Position: No
Argued by Angelica Gutierrez

I love Christmas, so my stance on this is probably incredibly distorted. Not only do I love Christmas, I specifically love how kitschy Christmas – and other holidays – have become. I live for tackiness.

I think that playing Christmas carols as soon as it is 12:01 a.m. Nov. 1 engenders that lovely spirit of tackiness. I think, more specifically, that this spirit of tackiness is a kind of earnest and impatient childish glee. One is excited for Christmas because it is an opportunity to celebrate something which embodies warmth, gratitude and good cheer. 

In other words, I support radio stations over-saturating their radio waves with the sickeningly cloying Christmas music. I want to hear Mariah Carey’s famous whistle notes piercing my ear drums at top volume the second I put one foot in a patch of snow. I can’t get enough of Christmas music – I want to be consumed by it. 

I imagine that my ardent passion for the spirit of Christmas past to haunt and heckle me at all hours is something which seems bizarre to those that lack Christmas cheer. I understand that not everyone can be as virtuously Christmas-y as I am. Some of us are rather grinch-like. 

What is to be done, when those who are virtuously Christmas-y encounter those who lack the capacity for happiness and joy? All persons, even if they are humbugs, deserve basic respect. I am willing to compromise on my love of Christmas music – there are such things as headphones. 

But where I will not compromise is on my insistence that radio stations, grocery stores and other public venues have a fundamental right to bombard listeners with Christmas music at all times. It’s Christmas time, baby. There’s no getting away from it until the very end of December.  

Position: Yes
Argued by Catherine Dema

On Nov. 1, I awoke to resounding commandments from all around. I could barely open my phone or walk through the PLC without hearing the following assertion – expressed with pure, unadulterated confidence: “Halloween is over, so it’s Christmas now.” 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas. Or, more accurately, I love the Christmas and holiday season. The season inspires nostalgia like nothing else can. Celebrating Christmas rejuvenates my very soul.

However, I think the way in which one celebrates the holiday season is inherently personal because of its nostalgia. Everyone means something different when they say they love Christmas, and everyone experiences the season differently.

As such, I have absolutely no issue with people starting to listen to Christmas music whenever they so choose. Nov. 1, before Thanksgiving, even Aug. 25 – I truly do not care. Yet, this year especially, people who like to begin celebrating early have a tendency to force those around them to begin celebrating. If they don’t, they’re called a Scrooge. You either advocate for Christmas beginning immediately after Halloween or you have no joy in your life and no valid opinions.

This imposing of the holiday season on me not only annoys me, but it makes me feel as though I’m losing my connection to a time I genuinely love. Part of what I love about the holiday season is that it is fleeting. Because the season is short, I know I must take advantage of it. I savor it. 

The more Christmas is drawn out, the more – to me, personally – all my favorite things about the season come to feel meaningless. Especially as someone who didn’t celebrate a typical Christmas or holiday season at home last year – and after the mess of a year 2020 has been – I desperately need this holiday season. And I need it to be special. I need it to inspire the comforting nostalgia I crave. 

I know that this year will likely look different already. I will not be able to gather with family and friends in the way I have in the past. Thus, the extension of the holiday season to earlier and earlier makes me feel that in addition to potentially missing the best parts of Christmas, I may lose affection for the more stereotypical, shared aspects of the season. 

I love Christmas music. I love the decorations. I love the specialty drinks. I love the food. But I love all these things because they feel special. They feel fleeting. They’re also made better by following fall and Thanksgiving traditions. 

When people declare that the holiday season has officially begun in early November – honestly the fact I’m writing this Nov. 10 bewilders me – I feel they’re skipping over the ritualistic process which makes the holiday season even better. But, again, others celebrating how they like is not a problem to me. 

I’m far more concerned that people play music around me, call me a Scrooge and incessantly talk about Christmas. I feel as though the way I love the holidays is being denied. Even more so, I’m losing the ability to celebrate in the way I want or the way I’ll need to in order to recover from this year. 

I want people to celebrate the holiday season however they like and do whatever they need to cling to some semblance of joy. But please do not impose your form of celebration on me because it’s not making me appreciate the season any more. It’s making me desperately fear that my favorite season, and the way I love it, has already been corrupted for me. 

Go ahead, listen to Christmas music. Put up your decorations. Write your letters to Santa. But please be wary of forcing others to. Just as many people need to start celebrating as early as possible to get through 2020, others need the season to stay just as special and fleeting.

On Feb. 15, 2019, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in the United States to further his agenda for the border wall. On Feb. 28, President Trump confirmed that should Congress pass the resolution voiding his declaration of a national emergency, he would veto the resolution.

In order for Congress to say no to the national emergency, a simple majority is needed. This means assuming all left-leaning members of Congress vote to end it, only four Republican senators would need to flip on President Trump.

On Sunday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) became the fourth Republican senator to declare that he would flip – giving the Democrats the weight they need to vote no on the president’s use of emergency powers.

“I stand with the president often, and I do so with a loud voice,” Mr. Paul wrote in an opinion piece published late Sunday on Fox News’s website.

“Today, I think he’s wrong, not on policy, but in seeking to expand the powers of the presidency beyond their constitutional limits,” wrote Paul. “ I cannot support the use of emergency powers to get more funding [for a wall along the border with Mexico], so I will be voting to disapprove of his declaration when it comes before the Senate.”

Although it is already abundantly clear that President Trump will still initiate the national emergency, the question remains: will we actually see the wall?

It is unclear from a legal standpoint how far President Trump can stretch his executive powers – and he is known to play with the truth of the matter.

According to USA Today, the best conclusion says no, President Trump will not be successful at constructing a wall despite the national emergency.

“Poorly drafted laws give the president a wide range of easily abused emergency powers. Even if he can declare a “national emergency,” however, that does not mean he can use it to pay for and build a wall,” reported the Atlantic.

This is justified through specific reference to statutes in the Constitution.

Section 2808 states that, during a “national emergency” that “requires the use of the armed forces,” the president can reallocate defense funds to “undertake military construction projects … that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.” No threat posed by undocumented immigration “requires the use of the armed forces,” and it is hard to see why a wall is “necessary to support such use.”

Source: USA Today

To this end, assuming Trump is not granted incredible executive leeway to mobilize the government in any way he sees fit, the political action of declaring a national emergency is nothing but symbolic. This still carries significance as much of the executive is symbolic in terms of tradition and precedent, but it should be made clear that the capability for the national emergency to create material violence is minimal.

The precedent Trump is setting with his current actions is no different than what some of the most successful Republican politicians have done up to this point – create catchy phrases to attach to policy initiatives which boil down the issues to easily consumable bites of rhetoric.

The terms “climate change” and “war on terror” are products of this method as well – “national emergency” is no different.

The fear that the words provoke is intended to spur voter interest and passion, leading them down a course of action conducive to solving whatever problem it is they posit to be at the heart of whatever problem they have identified.

The effort President Trump has exerted in pushing his wall is valiant. Unfortunately, the results of democracy are predicated on the will of the constituency, not necessarily the single-sighted desires of the president.

Democracy structurally excludes these sorts of authoritative decrees as they are a threat to the fluid movement of the U.S. government. Not to say the government is moving fluidly now, but choking the democratic processes by using executive orders and veto powers is not a safe precedent to set for presidents to come.

Coming off the heels of a devastating government shutdown that we’ve somehow all already forgotten about, the president’s declaration of a national emergency Feb. 15 was not only a nakedly obvious attempt to distract his base from his own pathetic loss in that gamble – in which  he actually impeded his own plans, coming out with $1.3 billion for 55 miles of fencing, far less than what he wanted and had been offered by the Democrats weeks prior – but moreover was not even a particularly good attempt at doing such. What that base received, instead, was perhaps the most doddering and senile display our president has given yet.

The whole affair calls back to one of the more banal stories in the mainstream news media last year, that of the supposed caravan of Latin American migrants approaching the U.S. border. The story then was the same here – a campfire tale for senior citizens who are convinced that MS-13 seeks to invade their podunk, midwestern towns. And while that tactic may have seen results at afternoon Bingo, the American people would appear to know better, given the rejection of this nonsense in the midterm elections.

The truth is that the caravan story is the same as every other conservative brouhaha about immigration – it is a fundamental misdirection as to where the origins of our country’s problems lie. When the people who embrace this anti-immigrant stance are able to actually articulate meaningful concerns re: immigration, it is almost always the fear that they will lose their jobs to lower-paid immigrant workers. It’s become something of a trope, the evergreen cry of “They’re takin’ our jobs.”

Here’s where the misdirection comes in. If your boss can replace you with someone and pay them less than what they pay you, why be mad at the new guy? Why not be mad at the boss instead? Or at the lawmakers, who aren’t just letting it happen – they’ve written it into the rules. The American economy of 2019 is demonstrably not designed for everyone, this is proven twice daily on Wall Street.

In the interest of good faith, though, I want to posit that Trump may be onto something here. The problems we face today in the U.S. are legion, and the processes in place seem almost designed to result in half-measures. It could very well be the case that a future president may need to call a national emergency themself in order to lead the country out of hard times. To help them with that, I’d like to propose a few options.

A president could call a national emergency to overhaul our healthcare system. The CDC reported in 2017 that at least 40 million American adults were unable to afford health insurance or access medical care.

Similarly, a president could call a national emergency to reign in the pharmaceutical industry, where rampant price-gouging has led to social media’s inundation with stories of kickstarters for life-saving surgery or cases as heartbreaking as a diabetic teenager who risked his life stretching his insulin so as to help his parents save money.

It need not stop there. A national emergency could be called to advance the Green New Deal – it may require such. Or, perhaps as a national apology for our president and his party’s actions, one could be called to reunite the thousands of children cruelly separated from their parents at the border.

As for Trump, he will never do any of these things. He’ll need to think fast on what his next move is though, given that the House has since motioned against his declaration and the Senate appears poised to do the same. His vision of carnage in the streets may have been enough to rile up the racists and profiteers for a time, but in the wake of growing resentment, it is clearly getting harder for him and his party to maintain that facade.
In short, the president’s national emergency is a godd*mned joke. But don’t just take my word for it, Trump himself admitted as much from the get-go.

Charter schools operate like public schools in that they are free of tuition, open to all students and must take state and federal standardized tests. While they operate in many of the same capacities as public schools, charter schools have more freedom in their curricula and are exempt from some regulations that public schools must adhere to. In exchange for this freedom, charter schools are more strictly monitored and must achieve their academic and charter promises in order to retain funding.

As of 2014, charter schools were found to be more diverse than public schools. Charter schools across the U.S. have an average of 34 percent white, 27 percent black, 30 percent Hispanic and four percent Asian/Pacific Islander students. This relatively diverse student setting is much more balanced than traditional public schools, which average a 51 percent white, 15 percent black, 25 percent Hispanic and five percent Asian/Pacific Islander makeup of their student body.

Beyond the obvious benefits to participating in an increasingly diverse world – like increased tolerance, cultural awareness and collaboration, to name a few – diversity in the U.S. is rapidly increasing. By being educated in a more diverse setting, students in charter schools will be more equipped to work in a diverse setting and better operate in the world around them. Students who go through less diverse public education will be less equipped and knowledgeable than students of charter schools when operating in a diverse world outside of their schooling.

In the Midwest, cities that once were majority white are becoming more diverse at a faster rate, meaning the status quo of homogeneous Midwest suburban neighborhoods will be disrupted in a short amount of time. Missouri and its neighboring states are experiencing “the greatest rate of [racial and ethnic] change,” according to a Washington Post article analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data.

Photo courtesy of washingtonpost.com

Charter schools in the Missouri and Kansas more accurately represent the racial and ethnic makeup of the states than do public schools.

In Missouri, charter public schools have an average of 10 percent white, 78 percent black, nine percent Hispanic and one percent Asian students – whereas traditional public schools have an much less diverse average of 76 percent white, 15 percent black, four percent Hispanic and one percent Asian students.

Charter and traditional public schools in Kansas are more closely representative in the state average of racial makeup of traditional public schools versus charter public schools. Traditional public schools are on average composed of 69 percent white, seven percent black, 15 percent Hispanic and two percent Asian students whereas charter public schools have an average population of 76 percent white, seven percent black, 10 percent Hispanic and one percent Asian students. However, it is important to note that this balance comes from the state average – among the three different school districts in the study with a high population of students, charter schools were shown to be much more diverse than traditional public schools on a district level.

Not only is diverse schooling important to prepare students for the diverse world and work spaces that they will operate in, it is crucial to be better for human purposes. A lack of diversity breeds ignorance and, sadly all too common, hatred or animosity against other cultures because of that ignorance. One of the best ways to ensure the next generation of people is less ignorant than the last is to better educate them.

By having a more diverse racial and ethnic makeup than their peer traditional public schools, charter schools will more likely educate more socially conscious and tolerant individuals.

Besides educating more socially adept students, charter schools consistently gain higher letter grades than traditional public schools in the cities examined – New York City, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

The higher average of academic achievement can be attributed to the fact that charter schools, and the funding they receive, are bound to the academic standards they specify in their charter. If a school does not meet the goals of the charter, or requirements by the state, they will likely lose funding – this motivates them to try to achieve more.

Opponents of charter schools cite a high faculty turnover rate as an issue with the type of schooling as a whole. A high faculty turnover rate means less stability for students, which can negatively affect the grades and overall education of the student. The teacher-student relationship is a key part of a successful education.

While a high teacher attrition rate is an issue in charter schools, the issue is not solely due to the nature of charter schools. Public schools have similar issues with retaining teachers – for instance, over 20 teachers left my school when I was a junior in a public high school. The issue of teacher attrition is complex and must be comprehensively dealt with in every type of schooling. Nevertheless, because it is not a problem that can be attributed to only charter schools, it should not be a reason that charter schooling is singularly criticized.

Charter schools have many benefits. Since they are public, all students are able to go and have no tuition. However, charter schools also receive private funding – allowing them to specialize their education techniques and goals. The increased diversity better equips students to be successful in the outside world and workforce. The benefits of charter schools, a hybrid of private and public education, outweigh criticisms against the type of schooling.

Photo courtesy of WBUR.