The SGA is doing a great job. With poor voter turnout, coercive increases in student fees and legislations claiming to represent the opinions of the whole student body, I can barely tell the difference between this student-operated association and a real government.
At SGA's final meeting last spring, a proposal condemning the sale of advertising space on campus to Wackenhut security forces was proposed by Fred Johnson and passed.
With rare glimmers of intelligence, Karl Weis, Patrick McDermott, Matthew Smith, and Sarah Roy attempted to delay the proposal by raising arguments against its socialist implications and moot effects.
SGA technically does not have any authority over the banning of advertising space on campus. This authority lies in the hands of Residential Life and the Student Activities offices.
SGA was attempting to make a stance on the issue of private prisons and their applicability to the Jesuit ideals of Loyola. The resolution implies that private industry, specifically in the realm of correctional facilities, is inherently evil and prone to a lack of respect towards basic human rights.
As Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., and her companions most effectively pointed out, our current public justice system is similarly prone to such injustices.
The true explanation for such aggressions and inefficiencies is a lack of market competition. In both scenarios, the government limits entry into the market for prison facilities.
Competition is the method in which businesses most effectively regulate themselves and achieve morally preferred standards of operations. The moratorium campaign and activists such as Prejean call for serious political activism resulting in further governmental regulatory sanctions and policies.
These interventionist tendencies accomplish nothing more than increasing the potential for corruption, abuses of the system, money-funneling, and a stomping on human rights, all while shrinking any accountability. It is obviously more difficult, if not impossible to directly hold a government or governmental agency responsible for the aggressions and rights violations it commits, in contrast to a private company. When a completely privatized business commits aggression against people, it can be held directly accountable through lawsuits.
Not many students or teachers know or understand this. Thank heaven for SGA and its authoritative resolutions to limit my choices for places of employment. Heaven forbid I should think for myself.
SGA's responsibility is to represent the opinions of the students within the realms of Jesuit idealism.
With this understanding of market and governmental forces, I am incapable of seeing any inherent issue with the privatization of prisons that contradict Jesuit ideals to necessitate any action by SGA.
If anything I would argue that government, in any form, with its tendencies towards war, theft, and oppression through regulations and interventions stands in direct opposition to Jesuit ideals and common sense.
This column is an extremely limited arena to fully develop the theories and understandings at play in the issue of a criminal justice system in a private versus public setting. No true example of a completely private prison, police or justice agency exists in today's society.
With this in mind, I would like to invite all students, as well as the members of SGA, interested in learning and understanding the prison issue, to an open discussion sponsored by the economics club. We will try to attain a greater perspective on how the Loyola students feel about this issue.
To participate in this discussion please keep your eyes open for advertisements on campus.
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