifically targeted by the Chinese

government is low. “If you’re not a defense contractor or you’re not someone
who’s likely to be of specific interest to the Chinese government…then I would
say your risk is much higher from Facebook and Instagram, all those things
where those companies are doing the best to hire people to figure out how to
make you more addicted to their product,” says Justin Cappos, engineering
101
professor at New York University.

“I cannot stress this enough — the national security concerns are purely
hypothetical. And rather hysterical,” argues CNN Senior Editor Allison
Morrow.
Journalist Karl Bode calls the ban rhetoric “the great TikTok moral panic of
2023” and notes the uproar over TikTok is simply a purposeful distraction
from the lack of larger policy solutions for the industry at large.
In the end, what we have here is “a big dumb performance in which we

pretend that banning a single app actually does anything of use. After all, the
Chinese, Russian, and U.S. governments can all just buy data from the poorly
regulated data broker market. They don’t need TikTok for surveillance and
propaganda; they have plenty of data brokers and U.S. tech giants for that,”
Bode continues.
“Just that myopically fixating on the ban of one app — but doing nothing about
the shitty policy environment that created the problem — is more political
performance than meaningful solution. A performance that will annoy young
voters, make it tougher on researchers and educators, uproot established
community, face numerous First Amendment challenges, and not actually fix
the core issues,” explains Bode.
Calls to ban TikTok gives politicians the opportunity to appear to be “tough on

China” without pinpointing or addressing actual threats.
1. Should American federal or state governments ban TikTok on government

devices? Why or why not?
2. Should TikTok be banned for the average American citizen? Explain your
answer(s).
3. What policies should be enacted (if any) to minimize the risk of social media
challenges and private data leaks? Explain your answer(s).
102

Article 14: Is Social Media Good for Society?

Around seven out of ten Americans (72%) use social media sites such
as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, up from 26% in
2008.
On social media sites, users may develop biographical profiles, communicate

with friends and strangers, do research, and share thoughts, photos, music,
links, and more.
Proponents of social networking sites say that the online communities

promote increased interaction with friends and family; offer teachers,
librarians, and students valuable access to educational support and materials;
facilitate social and political change; and disseminate useful information
rapidly.
Opponents of social networking say that the sites prevent face-to-face

communication; waste time on frivolous activity; alter children’s brains and
behavior making them more prone to ADHD; expose users to predators like
pedophiles and burglars; and spread false and potentially dangerous
information.
Pro 1
Social media promotes community that can translate into or supplement

offline relationships.
Using social media, people can have friends with similar interests in multiple
cities, states, and countries. Closer to home, social media can help people find
each other in a busy world, from mom groups and soccer leagues to book
clubs and historical reenactment groups.
“[M]ost young people will say that social media and networked games are a
lifeline to supportive connections with friends and loved ones. This was
critical during the [COVID-19] pandemic when schools and sports were off
limits. Social media can also be a way for young people to connect with others
with shared interests and identities, which can be a lifeline for youth with
marginalized or stigmatized identities such as LBGTQ+ youth or racial and
religious minority youth,” explained Mizuko Ito, Professor of Information and
Computer Sciences at the University of California at Irvine. 103
And the opposite is also true, While social media “does not substitute for in-
person contact. Relationships that might previously have gone dormant now
persist over time [online]. As such, social media users tend to report that they
have access to more social support and have lower psychological distress,”
offered Keith Hampton, Professor of Media and Information at Michigan State
University.
Studies have shown that not only does social media participation not
completely obliterate in-person friendships as once feared, but that online
relationships are a key supplement that add to one’s well-being. People are
able to share more of their lives with friends and family and may receive
crucial support from groups they do not have in offline life.
80% of teens felt more connected to friends, 67% felt they had people to
support them, and 58% felt more accepted because of social media.
Traditional barriers to friendships are reduced or completely removed for

adults who are no longer in school or do not have a pool of coworkers,
particularly when working from home. Shy, introverted, or socially reticent
people can use social media to reach out to potential friends with lowered
barriers and risks.
Social media can also promote school and work communities. The platforms
allow students and parents to connect to each other as well as teachers and
other school staff outside of school hours to establish relationships as well as
connect with outside community members and experts for internships,
interviews, and other opportunities. For work, employees can connect with
remote coworkers and other companies for what used to be “water cooler
chats,” as well as for global project collaboration, advice, and career
networking.
Pro 2
Social media encourages civic and political responsibility.

“Many of today’s youth take to digital spaces to develop their civic identities
and express political stances in creative ways, claiming agency that may not
be afforded to them in traditional civic spaces. The key difference between
civic engagement by youth today and older, more traditional forms of action is
the availability of digital technology, which provides a low-barrier-to-entry
canvas for young people to create content that is potentially vastly scalable,”
according to a 2020 UNICEF report.
104
Social media creates a more equitable point of entry and space for continued
civic and political activity than traditional spaces. This easy access
“contributes to a sense of socio-political empowerment,” which, in turn,

makes young people more likely to participate in offline political activities,

including voting.
Carla, a self-identified Latina young person, explained, “I feel like it’s my duty,
that I come from a heritage of people that don’t have a voice, don’t have the
opportunity to say something… it’s my duty to be like ‘this is wrong.’ And
hopefully that inspires someone else to be like ‘oh, she’s right,’ or ‘oh, he’s
right.’ And I want to be a part of that, so that’s why I do it. We’re a generation
where we have a voice.”
Meanwhile, many young people are taking responsibility to properly vet

information they share. Jeremy noted, “I found myself becoming much more
active [during an election] to some degree, in terms of reposting different
pieces of information that I try to vet as much as possible… I found myself
once or twice having to delete stories because of the information ended up
being incorrect, and I felt like it was my obligation to immediately take it
down.”
Social media allows for political activists to fundraise, partner with

influencers to boost the message, promote events including marches, share
stories, and spread awareness of their chosen issue(s). For example, social
media use fueled political protests including the Arab Spring, Black Lives
Matter, #LoveWins, #MeToo, and Occupy Wall Street.
Presidents Obama and Trump both used social media to an unprecedented

degree to communicate with both US citizens and people abroad. “Social
media not only enables the politicians to directly communicate with the
citizens but also encourages political participation of citizens in the form of
feedback via comments on social networking sites,” according to researchers.
Pro 3
Social media bolsters inclusivity and diversity on- and offline.

Social media brings everyone together into one online space. With tools
including hashtags and groups, people from diverse backgrounds who have
similar identities, interests, or goals can find each other easily. For instance,
“social media sites offer critical opportunities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans,
queer, and other sexual and/or gender minority (LGBTQ+) youth to enhance
well-being through exploring their identities, accessing resources, and
connecting with peers.“ 105
Similarly, people can explore people, cultures and ideas with which they are
unfamiliar without judgment from their offline communities. Pew Research

Center found that in a “survey of adults in 11 nations across four global

regions… in many key respects, smartphone users – and especially those who
use social media – are more regularly exposed to people who have different
backgrounds.”
For example, in Lebanon, social media users are 76% more likely to interact
with people of different religious groups, 58% more likely to interact with
people of different races and ethnic groups, 68% more likely to interact with
people of different political parties, and 81% more likely to interact with
people of different income levels than Lebanese people who do not use social
media.
Further, many companies extend their Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
policies to online spaces, allowing not only employees but also diverse
customers, clients, and others to be included equitably. For example,
“bilingual social media content has emerged as a tool used to increase
diversity and rights for minority groups. On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,
Snapchat, and other social platforms, organizations such as Tide Pods by
Unilever have released bilingual images that support diverse communities.
Nonprofits are currently producing bilingual content across the globe to
increase equality further internationally. Bilingual social media content is now
becoming a marketing tool for organizations to learn about other cultures
worldwide. It can help them connect with their followers by using images that
promote acceptance and understanding of cultural diversity,” according to
Maria Ochoa, founder and CEO of Emprender Creative.
Creating a diverse online space can translate into a diverse work environment
as employees and customers of diverse backgrounds feel included and, in
turn, interact with the company.
Con 1
Social media promotes cyberbullying that spills into offline life.

Cyberbullying is “the electronic posting of mean-spirited messages about a
person (such as a student) often done anonymously.” Specific types of
cyberbullying include but are not limited to: flaming (online arguments with
personal attacks), outing (revealing someone’s sexual orientation without
permission), trolling (being antagonistic to start arguments),
and doxing (revealing private information without permission).
106
66% of teens believe social media companies are not doing enough to curb
cyberbullying. And 33% of kids have deleted a social media account to avoid
cyberbullying.

Pew Research Center found 59% of American teens had been bullied online,
including offensive name-calling (42%), false rumors (32%), unsolicited
receipt of explicit images (25%), “someone other than a parent constantly ask
where they are, who they’re with or what they’re doing” (21%), physical
threats (18%), and non-consensual sharing of explicit images of the teen
(7%).
However, not only teens engage in cyberbullying or experience the effects.

Kids as young as ten face cyberbullying, specifically racist attacks, globally.
And 41% of American adults reported being harassed online, ranging from
offensive name-calling (31%) to stalking (11%). Adults were most likely to be
targeted for political views (50%), their gender (33%), race or ethnicity
(29%), religion (19%), and sexual orientation (16%). 75% of adults who have
been cyberbullied indicated the harassment happened on social media.
The harms carry over into offline life. People under the age of 25 who were
cyberbullied were more than twice as likely to “self-harm and enact suicidal
behavior” than non-victims.
Cyberbullying victims of any age are subject to mental, emotional, and

physical harms, including upset, embarrassment, anxiety, shame, depression,
loss of sleep, headaches, and stomachaches. Victims may be less productive or
skip school and work. Some may turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the
distress.
Cyberbullying can also have large-scale global implications. Amnesty

International accused Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and
WhatsApp among others) of fueling the Rohingya massacres in Myanmar.
The organization stated: “The mass dissemination of messages that advocated
hatred, inciting violence, and discrimination against the Rohingya, as well as
other dehumanizing and discriminatory anti-Rohingya content, poured fuel on
the fire of long-standing discrimination and substantially increased the risk of
an outbreak of mass violence.”
Con 2
Social media encourages the spread of misinformation.

Social media users frequently collect in echo chambers, which are generally
figurative but sometimes literal places where similarities among people
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greatly outnumber differences. Users may share biases, political affiliations,
gender, race, sexual orientation, income, employment status, or any number of
other demographic identifiers.

Echo chambers allow misinformation to flourish because users are less likely
to fact-check a post by someone with whom they identify and want to agree.
Outside of an echo chamber, someone is more likely to fact-check and stem
the misinformation before it goes viral. Further, within an echo chamber,
extreme misinformation is more likely to go viral to encourage engagement on
the social media platform among the echo chamber’s participants.
Social media platforms exploit and manipulate the impulse for like-minded
people to gather by programming algorithms to show more information of the
same vein and by not controlling the bots and trolls that spread
misinformation.
“Human biases play an important role: Since we’re more likely to react to
content that taps into our existing grievances and beliefs, inflammatory
tweets will generate quick engagement. It’s only after that engagement
happens that the technical side kicks in: If a tweet is retweeted, favorited, or
replied to by enough of its first viewers, the newsfeed algorithm will show it
to more users, at which point it will tap into the biases of those users too—
prompting even more engagement, and so on. At its worse [sic], this cycle can
turn social media into a kind of confirmation bias machine, one perfectly
tailored for the spread of misinformation,” explained Chris Meserole, Director
of Research for the Brookings Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology
Initiative.
According to a 2022 study, “[d]isaster, health, and politics emerged as the

three domains where misinformation [on social media] can cause severe
harm, often leading to casualties or even irreversible effects…. [For example,]
misinformation in these areas has higher potential to exacerbate the existing
crisis in society.”
Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted about the COVID-19

pandemic: “We are not just fighting an epidemic; we are fighting an
infodemic,” referring to the misinformation populating social media feeds
about the virus. The same might be said about any number of topics
populating social media feeds.
Con 3
Social media increases privacy risks across the Internet.

Social media is a hotbed of privacy risks including but not limited 108
to phishing, data mining, malware sharing, and botnet attacks.

Only 49% of Americans had any confidence that social media companies could
protect their private information, the least amount of faith afforded the
organizations and businesses that collect private data including the federal
government, cell phone service providers, and retailers.
Moreover, while 74% indicated that control over shared private information
was “very important,” only 9% felt they had “a lot of control” over the
information.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) argued, “the extraordinary

growth of social media has given platforms extraordinary access and influence
into the lives of users. Social networking companies harvest sensitive data
about individuals’ activities, interests, personal characteristics, political views,
purchasing habits, and online behaviors. In many cases this data is used to
algorithmically drive user engagement and to sell behavioral advertising—
often with distortive and discriminatory impacts.”
Further, as EPIC noted, “tracking and behavioral advertising by social media

companies is not limited to the platforms themselves. Firms like Facebook use
hard-to-detect tracking techniques to follow individuals across a variety of
apps, websites, and devices. As a result, even those who intentionally opt out
of social media platforms are affected by their data collection and advertising
practices.”
Thus, social media compromises everyone’s data across the Internet,

including “location information, health information, religious identity, sexual
orientation, facial recognition imagery, private messages, personal photos,
and more.” Much of that information can be used for identity theft, in-person
robbery, and any number of other crimes. And, as noted above in the
argument about cyberbullying, the release of such information could also
result in stalking, outing LGBTQ+ people, and religious intolerance online. The
information could also be used to influence opinions and spread
misinformation among vulnerable people.
Additionally, information gathered from social media can be used by insurers

to deny health coverage or home insurance, businesses to deny employment,
and others to make decisions.
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Did You Know?
1. Social media sites are one of the top news sources for 46% of Americans,
compared to 66% for television, 26% for printed newspapers, and 23% for
radio.
2. Students who used social networking sites while studying scored 20%
lower on tests and students who used social media had an average GPA of
3.06 versus non-users who had an average GPA of 3.82.
3. A 2018 Kaplan Test Prep survey found that 25% of college admissions
officers checked an applicant's social media to learn more about them, up
from 10% in 2008 but down from a high of 40% in 2015. 42% of these
admissions officers discovered information that had a negative impact on
prospective students' admission chances.
4. 81% of teens age 13 to 17 reported that social media makes them feel more
connected to the people in their lives, and 68% said using it makes them feel
supported in tough times.
5. Worldwide, people spent a daily average of 2 hours and 23 minutes on

social media in 2019, up from about 1 hour 30 minutes in 2012. With a daily
average of 4 hours 1 minute, the Philippines logged the most time on social
media of any other country, followed by Brazil at 3 hours 45 minutes.
110

Article 15: Should the United States Maintain Its

Embargo against Cuba?
History of the Cuba Embargo
Since the 1960s, the United States has imposed an embargo against Cuba,
the Communist island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The embargo,
known among Cubans as “el bloqueo” or “the blockade,” consists of economic
sanctions against Cuba and restrictions on Cuban travel and commerce for all
people and companies under U.S. jurisdiction.
The United States and Cuba have not always been at odds. In the late 1800s,
the United States was purchasing 87% of Cuba’s exports and had control over
its sugar industry. In the 1950s, Havana’s resorts and casinos were popular
destinations for American tourists and celebrities such as Frank
Sinatra and Ernest Hemingway.
Pro 1
Ending the embargo would only help the government, not regular Cuban
citizens.
The 90% state-owned economy ensures that the Cuban government and
military would reap the gains of open trade with the United States, not private
citizens. Foreign companies operating in Cuba are required to hire workers
through the state and wages are converted into local currency and devalued at
a ratio of 24:1, so a $500 wage becomes a $21 paycheck. A Cuban worker
stated, “In Cuba, it’s a great myth that we live off the state. In fact, it’s the state
that lives off of us.”
The embargo enables the United States to apply pressure on the Cuban
government to improve human rights. Several international organizations
have written about the long history of human rights abuses and repression in
Cuba. At least 4,123 people were detained for political reasons in 2011, and an
estimated 6,602 political detentions occurred in 2012. Since the United States
agreed to re-open the US embassy in Cuba, the Cuban government has
continued to persecute and arrest its own citizens. Arbitrary short-term
detentions increased between 2010 and 2016, from a monthly average of 172
detentions to a monthly average of 827 detentions. While the average had 111
dropped by 2019, the Cuban government was still detaining over 227 people
per month arbitrarily. Newer numbers haven’t been reported, however a
reported 1,400 people were imprisoned for protesting the scarcity of medical
supplies on July 11, 2021, illustrating the government’s intolerance for dissent
and speed in imprisoning anyone who dares speak against the government.
The freedom of expression and right to assemble are severely restricted by

the government. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act stated that the United States has
a “moral obligation” to promote human rights in keeping with the Charter of
the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the
embargo is a bargaining tool.
With the embargo in place, the United States is able to target the Cuban
government while still providing assistance to Cuban citizens. American
policy allows people to visit family members and send money to relatives in
Cuba, and also permits travel for humanitarian and educational reasons. Over
one billion dollars in remittances (money transferred from abroad) are sent to
Cuban families each year, mostly from relatives in the United States.
And Congress gave USAID a total budget of $364 million between fiscal year
1996 and fiscal year 2019 to promote democracy and human rights in Cuba.
Further, the embargo should be maintained because open travel is insufficient

to promote change in Cuba. Many democratic countries already allow travel to
Cuba with no results.
More than 2.7 million people from around the world visited Cuba in 2011,
including more tourists from Canada than any other country. Despite the
steady flow of tourism from western countries, the Cuban government still
maintains total control over its people because most Cuban nationals are
banned from tourist areas such as resorts and beaches. There would be
limited, if any, contact with U.S. citizens vacationing there.
Pro 2
Cuba has not met the conditions required to lift it or a willingness to

negotiate in good faith with the United States.
Proclamation 3447 signed by President Kennedy on Feb. 3, 1962, established
the embargo against Cuba to reduce “the threat posed by its alignment with
the communist powers.” The embargo was strengthened by the 1992 Cuban
Democracy Act and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad)
Act of 1996 (also known as Helms-Burton), which specified conditions for
terminating the embargo. 112
According to U.S. law, Cuba must legalize all political activity, release all
political prisoners, commit to free and fair elections in the transition to

representative democracy, grant freedom to the press, respect internationally

recognized human rights, and allow labor unions. Since Cuba has not met
these conditions, the embargo should not be lifted.
Lifting the sanctions unilaterally would be an act of appeasement that could

embolden Cuba to join forces with other countries such as Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Bolivia, China, and Iran to promote anti-American sentiments or
socialism in the Western Hemisphere. The United States should not risk
sending the message that it can be waited out or that seizing U.S. property in
foreign countries, as Castro did in Cuba when he took power, will be tolerated.
Further, Cuba has not demonstrated a willingness to negotiate in good faith

with the United States. President Barack Obama stated in a Sep. 28, 2011
“Open for Questions” roundtable, “Now, what we’ve tried to do is to send a
signal that we are open to a new relationship with Cuba…. we have to see a
signal back from the Cuban government… in order for us to be fully engaged
with them. And so far, at least, what we haven’t seen is the kind of genuine
spirit of transformation inside of Cuba that would justify us eliminating the
embargo.”
Fidel Castro responded the following day by calling Obama “stupid” and
saying, “Many things will change in Cuba, but they will change through our
efforts and in spite of the United States. Perhaps that empire will fall first.”
Even though President Obama made efforts to normalize diplomatic relations

with Cuba in 2015, the Cuban government has failed to improve on human
rights. According to a 2022 Human Rights Watch report, “The Cuban
government continues to repress and punish virtually all forms of dissent and
public criticism. At the same time, Cubans continue to endure a dire economic
crisis, which impacts their social and economic rights.” Arbitrary and political
imprisonment is frequently used. Further, the government controls all media
and restricts outside media.
Pro 3
Cuba sponsors terrorism and responds to American actions with

aggression.
Cuba is known to have repeatedly supported acts of terrorism. Cuba was on
the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list from 1982 until 2015. The country
was reinstated to the list on Jan. 12, 2021. The list, which includes North 113
Korea, Iran, and Syria as of Nov. 30, 2023, is a tally of “countries determined
by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of
international terrorism.”
The U.S. State Department consistently finds evidence of Cuba’s involvement

in promoting violence, giving terrorists a safe haven, and harboring U.S.
fugitives. Members of the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a terrorist
organization that operates in Spain, live in Cuba. Black Panther activist and
convicted murderer Joanne Chesimard, known as Assata Shakur, is one of 90
or more criminals who fled the United States and received political asylum in
Cuba.
In 1996, Castro’s military shot down two American civilian aircrafts, killing
four people. Cuba has also supported armed insurgencies in Latin America
and Africa.
In addition to sponsoring international terrorism, the Cuban government has

consistently responded to U.S. attempts to soften the embargo with acts of
aggression, raising concerns about what would happen if the sanctions were
fully lifted. President Jimmy Carter tried to normalize relations with Cuba by
opening the U.S. Interests Section (a de facto embassy) in Havana in 1977.
Fidel Castro then orchestrated the Mariel Boatlift, which sent 125,000
emigrants (including criminals) to the United States.
In 2003, President George W. Bush began to ease restrictions for visiting

family members in Cuba, but tightened the rules again in 2004 in response to
Cuba’s crackdown against political dissidents.
President Obama relaxed the U.S. travel policy in 2009 to allow unlimited
travel to Cuba to visit family members. That same year, the Cuban government
arrested an American aid worker and sentenced him to 15 years in prison,
and he was not released until Dec. 2014.
Con 1
The embargo has failed and harms Americans.

Signed in 1962, the Cuban embargo has not accomplished any of its goals in
over 60 years of implementation. Cuba has not adopted a representative
democracy and poses no threat to the United States.
Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War raised
concerns about U.S. national security, but that era is long over. The U.S.S.R.
dissolved in 1991, and American foreign policy has adapted to the change in
most aspects apart from the embargo.
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The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report in 1998 stating “Cuba
does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in

the region.” The embargo can no longer be justified by the fear of Communism
spreading throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Fidel Castro resigned his presidency in 2008, and abdicated his role as the
leader of Cuba’s communist party in 2011 due to illness. His brother Raúl then
stepped in to take his place and, in Apr. 2019, Vice President Miguel Diaz-
Canel, a close Castro ally, was selected as President. If over 50 years of
sanctions have not toppled the Castro regime, there is no reason to think the
embargo will ever work.
Furthermore, the embargo harms the U.S. economy and Americans. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce opposes the embargo, saying that it costs the United
States $1.2 billion annually in lost sales of exports.
A study by the Cuba Policy Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former U.S.

diplomats, estimates that the annual cost to the U.S. economy could be as high
as $4.84 billion in agricultural exports and related economic output. “If the
embargo were lifted, the average American farmer would feel a difference in
his or her life within two to three years,” the study’s author said.
A Mar. 2010 study by Texas A&M University calculated that removing the
restrictions on agricultural exports and travel to Cuba could create as many as
6,000 jobs in the U.S.
And nine U.S. governors released a letter on Oct. 14, 2015 urging Congress to
lift the embargo, which stated: “Foreign competitors such as Canada, Brazil
and the European Union are increasingly taking market share from U.S.
industry [in Cuba], as these countries do not face the same restrictions on
financing…. Ending the embargo will create jobs here at home, especially in
rural America, and will create new opportunities for U.S. agriculture.”
Con 2
The embargo is hypocritical. The United States should not have different
trading and travel policies for Cuba than for other countries with
governments or policies it opposes.
The United States trades with China, Venezuela, and Vietnam despite their
records of human rights violations. And President George W. Bush lifted trade
sanctions on North Korea in 2008 amidst concerns about that nation’s desire
to develop nuclear weapons. 115
Americans are permitted to travel to other communist countries, nations

known for human rights violations, and even places on the list of State

Sponsors of Terrorism. Citizens may go to countries like Burma, Iran, and

North Korea if given a visa. There is no justification for singling out Cuba as
the one nation in the world that is off limits.
Promoting democracy by prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba is

hypocritical. Restricting American rights as a means of forcing another
country to embrace freedom is insincere, as is demanding that Cuba adopt a
representative democracy given the long history of U.S. support for brutal
dictatorships in countries that favor American interests, such as Hosni
Mubarak in Egypt and Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
The United States even backed Cuban dictator, President General Fulgencio
Batista (who served as elected president from 1940 to 1944, and then as U.S.-
backed dictator from 1952 to 1958 before being overthrown by Fidel Castro),
someone known to have killed, tortured, and imprisoned political dissenters,
because he was friendly to American interests.
An opinion poll of more than 1,000 US adults found that 62% of respondents
thought the United States should re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Among Americans surveyed, 57% think that the travel ban to Cuba should be
lifted, while only 27% think the ban should remain. Regarding the trade
embargo, 51% of Americans want to open trade with Cuba, compared to 29%
who do not.
Most of the world opposes the embargo. Maintaining it is detrimental to the

reputation of the United States among the international community. The
United Nations has formally denounced the U.S. embargo on Cuba every year
since 1991. In Nov. 2023, 187 countries in the U.N. General Assembly voted to
condemn the U.S. policy. Only Israel sided with the United States, while
Ukraine abstained from voting.
Con 3
The embargo harms everyday Cubans, not the Cuban government.

Cubans are denied access to technology, medicine, affordable food, and other
goods that could be available to them if the United States lifted the embargo.
The embargo prevents the people of Cuba from joining the digital age by
cutting them off from technology, and restricts the electronic flow of
information to the island. Fewer than one in four Cubans accessed the internet
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in 2011.
Though the Cuban government began permitting internet access in private

homes in 2019, most access is too expensive for widespread use, costing
residents about 26% of the average salary for what amounts to 7% of the
average American’s internet data. And the government still controls legal
access to the internet.
A report by the American Association for World Health found that doctors in
Cuba have access to less than 50% of the drugs on the world market, and that
food shortages led to a 33% drop in caloric intake between 1989 and 1993.
The report states, “it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has
caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba.”
Amnesty International reports that “treatments for children and young people
with bone cancer… [and] antiretroviral drugs used to treat children with
HIV/AIDS” were not readily available with the embargo in place because “they
were commercialized under U.S. patents.”
In Apr. 2020, Cuba reported that the U.S. embargo was preventing the import
of important medical supplies and equipment, as well as other essentials.
Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez tweeted that the embargo was “the
main obstacle to purchase the medicines, equipment and material required to
confront the [COVID 19] pandemic.”
Cuban officials have not been forced to take responsibility for problems such
as a failing health care system, lack of access to medicine, the decline of the
sugar industry, decrepit plumbing systems, and water pollution because they
use the embargo as a scapegoat. The Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs
reportedly blamed the embargo for a total of $1.66 billion in damage to the
Cuban economy.
President Bill Clinton said in a 2000 interview, “sometimes I think [Fidel

Castro] doesn’t want the embargo lifted… because as long as he can blame the
United States, then he doesn’t have to answer to his own people for the
failures of his economic policy.”
Free trade, not the isolation of an embargo, can promote democracy in Cuba.
And, lifting the embargo would put pressure on Cuba to address problems
that it had previously blamed on U.S. sanctions. Trading with China led to
economic reforms that brought 100 million people above the poverty line and
improved access to health care and education across the country.
Did You Know?

117
1. President John F. Kennedy sent his press secretary to buy 1,200 Cuban
cigars the night before he signed the embargo in Feb. 1962.

2. Congress gave USAID a total budget of $364 million between fiscal year
1996 and fiscal year 2019 to promote democracy and human rights in Cuba.
3. There were an estimated total of 6,602 political detentions in Cuba in 2012,

which is among the world's highest on a per capita basis. While the number
had dropped by 2019, the Cuban government was still detaining over 227
people per month arbitrarily.
4. The United Nations has denounced the U.S. embargo against Cuba every
year since 1991.
5. Though the Cuban government began permitting internet access in private

homes in 2019, most access is too expensive for widespread use, costing
residents about 26% of the average salary for what amounts to 7% of the
average American's internet data.
118

Article 16: Should the United States Continue Its Use of

Drone Strikes Abroad?
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones, are
remotely-controlled aircraft which may be armed with missiles and bombs for
attack missions. Since the World Trade Center attacks on Sep. 11, 2001 and
the subsequent “War on Terror,” the United States has used thousands
of drones to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen,
Somalia, and other countries.
Proponents state that drones strikes help prevent “boots on the ground”
combat and makes America safer, that the strikes are legal under American
and international law, and that they are carried out with the support of
Americans and foreign governments
Opponents state that drone strikes kill civilians, creating more terrorists than
they kill and sowing animosity in foreign countries, that the strikes are
extrajudicial and illegal, and create a dangerous disconnect between the
horrors of war and soldiers carrying out the strikes.
Pro 1
Drone strikes make the United States safer by remotely decimating

terrorist networks across the world.
Drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia have killed
between 7,665 and 14,247 militants and alleged militants, including high-level
commanders implicated in organizing plots against the United States.
According to President Obama, “[d]ozens of highly skilled al Qaeda

commanders, trainers, bomb makers and operatives have been taken off the
battlefield. Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted international
aviation, U.S. transit systems, European cities and our troops in Afghanistan.
Simply put, these strikes have saved lives.”
Beyond killing terrorists, that drones are remotely piloted saves US military
lives. Drones are launched from bases in allied countries and are operated
remotely by pilots in the United States, minimizing the risk of injury and death
that would occur if ground soldiers and airplane pilots were used instead. Al 119
Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates often operate in distant and
environmentally unforgiving locations where it would be extremely
dangerous for the United States to deploy teams of special forces to track and

capture terrorists. Such pursuits may pose serious risks to US troops including
firefights with surrounding tribal communities, anti-aircraft shelling, land
mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), suicide bombers, snipers,
dangerous weather conditions, harsh environments, etc. Drone strikes
eliminate all of those risks common to “boots on the ground” missions.
Pro 2
Drone strikes are legal under American and international law.

Presidential powers under Article II of the US Constitution allow the use of
force against an imminent threat without congressional
approval. Additionally, in 2001 Congress passed the Authorization for Use of
Military Force (AUMF), authorizing armed conflict with al Qaeda and
associated forces indefinitely. The AUMF states that the President is
“authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations,
organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or
aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored
such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of
international terrorism against the United States by such nations,
organizations or persons.” The AUMF does not have a geographic boundary,
and the Obama administration notes that al Qaeda militants far from the
battlefield in Afghanistan are still engaged in armed conflict with the United
States and therefore covered under the law.
Article 51 of the UN Charter provides for a nation’s inherent right to self-

defense when it has been attacked. The UN Special Rapporteur on
extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions has said that Article 51 applies
if the targeted state agrees to the use of force in its territory, or the targeted
group operating within its territory was responsible for an act of aggression
against the targeting state where the host state is unwilling or unable to
control the threat themselves. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia
have officially consented to US drone strikes within their countries because
they are unable to control terrorist groups within their own borders.
Harold Hongju Koh, JD, Professor of International Law at Yale University and
former US State Department Legal Adviser explained, “a state that is engaged
in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide
targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.,” and a
country may target individuals in foreign countries if they are directly
participating in hostilities or posing an imminent threat that only lethal force 120
can prevent.

The United States also has the right under international law to “anticipatory
self-defense,” which gives the right to use force against a real and imminent
threat when the necessity of that self-defense is “instant, overwhelming, and
leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.”
Pro 3
Americans support drone strikes.

A Jan. 23, 2020 poll, after the Jan. 3 drone strikes that killed Iranian Quds
Force commander Qasem Soleimani, found that 35% of Americans agree that
drone strikes are a “very effective way to achieve US foreign policy,” an
increase from 23% in 2015. Fewer people believe signing international
agreements (29%), sanctions (23%), or military intervention (17%) are very
effective. Meanwhile ,47% supported President Trump’s decision to order the
strikes that killed Soleimani and others.
According to a July 18, 2013 survey by Pew Research, 61% of Americans

supported drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Support spanned
the political divide, including Republicans (69%), independents (60%), and
Democrats (59%).
A Mar. 20, 2013 poll by the Gallup organization found that 65% of Americans
believed the US government should “use drones to launch airstrikes in other
countries against suspected terrorists” and 74% of Americans who “very” or
“somewhat” closely follow news stories about drones supported the attacks.
A May 28, 2013 Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll found that 57% of
Americans supported drone strikes targeting “al Qaeda targets and other
terrorists in foreign countries.”
Pro 4
Drone strikes are carried out with the collaboration and encouragement
of local governments, and make those countries safer.
US drone strikes help countries fight terrorist threats to their own domestic
peace and stability, including al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, al-Shabaab
in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, and al Qaeda in the
Maghreb in Algeria and Mali.
On Aug. 21, 2020, for example, acting in cooperation with the Somali National 121
Army, a US drone strike killed a “high-ranking” al-Shabab bomb and IED
maker.

Yemen’s President, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has openly praised drone
strikes in his country, stating that the “electronic brain’s precision is
unmatched by the human brain.”
In a 2008 State Department cable made public by Wikileaks, Pakistani Chief of

Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani asked US officials for more drone strikes,
and in Apr. 2013 former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf acknowledged
to CNN that his government had secretly signed off on US drone strikes. In
Pakistan, where the vast majority of drone strikes are carried out, drones
contributed to a major decrease in violence. The 41 suicide attacks in Pakistan
in 2011 were down from a record high of 87 in 2009, which coincided with an
over ten-fold increase in the number of drone strikes.
After the Jan. 2020 strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major
General Soleimani in Iran, President Donald Trump stated, “Soleimani has
been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20
years… Just recently, Soleimani led the brutal repression of protestors in Iran,
where more than a thousand innocent civilians were tortured and killed by
their own government… The future belongs to the people of Iran — those who
seek peaceful coexistence and cooperation — not the terrorist warlords who
plunder their nation to finance bloodshed abroad.”
Pro 5
Drones limit the scope, scale, and casualties of military action, keeping the
US military and civilians in other countries safer.
Invading Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia with boots on the ground to capture
relatively small terrorist groups would lead to expensive conflict,
responsibility for destabilizing those governments, large numbers of civilian
casualties, empowerment of enemies who view the United States as an
occupying imperialist power, US military deaths, among other consequences.
America’s attempt to destroy al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan by
invading and occupying the country resulted in a war that has dragged on for
over 12 years. Using drone strikes against terrorists abroad allows the United
States to achieve its goals at a fraction of the cost of an invasion in money,
manpower, and lives.
Drones are launched from bases in allied countries and are operated remotely
by pilots in the United States, minimizing the risk of injury and death that
would occur if ground soldiers and airplane pilots were used instead. Al 122
Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates often operate in distant and
environmentally unforgiving locations where it would be extremely
dangerous for the United States to deploy teams of special forces to track and
capture terrorists. Such pursuits may pose serious risks to US troops including
firefights with surrounding tribal communities, anti-aircraft shelling, land
mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), suicide bombers, snipers,
dangerous weather conditions, harsh environments, etc. [10] Further, drone
pilots suffer less than traditional pilots because they do not have to be directly
present on the battlefield, can live a normal civilian life in the United States,
and do not risk death or serious injury. Only 4% of active-duty drone pilots
are at “high risk for PTSD” compared to the 12-17% of soldiers returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Drones also have lower civilian casualties than “boots on the ground”
missions. Between 1,193 and 2,654 civilians have died in drone strikes in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, or between 7% and 15% of the
those killed by drones. By contrast, about 335,000 total civilians have been
killed violently in the War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syrian, and
Yemen. [139] The traditional weapons of war – bombs, shells, mines, mortars
– cause more collateral (unintended) damage to people and property than
drones, whose accuracy and technical precision mostly limit casualties to
combatants and intended targets. Civilian deaths in World War II are
estimated at 40 to 67% of total war deaths. In the Korean, Vietnam, and
Balkan Wars, civilian deaths accounted for approximately 70%, 31%, and
45% of deaths respectively.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, PhD, stated, “You can far more
easily limit collateral damage with a drone than you can with a bomb, even a
precision-guided munition, off an airplane.” Former CIA Director Leon
Panetta, JD, concurred, ““I think this is one of the most precise weapons that
we have in our arsenal.” And Former State Department Legal Advisor Harold
Hongju Koh, JD, agreed that drones “have helped to make our targeting even
more precise.”
Con 1
Drone strikes mostly kill low-value targets and create more terrorists.
Reuters reported that of the 500 “militants” the CIA believed it had killed with
drones between 2008 and 2010, only 14 were “top-tier militant targets,” and
25 were “mid-to-high-level organizers” of al Qaeda, the Taliban, or other
hostile groups. The CIA had killed around 12 times more low-level fighters
than mid-to-high-level during that same period. [59] According to the New
America Foundation, from 2004 to 2012 an estimated 49 “militant leaders” 123
were killed in drone strikes, constituting “2% of all drone-related fatalities.”

Abdulghani Al-Iryani, senior researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic

Studies, noted many militants operating in Yemen are “people who are
aggrieved by attacks on their homes that forced them to go out and
fight.” While Abdulrasheed Al-Faqih, Executive Director of Mwatana
Organization for Human Rights, explained, “Incidents of civilian harm in
Yemen continue to negatively affect the reputation of the United States in the
country and push local communities to consider violence and revenge as the
only solution to the harm they suffer.”
The number of Al Qaeda core members in the Arabian Peninsula grew from no
more than 300 in 2009 when drone strikes resumed to at least 700 in 2012,
resulting in an increase in terrorist attacks in the region. Both the “Underwear
Bomber,” who tried to blow up an American airliner in 2009, and the “Times
Square Bomber,” who tried to set off a car bomb in New York City in 2010,
cited drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as motivators for the
plots. David Rohde, who was held captive by the Taliban for eight months,
stated, “the Taliban were able to garner recruits in their aftermath by
exaggerating the number of civilian casualties.”
Con 2
Drone strikes terrorize and kill civilians.

A Pakistani man stated, “When [children] hear the drones, they get really
scared, and they can hear them all the time so they’re always fearful that the
drone is going to attack them. Because of the noise, we’re psychologically
disturbed — women, men, and children… Twenty-four hours, [a] person is in
stress and there is pain in his head.” Yemeni tribal sheik Mullah Zabara said,
“we consider the drones terrorism. The drones are flying day and night,
frightening women and children, disturbing sleeping people. This is
terrorism.”
Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, a human rights organization, stated,

“an entire region is being terrorized by the constant threat of death from the
skies. Their way of life is collapsing: kids are too terrified to go to school,
adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals, business meetings, or anything
that involves gathering in groups.”
According to Micah Zenko, PhD, political scientist, and Amelia May Wolf,
research associate in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on
Foreign Relations, “drones are far less precise than airstrikes conducted by 124
piloted aircraft, which themselves also conduct ‘precision strikes.’ Drones
result in far more civilian fatalities per each bomb dropped.”

President Obama’s policy of “signature strikes” allowed the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the military’s Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) to target anyone who fits a specific terrorist profile or
engages in behavior the US government associates with terrorists, regardless
of whether they have been conclusively identified as enemy
combatants. Classified documents leaked in Oct. 2015 showed that in one five-
month period of drone strikes in Afghanistan, as many as 90% of those killed
were not the intended targets, and that those unintended deaths were
classified as “enemies killed in action” regardless of whether they were
civilians or combatants.
At the height of the drone program in Pakistan in 2009 and 2010, as many as
half of the strikes were classified as signature strikes. According to top-secret
intelligence reports, drone operators are not always certain of who they are
killing “despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s
targeting intelligence.” The CIA and JSOC target “associated forces,” “foreign
fighters,” “suspected extremists,” and “other militants,” but do not publicly
reveal whether the people killed are actively involved in terrorism against the
United States. In two sets of classified documents obtained by NBC News, 26
of 114 drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan between Sep. 3, 2010 and
Oct. 30, 2011, targeted “other militants,” meaning that the CIA could not
conclusively determine the affiliation of those killed.
Con 3
Secretive drone strikes amount to extrajudicial assassination and violate

human rights.
Drone strikes are secretive, lack sufficient legal oversight, and prevent citizens
from holding their leaders accountable. Drone strikes often skip steps taken
by boots on the ground approaches. The Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law
School explains, “While interrogation and detention, as recent history shows
all too well, carry their own risks of human rights abuses, these non-lethal
approaches at least provide the opportunity for an assessment of whether
targeted individuals in fact pose a threat to U.S. interests—an opportunity
taken off the table by drone strikes.”
The United States frequently calls drone strikes “targeted killings,” a term that
does not have a definition in international law. Charli Carpenter, PhD,
Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
explained, “The term was originally coined by a human rights organization to 125
distinguish El Salvador death squads’ assassination of individuals from the
squads’ wider indiscriminate killings of civilians. Both acts, Americas Watch
correctly argued, violated human rights standards as well as the international
laws surrounding war.” Thus, “targeted killings” are, Carpenter explained, “the
extrajudicial execution of nonstate political adversaries,” or political
assassination, which is “taboo in war,” banned by the 1907 Hague Convention
and the 1998 Rome Statute, and is a “violation of the human right to life
enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.”
UN Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions Agnès Callamard tweeted in

response to a Jan. 2020 drone strike, “The targeted killings of Qasem
Soleimani and Abu mahdi al muhandi most likely violate international law incl
human rights law. Lawful justifications for such killings are very narrowly
defined and it is hard to imagine how any of these can apply to these killings.”
The strikes are expecially problematic outside of declared war, when even
terrorists must be arrested, tried, and convicted of a capital crime before
being killed.
Con 4
Drone strikes violate the sovereignty of other countries and are extremely
unpopular in the affected countries.
Strikes are often carried out without the permission and against the objection
of the target countries. Iraq Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halboosi called
the Jan. 2020 strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem
Soleimani “a flagrant violation of sovereignty, and a violation of international
conventions… “Any security and military operation on Iraqi territory must
have the approval of the government.”
Pakistan’s foreign ministry called drone strikes “illegal” and said they violated
the country’s sovereignty. On Oct. 22, 2013, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif said that the “use of drones is not only a continued violation of our
territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve at efforts in eliminating
terrorism from our country… I would therefore stress the need for an end to
drone attacks.”
The United Nations’ Human Rights Chief, Special Rapporteur on counter-

terrorism and human rights, and Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial,
summary, or arbitrary executions have all called US drone strikes a violation
of sovereignty, and have pressed for investigations into the legality of the
attacks. In a July 18, 2013, 39-country survey by Pew Research, only six 126
countries approved of US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

General Stanley McChrystal, former leader of the US military in Afghanistan,

says that the “resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes… is
much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a
visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of
one.”
76% of residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of

northwestern Pakistan (where 96% of drone strikes in the country are carried
out) oppose American drone strikes. [80] 48% think the strikes largely kill
civilians. Only 17% of Pakistanis back American drone strikes against leaders
of extremist groups, even if they are conducted in conjunction with the
Pakistani government.
On Dec. 16, 2013, Yemen’s parliament passed a motion calling for the United
States to end its drone program in the country after a wedding convoy of 11 to
15 people were killed by a US drone strike.
Con 5
Drone strikes allow an emotional disconnect from the horrors of war and
inflict psychological stress on drone operators.
According to D. Keith Shurtleff, an Army chaplain and the ethics instructor for
the Soldier Support Institute at Fort Jackson, stated, “as war becomes safer
and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the
enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is a very real danger of
losing the deterrent that such horrors provide.” Without this deterrent, it
becomes easier for soldiers to kill via a process called “doubling,” in which
“[o]therwise nice and normal people create psychic doubles that carry out
sometimes terrible acts their normal identity never would.”
Drone pilot Colonel D. Scott Brenton, in a July 29, 2012 interview with the
New York Times, acknowledged the disconnect of what journalist Elisabeth
Bumiller described as “fighting a telewar with a joystick and a throttle from
his padded seat in American suburbia” thousands of miles away from the
battlefield, then driving home to help with homework. “I feel no emotional
attachment to the enemy,” he said. “I have a duty, and I execute the duty… No
one in my immediate environment is aware of anything that occurred.”
A study from the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the US Air Force’s School

of Aerospace Medicine found that drone pilots, in addition to witnessing 127
traumatic combat experiences, face several unique problems: lack of a clear
demarcation between combat and personal/family life; extremely long hours
with monotonous work and low staffing; “existential conflict” brought on by
the guilt and remorse over being an “aerial sniper”; and social isolation during
work, which could diminish unit cohesion and increase susceptibility to PTSD.
Did You Know?
. The first recorded use of attack drones occurred on July 15, 1849 when the
Habsburg Austrian Empire launched 200 pilotless balloons armed with bombs
against the revolution-minded citizens of Venice.
2. Between Nov. 1944 and Apr. 1945, Japan released more than 9,000 bomb-
laden balloons across the Pacific, intending to cause forest fires and panic in
the western United States in operation “Fu-Go.” Because the US government,
in concert with the American press, kept the balloons a secret, the Japanese
believed the tactic ineffective and abandoned the project.
3. The first drone strike in Afghanistan, piloted by Air Force operators

controlled by CIA analysts, happened on Oct. 7, 2001, a failed attempt to kill
Taliban Supreme Commander Mullah Mohammed Omar.
4. The first known killing by armed drones occurred in Nov. 2001, when a
Predator killed Muhammad Atef, al Qaeda’s military commander.
5. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there have been at

least 14,040 confirmed strikes between Jan. 2002 and Jan. 2019. Between
8,858 and 16,901 people have been killed, including 910 to 2,200 civilians,
and 283 to 454 civilians.
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Article 17: Saturday Halloween

Halloween takes place on Oct. 31 regardless of the day of the week. In 2023,
Halloween is on a Tuesday.
According to tradition, children in the United States dress up in costumes and

go door-to-door in their neighborhoods saying “trick or treat” to receive
candy.
Some would like to see Halloween held on a Saturday every year for safety
reasons, and petitioned the U.S. President via change.org. However, others
point out that the federal government doesn’t have the ability to make that
change because Halloween isn’t a federal holiday.
69% of Americans celebrated Halloween in 2022, with 73% expected to

participate in Halloween activities in 2023. Spending has also increased in
2023, with Halloween shopping expected to exceed $12.2 billion, or about
$108.24 per person.
The National Retail Federation, which tracks consumer habits, says

approximately 2.6 million children have chosen a Spiderman costume, 2
million will dress as a princess, about 1.6 million will be ghosts, 1.5 million
have a superhero costume, and 1.4 million will trick-or-treat as witches.
Americans are also keen to dress up their pets for Halloween, with 11%
choosing pumpkin costumes, 7% hot dogs, 4% bats, 3% bumblebees, and 3%
spiders.
Should Halloween Be Moved Permanently to Saturday?
Pro 1
Celebrating Halloween on a Saturday would make the holiday safer for

children.
A study found an 83% increase in fatal crashes involving children and a 55%
increase in pedestrian fatal crashes when Halloween falls on a weeknight.
There’s been an increase of at least 21 fatal crashes every time the holiday fell
on a Friday since 1994. Safe Kids Worldwide stated, “Twice as many kids are
killed while walking on Halloween than any other day of the year.”
82% of parents don’t add high visibility aids such as reflective tape or glow
sticks to their kids’ costumes, and 63% of trick-or-treaters don’t carry 129
flashlights, according to the Halloween & Costume Association, an
organization that created a petition to move Halloween to Saturdays signed by
over 150,000 people.
Moving Halloween to a Saturday would allow trick-or-treating to begin in the

daylight hours, reducing risk of fatal crashes and eliminating the need for
costume safety alterations and flashlights. The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration said fatal crashes can occur on Halloween when trick-
or-treaters dart out into the street unexpectedly. Communities could create
safer walking conditions on a Saturday Halloween by blocking off selected
roads, which wouldn’t be practical on weeknights when people are returning
home from work.
Pro 2
Celebrating Halloween on a Saturday would be more fun and less stressful

for everyone.
Instead of rushing home from school and work to fit in dinner and homework
before setting out for trick-or-treating, kids and parents could enjoy the day
and do more fun Halloween activities together on a Saturday. Entrepreneur
Matt Douglas noted, “Extended family could gather like they do for other
major holidays and special memories can be made.”
With a Saturday Halloween, people who work the traditional Monday-Friday

schedule wouldn’t miss out on the fun of handing out candy to kids in the
neighborhood. The holiday would be less stressful because parents wouldn’t
have to worry about kids staying up past their bedtimes on a sugar high. Plus,
businesses wouldn’t lose the productivity of tired workers who attended
Halloween parties.
Pro 3
A Saturday Halloween would minimize the holiday's negative impact on

schools and learning.
When Halloween falls on a weekday, students are too distracted to learn.
Halloween parties and parades at school exclude kids whose cultures don’t
celebrate or whose parents can’t afford nice costumes.
School day Halloween celebrations, which may have sweet treats and loud
music, raise potential issues for students with serious food allergies, kids on
the autism spectrum, and those with anxiety. Students and even teachers
sometimes cause disruptions by wearing costumes that are inappropriate,
racist, or just plain too scary.
130
Teachers also struggle to keep students focused the day after Halloween,
when they have to wrangle tired and cranky kids. Retired teacher Cookie
Knisbaum stated that kids are “going to be hyped-up from the day before, and
they’re going to try to bring their candy with them.” Moving Halloween to a
Saturday would get the holiday out of the classroom and allow families to
decide if and how they want to celebrate.
Con 1
Moving Halloween to Saturday would put kids on the streets on the most
dangerous night of the week.
Halloween is already a dangerous holiday, with about 43% more pedestrians
dying on the holiday than other autumn nights. Moving the holiday to
Saturdays, the most dangerous day of the week, could further increase injuries
and deaths because people would start drinking alcohol earlier in the day, and
consume more overall than they would on a weeknight.
Drunk drivers are already involved in more than 25% of pedestrian deaths on
Halloween. Ensuring that Halloween always occurs on a weekend night would
lead to more binge drinking and drunk driving, making pedestrians less safe.
Drivers ages 15 to 25 are responsible for nearly a third of all child pedestrian
fatal accidents on Halloween. Moving the holiday to the weekend every year
would likely increase the fatalities because of later curfews and a lack of
school and other responsibilities the following day.
Saturdays have the most fatal car crashes of any day, with a total of 5,873
during 2017 (over 500 more than the second-highest crash day). In 2017,
there were an additional 799,000 nonfatal traffic accidents on Saturdays. 53%
more road deaths occur on Saturdays than on Tuesdays, the safest day of the
week.
Con 2
Moving Halloween would ignore the holiday's ancient and religious

traditions.
The origins of Halloween have religious and cultural importance, tracing back
2,000 years to the pagan festival Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), in which the
ancient Celts celebrated the end of summer from sunset on Oct. 31 to sunset
on Nov. 1. They believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth,
blurring the boundary between the living and dead. Around 43 AD, the
Romans, who were then ruling the Celtic territory, combined their Feralia
festival honoring the dead with the Samhain activities. 131
The Catholic church has observed All Saints’ Day (also known as All Hallows
or Hallowmas) on Nov. 1 since the mid-eighth century. Halloween, originally
“All Hallows’ Eve” or “Vigil or Eve of All Hallows” therefore takes place the day
before, on Oct. 31.
Con 3
Moving Halloween to Saturday would allow kids more time to be

mischievous.
Halloween has historically always been a night of pranks. Celebrations in
Colonial America included “mischief-making of all kinds,” according to
History.com. These days, kids might toss toilet paper in trees, jump out to
scare people, or drink while underage.
Amarjeet Sidhu, a seventh grader at the time of this quote, stated, “I think that
Halloween should always be celebrated on the 31st. If it is celebrated on
Saturdays, kids would go out late at night and put graffiti on signs, smash
pumpkins and egg houses. I know this from experience. It won’t feel right if
Halloween is not on Oct. 31.”
Many kids don’t realize that pranks they think of as harmless could actually
get them arrested for vandalism or assault. Some less serious pranks are still
subject to community service or monetary penalties. When Halloween is on a
Saturday, kids are able to stay out later causing trouble. If Halloween were
always on a Saturday, they could get into the annual habit of coming up with
dangerous pranks.
1. Should Halloween be moved to Saturday? Why or why not?
2. Would moving Halloween to Saturday make the holiday safer or more

unsafe? Explain your answer.
3. Would moving Halloween to Saturday be disrespectful? Why or why not?
132

Article 18: Is There Really a Santa Claus?

History of Santa Claus
Once a year, millions of children around the world eagerly wait for a plump,
bearded man dressed in red and white to bring them presents to open on Dec.
25. Known as Santa Claus, his origins are mysterious and his very existence
has been disputed. Some people believe that he lives and works in the North
Pole, employs a group of elves to manufacture toys, distributes the gifts
annually with the aid of flying reindeer, and regularly utters “ho ho ho” in a
commanding voice.
But is Santa Claus man or myth? Santa proponents argue that he is commonly
sighted at shopping malls, that the disappearance of milk and cookies left for
him is evidence of his existence, and that, after all, those Christmas gifts have
to come from somewhere.
Pro & Con Arguments
Pro 1
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

“He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you
know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy… He
lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times
ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of
childhood.”
Pro 2
“Mountains of historical data and more than 50 years of NORAD tracking

information leads us to believe that Santa Claus is alive and well in the
hearts of people throughout the world.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), “based on flight
profile data gathered from over 50 years of NORAD’s radar and satellite
tracking, concludes that Santa probably stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall and
weighs approximately 260 pounds (before cookies). Based on fighter-aircraft
photos, we know he has a generous girth (belly), rosy cheeks from sleigh
riding in cold weather, and a flowing white beard.
NORAD can confirm that Santa’s sleigh is a versatile, all weather, multi- 133
purpose, vertical short-take-off and landing vehicle. It is capable of traveling
vast distances without refueling and is deployed, as far as we know, only on

December 24th (and sometimes briefly for a test flight about a month before
Christmas).”
Pro 3
“Science has long shown that Santa Claus is real, and those who claim
otherwise are invariably in the pocket of the big toy companies, who don’t
want people thinking they can get free playthings and so will pay for their
products.”
Neuroscientist Dean Burnett, stated, “But the evidence is beyond any
reasonable doubt, and the arguments of the Santa deniers have been
repeatedly debunked…
Admittedly, the whole ‘flying reindeer’ thing does seem very far-fetched, and
this is a fair accusation. Investigations suggest that the flying reindeer image is
a distortion of the truth, in that reindeer are native to the Arctic so Santa may
well keep reindeer on his premises and perhaps they did pull his sleigh
originally. But there is substantial evidence now to suggest that Santa powers
his sled with the energy obtained from a precisely controlled quantum
singularity. Basically, Santa has access to a small black hole, which he uses to
perform his duties.”
Con 1
“Bah! Humbug!”
“What else can I be [but cross]… when I live in such a world of fools as this?
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you
but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year
older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having
every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against
you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes
about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own
pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
Con 2
“Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different

time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical).”
134
An anonymous source told Spy Magazine, “This works out to 822.6 visits per
second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the

chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree,
eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the
sleigh and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around
the earth… we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of
75-1/2 million miles…
This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times
the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made
vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per
second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour…
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the
sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa…
On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that ‘flying reindeer’… could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we
cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.
We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the
weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons.”
Did You Know?
1. The first time Santa appeared in his now-classic red and white outfit was in
work by illustrator Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on December
25, 1866.
2. Every Christmas since 1958 the North American Aerospace Defense
Command (known as NORAD) has tracked Santa's worldwide flight using
radar and satellites.
3. Santa's ancestor, St. Nicholas, was a monk born around 280 AD in what is
now known as Turkey.
4. The first time Santa was spotted in a department store was in 1890 in
Brockton, Massachusetts.
5. Mrs. Claus first appeared in the 1849 short story "A Christmas Legend" by
James Rees and was popularized by Katherine Lee Bates' 1889 poem "Goody
Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride."
6. Santa didn't get reindeer until Clement Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From
135
Saint Nicholas," now known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas" was
published anonymously in the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823.

Article 19: Space Colonization

While humans have long thought of gods living in the sky, the idea of space
travel or humans living in space dates to at least 1610 after the invention of
the telescope when German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote to Italian
astronomer Galileo: “Let us create vessels and sails adjusted to the heavenly
ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes. In the
meantime, we shall prepare, for the brave sky-travellers, maps of the celestial
bodies.”
In popular culture, space travel dates back to at least the mid-1600s

when Cyrano de Bergerac first wrote of traveling to space in a rocket. Space
fantasies flourished after Jules Verne’s “From Earth to the Moon” was
published in 1865, and again when RKO Pictures released a film adaptation, A
Trip to the Moon, in 1902. Dreams of space settlement hit a zenith in the 1950s
with Walt Disney productions such as “Man and the Moon,” and science fiction
novels including Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950).
Fueling popular imagination at the time was the American space race with
Russia, amid which NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration) was formed in the United States on July 29, 1958, when
President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law.
After the Russians put the first person, Yuri Gagarin, in space on Apr. 12,
1961, NASA put the first people, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the
Moon in July 1969. What was science fiction began to look more like
possibility. Over the next six decades, NASA would launch space stations, land
rovers on Mars, fly past Pluto, and orbit Jupiter, among other
accomplishments. Launched by President Trump in 2017, NASA’s
ongoing Artemis program intends to return humans to the Moon by 2024,
landing the first woman on the lunar surface. The lunar launch is more likely
to happen in 2025, due to a lag in space suit technology and delays with the
Space Launch System rocket, the Orion capsule, and the lunar lander.
As of June 17, 2021, three countries had space programs with human space
flight capabilities: China, Russia, and the United States. India’s planned human
space flights have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they may
launch in 2023. However, NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011
when the shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July
21. NASA astronauts going into space afterward rode along with Russians
until 2020 when SpaceX took over and first launched NASA astronauts into
136
space on Apr. 23, 2021. SpaceX is a commercial space travel business owned
by Elon Musk that has ignited commercial space travel enthusiasm and the
idea of “space tourism.” Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff
Bezo’s Blue Origin have generated similar excitement.
Richard Branson launched himself, two pilots, and three mission specialists
into space from New Mexico for a 90-minute flight on the Virgin Galactic Unity
22 mission on July 11, 2021. The flight marked the first time that passengers,
rather than astronauts, went into space.
Jeff Bezos followed on July 20, 2021, accompanied by his brother, Mark, and
both the oldest and youngest people to go to space: 82-year-old Wally Funk, a
female pilot who tested with NASA in the 1960s but never flew, and Oliver
Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. The fully automated,
unpiloted Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launched on the 52nd anniversary
of the Apollo 11 moon landing and was named after Alan Shepard, who was
the first American to travel into space on May 5, 1961.
On Apr. 8, 2022, a SpaceX capsule launched, carrying three paying customers

and a former NASA astronaut on a roundtrip to the International Space
Station (ISS). Mission AX-1 docked at the ISS on Apr. 9 with former NASA
astronaut, current Axiom Space employee, and mission commander, Michael
Lopez-Alegría, Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe, Canadian investor Mark
Pathy, and American real estate magnate Larry Connor. The group returned to
Earth on Apr. 25, 2022. While this is not the first time paying customers or
non-astronauts have traveled to ISS (Russia has sold Soyuz seats), this is the
first American mission and the first with no government astronaut corps
members.
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied by groups of

six astronauts since Nov. 2000, for a total of 243 astronauts from 19 countries
as of May 13, 2021. Astronauts spend an average of 182 days (about six
months) aboard the ISS. As of Feb. 2020, Russian Valery Polyakov had spent
the longest continuous time in space (437.7 days in 1994-1995 on space
station Mir), followed by Russian Sergei Avdeyev (379.6 days in 1998-1999
on Mir), Russians Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov (365 days in 1987-1988
on Mir), American Mark Vande Hei (355 days on ISS) Russian Mikhail
Kornienko and American Scott Kelly (340.4 days in 2015-2016 on Mir and ISS
respectively), and American Christina Koch (328 days in 2019-20 in ISS).
In Jan. 2022, Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) announced plans for a film
production studio and a sports arena in space. The module will be named SEE-
1 and will dock on Axiom Station, which is the commercial wing of the
International Space Station. SEE plans to host film and sports events, as well
as content creation by Dec. 2024. 137
In a 2018 poll, 50% of Americans believed space tourism will be routine for
ordinary people by 2068. 32% believed long-term habitable space colonies

will be built by 2068. But 58% said they were definitely or probably not
interested in going to space. And the majority (63%) stated NASA’s top
priority should be monitoring Earth’s climate, while only 18% said sending
astronauts to Mars should be the highest priority and only 13% would
prioritize sending astronauts to the Moon.
The most common ideas for space colonization include: settling Earth’s Moon,
building on Mars, and constructing free-floating space stations.
Should Humans Colonize Space?
Pro 1
Humans have a right and a moral duty to save our species from suffering
and extinction. Colonizing space is one method of doing so.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, stated, “I think there is a strong
humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary, in order to safeguard
the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to
happen, in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant,
because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, ‘Good news, the
problems of poverty and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there
aren’t any humans left.’… I think we have a duty to maintain the light of
consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.”
According to some philosophies, humans are the only beings capable of

morality, and, thus, preserving humanity is the highest moral imperative.
Following from that premise, Brian Patrick Green, Director of Technology
Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University,
concluded, “Because space settlement gives humankind the opportunity to
significantly raise the chances of survival for our species, it is therefore a
moral imperative to settle space as quickly as possible.”
Some theorists, including Gonzalo Munevar, PhD, interdisciplinary Professor

Emeritus at Lawrence Technological University, believe colonizing space will
increase clean energy on Earth, provide access to the solar system’s resources,
and increase knowledge of space and Earth. The benefits to humanity created
by the resources and knowledge “create a moral obligation to colonize space.”
Sheri Wells-Jensen, PhD, Associate Professor of English at Bowling Green State

University, argues that the moral imperative goes even further than simple 138
preservation: “[W]e have a moral obligation to improve: that is, to colonize
yes, but to do it better: to actively unthink systems of oppression that we
know exist. To spread ourselves without thought or care would probably

result in failure: more planets spiraling toward global warming or space

settlements filled with social unrest.”
Pro 2
Space colonization is the next logical step in space exploration and human
growth.
Fred Kennedy, PhD, President of Momentus, a space transportation company,
explained, “I’ll assert that a fundamental truth – repeatedly borne out by
history – is that expanding, outwardly-focused civilizations are far less likely
to turn on themselves, and far more likely to expend their fecundity on
growing habitations, conducting important research and creating wealth for
their citizens. A civilization that turns away from discovery and growth
stagnates.” Kennedy pointed out that while humans still have problems to
resolve on Earth including civil rights violations and wealth inequality,
“Forgoing opportunities to expand our presence into the cosmos to achieve
better outcomes here at home hasn’t eliminated these scourges.” We shouldn’t
avoid exploring space based on the false dichotomy of fixing Earthly problems
first.
Humans are not a species of stagnation. Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

who traveled to space in 2021, asserted that exploring space would result in
expanded human genius: “The solar system can easily support a trillion
humans. And if we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins
and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources
and solar power unlimited for all practical purposes.”
Space, in particular, is connected to exploration and growth in the human

imagination. In 2014 Elon Musk stated, “It’s obvious that space is deeply
ingrained in the American psyche… SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between
now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear
improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a
significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of
people.”
Pro 3
Technological advancement into space can exist alongside conservation

efforts on Earth.
While Earth is experiencing devastating climate change effects that should be 139
addressed, Earth will be habitable for at least 150 million years, if not over a
billion years, based on current predictive models. Humans have time to

explore and colonize space at the same time as we mend the effects of climate
change on Earth.
Brian Patrick Green stated, “Furthermore, we have to realize that solving

Earth’s environmental problems is extremely difficult and so will take a very
long time. And we can do this while also pursuing colonization.”
Jeff Bezos suggested that we move all heavy industry off Earth and then zone
Earth for residences and light industry only. Doing so could reverse some of
the effects of climate change while colonizing space.
Munevar also suggested something similar in more detail: “In the shorter
term, a strong human presence throughout the solar system will be able to
prevent catastrophes on Earth by, for example, deflecting asteroids on a
collision course with us. This would also help preserve the rest of terrestrial
life — presumably something the critics would approve of. But eventually, we
should be able to construct space colonies… [structures in free space rather
than on a planet or moon], which could house millions. These colonies would
be positioned to construct massive solar power satellites to provide clean
power to the Earth, as well as set up industries that on Earth create much
environmental damage. Far from messing up environments that exist now, we
would be creating them, with extraordinary attention to environmental
sustainability.”
Space Ecologist Joe Mascaro, PhD, summarized, “To save the Earth, we have to
go to Mars.” Mascaro argues that expanding technology to go to Mars will help
solve problems on Earth: “The challenge of colonising Mars shares remarkable
DNA with the challenges we face here on Earth. Living on Mars will require
mastery of recycling matter and water, producing food from barren and arid
soil, generating carbon-free nuclear and solar energy, building advanced
batteries and materials, and extracting and storing carbon from atmospheric
carbon dioxide – and doing it all at once. The dreamers, thinkers and
explorers who decide to go to Mars will, by necessity, fuel unprecedented
lateral innovations [that will solve problems on Earth].”
Con 1
Humans living in space is pure science fiction.

Briony Horgan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Planetary Science at Purdue
University, explained that terraforming Mars is “way beyond any kind of 140
technology we’re going to have any time soon.”

In one widely promoted plan, Mars needs to first be warmed to closer to

Earth’s average temperature (from -60 °C/-76 °F to 15 °C/59 °F), which will
take approximately 100 years. Then the planet must be made to produce
oxygen so humans and other mammals can breathe, which will take about
100,000 years or more. And those two steps can only be taken once Mars is
thoroughly investigated for water, carbon dioxide, and nitrates.
A 2018 NASA study concluded that, based on the levels of CO2 found on Mars,
the above plan is not feasible. Lead author Bruce Jakosky, PhD, Professor of
Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, stated,
“terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.”
If a workable solution were found and implemented, a project of that

magnitude would cost billions, perhaps trillions.
Billionaire Elon Musk explained that the SpaceX Mars colonization project
would need one million people to pay $200,000 each just to move to and
colonize Mars, which doesn’t include the costs incurred before humans left
Earth. Returning to the Moon would have cost an estimated $104 billion in
2005 (about $133 billion in 2019 dollars), or almost 7 times NASA’s entire
2019 budget.
But, a person has yet to set foot on Mars, and no space station has been built
on another planet or natural satellite.
Further, as Linda Billings, PhD, Research Professor at George Washington

University, noted, “all life on Earth evolved to live in Earth conditions… If
humans can’t figure out how to adapt to, or arrest, changing conditions on
Earth – then I can’t see how humans could figure out how to adapt to a totally
alien environment.”
Con 2
Humans have made a mess of Earth. We should clean it up instead of

destroying a moon or another planet.
If humans have the technology, knowledge, and ability to transform an
uninhabitable planet, moon, or other place in space into an appealing home
for humans, then surely we have the technology, knowledge, and ability to fix
the problems we’ve created on Earth.
141
Lori Marino, PhD, Founder and Executive Director of the Kimmela Center for
Animal Advocacy, asserted, “[W]e are not capable of enacting a successful
colonization of another planet. The fact that we have destroyed our home

planet is prima facie evidence of this assertion. It is sheer hubris to even

consider the question of whether we should ‘go or not go’ as if we are deciding
which movie to see this weekend because we really are not in a position to
make that choice… What objective person would hire humanity to colonize a
virgin planet, given its abysmal past performance in caring for the Earth’s
ecosystem (overpopulation, climate change, mass extinctions)?”
Some assert that leaving Earth in shambles proves we are not ready to
colonize space in terms of cultural, social, or moral infrastructure, regardless
of technological advancements.
John Traphagan, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas

at Austin, argued, “Colonization has the odor of running away from the
problems we’ve created here; if we do that, we will simply bring those
problems with us. We need a major change in how we think about what it
means to be human—we need to stop seeing our species as special and start
seeing it as part of a collection of species. In my view, as long as we bring the…
[idea] of human exceptionalism with us to other worlds, we are doomed to
repeat the same mistakes we have made here.”
Con 3
Space is inhospitable to humans and life in space, if even possible, would

be miserable.
As novelist Andy Weir explained, “The problem is that you still don’t want to
send humans to the moon. You want to send robots. Humans are soft and
squishy and they die. Robots are hard and nobody gets upset when they die.”
Bioethicist George Dvorsky summarized the hostile nature of Mars: “The Red
Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times thinner than
Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars is primarily
composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to protect the surface
from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals,
it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You might as well be exposed to the
vacuum of space, resulting in a severe form of the bends—including ruptured
lungs, dangerously swollen skin and body tissue, and ultimately death. The
thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. The
average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius),
with temperatures dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C).”
142
Meanwhile, lunar dust is made of shards of silica and cuts like glass. The dust
clung to the space suits of Apollo astronauts, scratching their visors and
getting in their eyes and throats, which could result in bronchitis or cancer.
And the radiation on the Moon is about 200 times higher than on Earth, in
addition to other problems colonizing the Moon would cause humans.
Humans would have a host of illnesses to deal with due to climate differences
on Mars or the Moon: cancer, radiation illnesses, reproductive problems (or
sterility), muscle degeneration, bone loss, skin burns, cardiovascular disease,
depression, boredom, an inability to concentrate, high blood pressure,
immune disorders, metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and
sensorimotor problems, structural changes in the brain, nausea, dizziness,
weakness, cognitive decline, and altered gene function, among others.
Astronauts who have spent just a year in space have demonstrated
irreversible health problems.
Humans haven’t even attempted to live in Antarctica or under Earth’s seas,

which have many fewer challenges for human bodies, so why would humans
want to live on a planet or on the Moon that’s likely to kill them fairly
immediately?
1. Should humans colonize space? Why or why not?
2. If humans were to colonize space, where should we start: Mars, Earth’s

Moon, or another celestial body? And what should be done on that body:
residences, industrialization, or another purpose? Explain your answer(s).
3. If humans were to colonize space, how could life on Earth change? And
would these changes be good or bad? Explain your answer(s).
143

Article 20: Is the Internet “Making Us Stupid”?

In a 2008 article for The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google Making Us
Stupid?” Carr argued that the Internet as a whole, not just Google, has been
“chipping away [at his] capacity for concentration and contemplation.” He was
concerned that the Internet was “reprogramming us.”
However, Carr also noted that we should “be skeptical of [his] skepticism,”
because maybe he’s “just a worrywart.” He explained, “Just as there’s a
tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to
expect the worst of every new tool or machine.”
The article, and Carr’s subsequent book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is
Doing to Our Brains (2010, revised in 2020), ignited a continuing debate on
and off the Internet about how the medium is changing the ways we think,
how we interact with text and each other, and the very fabric of society as a
whole.
ProCon asked readers their thoughts on how the Internet affects their brains
and whether online information is reliable and trustworthy. While 52.7%
agreed or strongly agreed that being on the Internet has caused a decline in
their attention span and ability to concentrate, only 21.5% thought the
Internet caused them to lose the ability to perform simple tasks like reading a
map.
Only 18% believed online information was true. Nearly 60% admitted
difficulty in determining if information online was truthful. And 77% desired a
more effective way of managing and filtering information on the Internet to
differentiate between fact, opinion, and overt disinformation.
Between Apr. 28, 2021, and Oct. 17, 2022, the survey garnered 16,978
responses. To see the complete results, click here. To add your
thoughts, complete the survey.
Pro & Con Arguments
Pro 1
The speed and ubiquity of the Internet is different from previous

breakthrough technologies and is reprogramming our brains for the
worse. 144
The Internet has reduced our ability to focus; changed how our memory
functions; promoted skimming text over deep, critical reading (which, in turn,

promotes dangerously false information); and changed how we interact with

people.
In the 2020 update to The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,
Nicholas Carr summarized, “It takes patience and concentration to evaluate
new information—to gauge its accuracy, to weigh its relevance and worth, to
put it into context—and the Internet, by design, subverts patience and
concentration. When the brain is overloaded by stimuli, as it usually is when
we’re peering into a network-connected computer screen, attention splinters,
thinking becomes superficial, and memory suffers. We become less reflective
and more impulsive. Far from enhancing human intelligence, I argue, the
Internet degrades it.”
A 2019 study found that the Internet “can produce both acute and sustained
alterations” in three areas: “a) attentional capacities, as the constantly
evolving stream of online information encourages our divided attention
across multiple media sources, at the expense of sustained concentration; b)
memory processes, as this vast and ubiquitous source of online information
begins to shift the way we retrieve, store, and even value knowledge; and c)
social cognition, as the ability for online social settings to resemble and evoke
real‐world social processes creates a new interplay between the Internet and
our social lives, including our self‐concepts and self‐esteem.”
Moreover, several studies have found that not only do people reading digital
text skim more and retain less information than those reading text printed on
paper, but that the effects of digital reading span from less reading
comprehension to less in-depth textual analysis to less empathy for others.
Reading less critically not only results in low English grades, but also in
readers believing and proliferating false information, as well as
misunderstanding potentially important documents such as contracts and
voter referendums.
Bonnie Kristian, Contributing Editor at The Week, also noted the Internet’s
destruction of interpersonal relationships, especially during the COVID-19
pandemic: Many people have “a lack of intimate friendships and hobbyist
communities. In the absence of that emotional connection and healthy
recreational time use, this media engagement can become a bad substitute.
The memes become the hobby. The Facebook bickering supplants the
relationships. And it’s all moving so fast — tweet, video, meme, Tucker, tweet, 145
video, meme, Maddow — the change goes unnoticed. The brain breaks.”

Because the Internet touches nearly everything we do now, the fundamental

ways our brains process information is changing to accommodate and
facilitate the fast, surface-level, distracting nature of the Internet, to the
detriment of ourselves and society.
Pro 2
IQ scores have been falling for decades, coinciding with the rise of
technologies, including the Internet.
For the majority of the 20th century, IQ scores rose an average of three points
per decade, which is called the Flynn effect after James R. Flynn, a New
Zealand intelligence researcher. Flynn believed this constant increase of IQ
was related to better nutrition and increased access to education.
However, a 2018 Norwegian study found a reversal of the Flynn effect, with a
drop of 7 IQ points per generation due to environmental causes such as the
Internet. As Evan Horowitz, PhD, Director of Research Communication at
FCLT Global, summarized, “People are getting dumber. That’s not a judgment;
it’s a global fact.”
James R Flynn, in a 2009 study, noted a drop in IQ points among British male
teenagers, and hypothesized a cause: “It looks like there is something screwy
among British teenagers. What we know is that the youth culture is more
visually oriented around computer games than they are in terms of reading
and holding conversations.”
Further, the Internet makes us believe we can multitask, a skill scientists have
found humans do not have. Our functional IQ drops 10 points as we are
distracted by multiple browser tabs, email, a chat app, a video of puppies, and
a text document, not to mention everything open on our tablets and
smartphones, while listening to smart speakers and waiting on a video call.
The loss of 10 IQ points is more than the effect of a lost night’s sleep and more
than double the effect of smoking marijuana. Not only can we not process all
of these functions at once, but trying to do so degrades our performance in
each. Trying to complete two tasks at the same time takes three to four times
as long, each switch between tasks adds 20 to 25 seconds, and the effect
magnifies with each new task. The Internet has destroyed our ability to focus
on and satisfactorily complete one task at a time.
146
Pro 3
The Internet is causing us to lose the ability to perform simple tasks.

“Hey, Alexa, turn on the bathroom light… play my favorite music playlist, cook
rice in the Instant Pot… read me the news… what’s the weather today…”
“Hey, Siri, set a timer… call my sister… get directions to Los Angeles… what
time is it in Tokyo… who stars in that TV show I like…”
While much of the technology is too new to have been thoroughly researched,
we rely on the Internet for everything from email to seeing who is at our front
doors to looking up information, so much so that we forget how to or never
learn to complete simple tasks. And the accessibility of information online
makes us believe we are smarter than we are.
In the 2018 election, Virginia state officials learned that young adults in
Generation Z wanted to vote by mail but did not know where to buy stamps
because they are so used to communicating online rather than via US mail.
We require GPS maps narrated by the voice of a digital assistant to drive

across the towns in which we have lived for years. Nora Newcombe, PhD,
Professor of Psychology at Temple University, stated, “GPS devices cause our
navigational skills to atrophy, and there’s increasing evidence for it. The
problem is that you don’t see an overview of the area, and where you are in
relation to other things. You’re not actively navigating — you’re just listening
to the voice.”
Millennials were more likely to use pre-prepared foods, use the Internet for
recipes, and use a meal delivery service. They were least likely to know
offhand how to prepare lasagna, carve a turkey, or fry chicken, and fewer
reported being a “good cook” than Generation X or Baby Boomers, who were
less likely to rely on the Internet for cooking tasks.
Using the Internet to store information we previously would have committed

to memory (how to roast a chicken, for example) is “offloading.” According to
Benjamin Storm, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of
California at Santa Cruz, “Offloading robs you of the opportunity to develop
the long-term knowledge structures that help you make creative connections,
have novel insights and deepen your knowledge.”
Con 1
Virtually all new technologies, the Internet included, have been feared,
147
and those fears have been largely unfounded.
Many technologies considered commonplace today were thought to be
extremely dangerous upon their invention. For example, trains caused worry

among some “that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an

hour,” and so their “uteruses would fly out of [their] bodies as they were
accelerated to that speed.” Others feared that bodies, regardless of gender,
would simply melt at such a high speed. Information technologies have not
escaped the centuries-old technophobia.
Greek philosopher Socrates was afraid that writing would transplant

knowledge and memory.
The printing press created a “confusing and harmful abundance of books”

that, according to philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm, “might lead to a fall back
into barbarism.”
Similarly, the newspaper was going to socially isolate people as they read
news alone instead of gathering at the church’s pulpit to get information.
The telegraph was “too fast for the truth,” and its “constant diffusion of
statements in snippets” was bemoaned.
The telephone was feared to create a “race of left-eared people—that is, of

people who hear better with the left than with the right ear.” We would
become “nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other,” allowing basic
manners to degrade.
Schools were going to “exhaust the children’s brains and nervous systems
with complex and multiple studies, and ruin their bodies by protracted
imprisonment,” according to an 1883 medical journal. Excessive academic
study by anyone was a sure path to mental illness.
The radio was “loud and unnecessary noise,” and children had “developed the
habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school
assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker.”
Television was going to be the downfall of radio, conversation, reading, and

family life.
Calculators were going to destroy kids’ grasp of math concepts.
The VCR was going to be the end of the film industry. Motion Picture
Association of America’s (MPAA) Jack Valenti complained to Congress, “I say
to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public 148
as the [serial killer] Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”

Clinical and neuropsychologist Vaughn Bell, PhD, DClinPsy, noted, “Worries

about information overload are as old as information itself, with each
generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and
brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not the evolution of
these social concerns, but their similarity from one century to the next, to the
point where they arrive anew with little having changed except the label.”
Con 2
The Internet gives diverse populations of people more equal access to

information and society.
The basis of the argument that the Internet is “making us stupid” is
problematic and ignores large populations of people. First, the idea of
“stupidity” versus intelligence relies heavily upon IQ and other standardized
tests, which are racist, classist, and sexist.
Additionally, somewhere between 21 and 42 million Americans do not have

reliable broadband access to the Internet at home, or between 6% and 13%.
And 49% of the US population (162 million people) is not using the Internet at
broadband speeds. Thus we have to question who the “us” includes when we
ask if the Internet is “making us stupid.”
For those who do have access, the Internet is an impressive tool. Kristin
Jenkins, PhD, Executive Director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium,
explained, “Access to information is enormously powerful, and the Internet
has provided access to people in a way we have never before experienced…
Information that was once accessed through print materials that were not
available to everyone and often out of date is now much more readily
available to many more people.”
Social media in particular offers an accessible mode of communication for

many people with disabilities. Deaf and hearing-impaired people don’t have to
worry if a hearing person knows sign language or will be patient enough to
repeat themselves for clarification. The Internet also offers spaces where
people with similar disabilities can congregate to socialize, offer support, or
share information, all without leaving home, an additional benefit for those for
whom leaving home is difficult or impossible.
Older adults use the Internet to carry out a number of everyday tasks, which is
especially valuable if they don’t have local family, friends, or social services to 149
help. Older adults who use the Internet were also more likely to be tied to
other people socially via hobby, support, or other groups.

Con 3
Changing how the brain works and how we access and process
information is not necessarily bad.
Neuroscientist Erman Misirlisoy, PhD, argues that “Internet usage has
‘Googlified’ our brains, making us more dependent on knowing where to
access facts and less able to remember the facts themselves. This might sound
a little depressing, but it makes perfect sense if we are making the most of the
tools and resources available to us. Who needs to waste their mental
resources on remembering that an ‘ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain,’ when
the Internet can tell us at a moment’s notice? Let’s save our brains for more
important problems… [And] as with practically everything in the world,
moderation and thoughtful consumption are likely to go a long way.”
While we do tend to use the Internet to look up more facts now, consider what
we did before the Internet. Did we know this information? Or did we consult a
cookbook or call a friend who knows how to roast chicken? Benjamin C.
Storm, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California
at Santa Cruz, explained, “It remains to be seen whether this increased
reliance on the Internet is in any way different from the type of increased
reliance one might experience on other information sources.”
As with anything in life, moderation and smart usage play a role in the
Internet’s effects on us. Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-
Forming Products (2013), summarized, “Technology is like smoking cannabis.
Ninety percent of people who smoke cannabis do not get addicted. But the
point is that you’re going to get some people who misuse a product; if it’s
sufficiently good and engaging, that’s bound to happen.” We, and the Internet,
have to learn to moderate our intake.
Heather Kirkorian, PhD, Associate Professor in Early Childhood Psychology at

the University of Wisconsin Madison, offered another example: “the effects of
social media depend on whether we use them to connect with loved ones
throughout the day and get social support versus [use them to] compare our
lives to the often highly filtered lives of others and expose ourselves to
bullying or other negative content.”
150

1. Is the Internet making us, as a society, “stupid”? Cite your evidence and
explain how you believe the Internet is or is not “making us stupid.”
2. Does the Internet affect the way you think? Have you noticed good or bad
effects after being online? What effects and what were you doing online that
you believe caused those effects?
3. How can we use the Internet responsibly? Give examples and explain why
they are important.
151

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ARTICLES

COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

1. Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms?

Articles in this book has been compiled by Mokhida Khakimova

TELEGRAM: @MULTILEVELTOP COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

Article 1: Should Students Have to Wear School

Traditionally favored by private and parochial institutions, school uniforms

Pro & Con Arguments

School uniforms deter crime and increase student safety.

TELEGRAM: @MULTILEVELTOP COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

School uniforms keep students focused on their education, not their

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocates school uniforms as a

Plus, school uniforms can improve attendance and discipline. A study by

During the first semester of a mandatory uniform program at John Adams 3

Wasted time in classrooms is reduced because uniform policies save valuable

Students’ legal right to free expression remains intact with mandatory

Besides, students can still express their individuality in school uniforms by

Further, students dressed in uniform are better perceived by teachers and

Further, a peer-reviewed study found that “school uniforms increased the

Discipline problems increase in part because school uniforms emphasize the

uniform policy is implemented] for socioeconomic differences to show up

School uniforms do not improve attendance, academic preparedness, or

TELEGRAM: @MULTILEVELTOP COMPILED BY MOKHIDA KHAKIMOVA

The commercialization of school uniforms in public schools also undermines

School uniforms restrict students’ freedom of expression.

In Sweden, a government agency, the School Inspectorate, determined that

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identification, and seeking an identity is one of the critical stages of

Further, school uniforms promote conformity over individuality. Chicago,

Beyond student preference, parents should be free to choose their children’s

uniform “policies trample parents’ right to raise children without government

Did You Know?

2. Americans spend around $1 billion per year on school uniforms.

3. Students at Eton, one of England's most prestigious schools, were required to

5. A government agency in Sweden declared that mandatory school uniforms

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In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s

In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the

Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to

A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of

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Homework improves student achievement.

Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of

Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good

Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and

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Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning.

Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that

Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework

Too much homework can be harmful.

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Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap.

One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it

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Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not

1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience,

2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help

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Article 3: Fur Clothing Bans

Animals used for fur include but are not limited

PETA’s “naked” campaign ended in 2020 with the daughter of former

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Raising animals for fur is inhumane.