OPINION9 Feb. 2012 A6 www.hillsdalecollegian.com

The Collegian WeeklyThe opinion of The Collegian ediTorial STaff

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Presidential candidate Rick San-torum and his wife Karen held their fifth child, Gabriel, for the

entirety of his two-hour life.Then they took him home, introduced him to their other children, and held a funeral the following day.

Santorum is the most conservative candidate for Republican presiden-tial nominee. As such, he has faced savage attacks from the Left, most notably his “google problem.” Last month, Fox News commentator Alan Colmes joined the assault, calling the Santorums’ mourning for Gabriel “a very weird story.”

When Colmes later apologized, Santorum forgave him. Nevertheless, Gabriel’s story is not weird at all.

The Santorums’ care for their dead child left an impression on their other children and reinforced Rick Santo-rum’s pro-life stance. It is one thing to defend the life of a fetus in principle, but quite another to give a deceased child the respect he deserves.

At the birth of their daughter, Bella, the doctor advised that they “let her go.” Bella suffers from Trisomy 18, a serious genetic disorder.

When told to care for her “as she died,” Rick and Karen discounted the negativity. “We’re going to do every-thing we can to help her.”

For the past three years, she has been a “wonderful, joyful center of the universe for our family.”

Bella pulled through 36 hours of pneumonia two weeks ago. Rick took a break from the campaign in Florida, two days before the primary, to visit her. He continued to trail Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the polls, and this absence did not help his chances.

Santorum’s respect for Gabriel and his devotion to Bella join a long record of opposition to abortion. National Right to Life described his voting record as 100 percent pro-life for every one of the 12 years he was in the Senate.

He spearheaded partial-birth-abor-tion bans in the 1990s, and responded to Hillary Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village,” with his own book, “It Takes a Family.” He has taken a great deal of flack from this firm articulation of a pro-family stance, including the “google problem” mentioned above.

Among his own family, Santorum finds inspiration in his grandfather, Pietro Santorum, who worked in coal

mines until the age of 72 and left fascist Italy for America’s free-market dream. Rick remembers his large, blackened hands as the hands that dug for his family’s freedom and prosper-ity.

Santorum aims to reward such hard work by decreasing government regulation. He has repeatedly said that “the federal government kills jobs.” By taking from the working rich and giving to the poor, the federal gov-ernment removes any incentive for entrepreneurs to invent new methods of creating wealth.

This free-market dynamism made America the prosperous nation that at-tracted Pietro to leave Italy. Santorum defends it from big government with more than mere words.

The 1996 welfare-to-work effort cut both federal spending and poverty rates. It transformed welfare from an entitlement — writing checks to the needy — to a temporary assistance program. The new program included both caps on the amount of money given and time limits for the assis-tance.

Santorum’s enthusiasm for entitle-ment reform also led him to support Medicare Part D. While Ron Paul attacks him as a big-government

conservative because of this bill, San-torum intended it as a first step toward the privatization of Medicare.

The program created health sav-ings accounts, furthered a private-sec-tor proposal for Medicare prescription drugs, and encouraged competition among insurers. Because further steps in this direction did not follow, the program did not achieve its final goal. Nevertheless, Santorum’s campaign pushes for Medicare reform along the same lines.

Although out of office at the time, Santorum firmly opposed TARP, the “stimulus” packages, and the bail-outs of Obama’s administration. His zero percent rating by the AFL-CIO demonstrates his strong stance against Union restriction of the job market.

Santorum provides a powerful contrast to our current president, who has broken his promises, supported the reckless killing of fetuses — with-out knowing whether they are human or not — and restricted free markets, prolonging a devastating recession.

Rick Santorum’s love and respect for Gabriel and Bella, along with his dedication to the hard work of his grandfather, Pietro, demonstrate his commitment to life, liberty, and the hard work of pursuing of happiness.

As an editorial board, we have emphatically ex-pressed our distaste for

commentators confusing Hillsdale College’s conservative ideals with the Republican party platform.

Today, however, as nearly 20 Hillsdale students trek to Washing-ton D.C. for the annual Conserva-tive Political Action Conference, we want to consider instead, what is our relationship as college students to the political realm, and ought it be?

We are reminded of something a journalist-hero of ours, William F. Buckley Jr., said in the found-ing documents of his publication, National Review. He said he in-tended it to be a work that “stands

athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

We think Hillsdale students may have a similar role in the modern conservative movement.

We hope that Hillsdale students will be able to stand athwart issues like the Susan G. Komen Founda-tion’s defunding and then refund-ing of Planned Parenthood, ready to yell “Stop!” at the political pandering of even worthy research institutions.

And then, we hope, Hillsdale students will be able to articulate something more, to criticize not just the revised decision itself, but its underlying causes: the cast-

ing of a morally divisive issue in unilateral terms where one side is portrayed as inherently enlight-ened and the other as ignorant and outdated.

Let us also yell “Stop!” at the whiplash of Republican media campaigns and encourage them to settle into ideas, to think deeply and well and articulate concepts behind policy decisions.

In some ways, we are called as Hillsdale College students to serve the political realm in non-partisan ways. Our job is not to think in terms of “effectiveness” or “reach-ing demographics,” although we know “Ideas have consequences” and “Incentives matter.”

Our job is seek the true, to

know the good and not merely the palatable, to not lose track of the “Why?” in the myriad of policy “How?”s.

So as Hillsdale students head off to CPAC, we wish you a good weekend. Represent our school nobly. Ask hard questions — don’t swallow the party line. Build up our public institutions from the ground level instead of judging them from afar. Be effective com-municators and networkers. And don’t be afraid to yell “Stop!” if you feel so moved from time to time.

Buckley would not expect anything less of you, and neither would we.

When I arrived on campus this semester, I immediately sensed that something was missing. Hillsdale felt hollower some-

how, more homogenous, less varied. It was like sometime during Christmas break, the school had become an inverted version of communist North Korea — everyone on campus wasn’t wearing ster-ile gray uniforms, but they were wearing equally bleak consumerist ones.

As I wandered around the quid and the quad, I saw again and again the same stagnant outfits hung upon different bodies: girl after girl in leather boots and North Face jackets, and boy after miserable boy in boat shoes and flannel shirts. Where was the life, the color, the variety?

Something had changed. Something was miss-ing. It was a like a warm ray of sunshine had ceased to shine through the window of a dark, damp, termite-eaten house. It was like a vibrant, colorful flower had been plucked from where it grew in the crack of a concrete wasteland.

I longed for the variety and color of Hillsdale’s older days. I longed for bow ties, for ascots, for pink oxford shirts, for birkenstocks worn over argyle socks. I longed for…

Suddenly it hit me: I longed for Garrett Robin-son.

Yes, Garrett Robinson! Only last semester his bouncing figure was a common and welcome sight on the quad. He gave this campus character, color, class. And it wasn’t just his candy-cane speckled corduroys; it was also his distinctive character.

Now some of you freshmen are asking your-selves, “Who is Garrett Robinson and why should I care?” Well, you should care because unlike you, who are likely spending your time at college pursuing human affirmation by wearing fashionable clothes and building up your résumés and spending too much time with people of the opposite gender, Garrett Robinson did things because they were right and because they were him.

For instance, while other students of this col-lege mindlessly declared industrial capitalism and the American founding the coming of Holy Zion, Garrett had the courage to defend mercantilism and monarchy from student mockers. While other stu-dents relaxed by smoking PallMalls and watching TV shows with titles like “Pregnant in Heels”, Gar-rett would smoke cavendish tobacco from a pipe while leafing through Jacques Barzun. While other students would pray to Jesus by jumping around to emotive rock-and-roll, Garrett would pray as he saw fit: kneeling in the college chapel and praying from the Common Prayer Book in his deep sooth-ing bass. He was who he was. He was colorful, and he was honest about it.

I remember how Garrett once created his own cocktail. While other students decided to spend their Friday night unimaginatively drinking un-counted shots of cheap Louisiana vodka (hilarious-ly called “Nikolai Vodka”), Garrett created his own drink. He made an unprecedented cocktail by mix-ing together wine with his vodka. And did Garrett’s wit leave him without a name for his creation? Of course not. He called if “Vine-ka”.

Another story: Once, when some student was — strangely — riding on the college’s tandem bike alone, Garrett decided this lone cyclist needed a friend. As the student sitting in the front seat of the two-seated bicycle peddled his way through the quad’s interweaving sidewalks, Garrett took action. He bolted from under the library colonnade, galloped in pursuit of the tandem bike, caught up with it, jumped on to the back seat, and helped this student pedal away his loneliness.

Truly, Garrett was noble, unique, and un-ashamed of himself. Some would call him better bred than most of Hillsdale’s student body. And in my opinion, he was. No doubt the envious egalitar-ians would say he stuck out like a sore thumb. But I say even a unique sore thumb is better than a bunch of identical pale-white thumbs. And besides, Gar-rett had beautiful thumbs.

Anyway, here’s my point: Hillsdale College claims to fight against the leveling force of social-ism — the force that replaces creativity and indi-viduality with gray, sterile uniformity. But look at us today: We are becoming the very thing we con-demn! The creeping egalitarian virus has infected even our students. We are losing our variety, our aristocratic elements, our conservatism; we have become uniform slaves to the latest craze.

So for the sake of our college’s future, I plead with the administration: conserve the variety; find a way to bring Garrett Robinson back to us. Maybe the college could give him a job. But please, administration, bring him back soon and stop the present trend toward dull monotony. Our campus needs more gentility on this campus, more color, more ascots. Our campus needs Garrett.

Besides, we miss him.

In Memoriam:Garrett

Robinson

Love and poLiticsTyler O’Neil

Special to the Collegian

Michael BlankSpecial to the CollegianGenerally, I am not one

to boycott products simply because compa-

nies might have donated at one point or another to some cause I disagree with. I eat Heinz Ketchup, shop at Nordstrom, and, sometimes, I even go to Taco Bell. I do avoid drinking Pepsi at all cost, but that has more to do with my dedication to Coca-Cola than anything else.

But I draw the line at straight up donating my money to charities that even meni-ally support an organization I actively oppose. Financial support for any organization that contributes to Planned Parenthood is more than I can stomach.

If you followed the Student Fed/Relay for Life debacle, you might recall many popular

charities seem to support Planned Parenthood. If you do happen to be a product boycot-ter who opposes abortion, you may be interested in adding Microsoft, Forever 21, Kitch-enAid, Hunter Boot, Bank of America, and Major League Baseball to your boycott list. All these companies donate time, talent or treasure to The Susan G. Komen Founda-tion. This foundation has been searching for the cure to breast cancer for the last thirty years. However, it contributes to Planned Parenthood. Its con-tributions are for breast health services, but many Planned Parenthood clinics do not even offer breast screenings.

Last week, The Susan G. Komen Foundation pulled its support of Planned Parent-hood. The foundation claims that its original decision was not a political move, but rather a way to provide more women

with access to mammograms. Unfortunately, this decision was met with incredible public upheaval and resulted in many people frantically donating to Planned Parenthood. The deci-sion has since been reversed, leading to the resignation of the organization’s Vice Presi-dent, Karen Handel, who said she finds Planned Parenthood’s motives “disturbing.”

I am disappointed in the Su-san G. Komen Foundation. My Grandmother died of breast cancer, and I have always hoped for the opportunity to donate money to an otherwise good organization without supporting Planned Parenthood and its ideology. They gave me that hope for a short time, but caved to pressure and took that hope from me and millions of other pro-life Americans.

In last week’s Collegian issue, we were brought up to speed on Delta Sigma Phi’s current situation. As it now stands, the men of DSP will lose their

house next semester and will soon be undergoing membership reviews.

There are those on campus who support the deci-sion to take away the Delt Sig house and would even applaud the revocation of the fraternity’s charter. Many students see a fraternity house as a symbol of a counter-culture, as a component of a lifestyle that solely seeks to encourage drunken debauchery and contempt for college rules. These are opinions that I believe are based upon too many viewings of “Ani-mal House” and put too much stock in stereotypes.

I also believe that a fraternity house is a powerful symbol, a positive symbol. When I think of a Greek house, I think of brotherhood. I think of sisterhood. I think of unity. A house encourages community and helps foster relationships. It provides a meeting place where issues can be dealt with and problems can be resolved. It offers historical perspective, the opportunity to look back on previous generations and to see how they both flourished and faltered. And yes, it is also a place where fun can be had and good memories shared.

So, I encourage all of you to join the fight to save the DSP house. You can sign a petition on their website (savethedsphouse.com). As I write this article, there are already 83 signatures and counting. The brothers of DSP realize what the house means for the fraternity and are currently doing all they can, whether that means making sure the house stays clean or by meeting with members of administration, to insure that it exists as a positive symbol for years to come.

Grace KesslerSpecial to The Collegian

Richard ThompsonSpecial to the Collegian

No hope from susan

dsp is no animaL house

(Dane Skorup/Collegian)