Tiger GPS: Government and Public Service Blog

As we approach the holiday season, I wanted to reach out and thank you for your contributions and responses to TIGERs GPS.  In a world seemingly increasingly polarized and more complex, it is important to create a space for us all to have open and civil dialogue with each other.  One of the things to reflect on in this space is the word “public” in our degree program.

Public comes from the Latin word “publicus” which means “of the people; of the state; done for the state; common,” and from the Old Latin “poplicus,” meaning “pertaining to the people.”  These words historically and today remind me that we are all really in this together. We do not have to agree and we can even strongly disagree, but if we respect each other and value the communities we create for each other, we can find a way forward.

As I reflect on the Holiday season and my own gratitude, I am grateful for the good fortune we have and for all of you who make it possible. I am especially grateful for the hard work that you all do in making our communities stronger – because we are all in this together! Cheers!

Happy Holidays! Dr. Lori Dickes

I don’t remember a time before war. On September 11^th, 2001, I was only in third grade and the events of that day shaped the world I grew up in. I don’t remember a time we weren’t sending troops to the Middle East; I had never flown on a plane before the implementation of the Transportation Security Administration. Fear has been the reigning emotion driving our political climate my entire life. There is no doubt this is a tumultuous time for our nation, but for me, this is how it has always been.

In the most recent election, we saw campaigners use fear-mongering, mud-slinging tactics to slam their opponent; but these methods are not new or unique. In the 1964 election, LBJ used this approach in the “Daisy” commercial, combining video of an innocent child with images of billowing mushroom clouds, insinuating that his opponent’s election would lead to nuclear warfare and the destruction of America’s children. Playing on the most relevant uncertainties of the time, this tactic leaves people grasping for a shred of security.

News media generates additional uncertainty, holding a magnifying glass over events that invoke anxiety. A twenty-four hour news cycle becomes an object of entertainment instead of information, and while most news agencies try to put a brief focus on heartwarming stories, media glosses over the mediocrity of our everyday lives, highlighting only the extremes. It leaves us feeling the constant pressure of insecurity.

These systems fail to consider that for the average American, life continues to move on. We still live and work peacefully with people we don’t agree with on a daily basis, often without a second thought. Thinking back to the events in Charlottesville in August 2017, we saw American people loudly proclaiming they would not put up with such intolerance. Over and over we see that hate and disaster is often followed by community; a sense that we must pick ourselves up, dust each other off, and keep going.

This is not to say I’m not appalled by the hateful, damaging new policies our current president is working to put in place, but I have to believe in the resiliency of the American people. I grew up drowning in a culture of constant fear, but every day we kept going. Our ability to continue muddling through everyday life gives me hope. And while the future of our nation is uncertain, we have been here before. And we have overcome.

With the Harvey Weinstein / Hollywood sexual assault stories in the news lately, I’ve found myself thinking on the perils of the language we use to frame important topics. Publications on instances of rape, assault, and harassment tend to be phrased passively, like the headlines “1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus” from the New York Times (9/21/2015 by Pérez-Peña, or “Every Woman I Know Has Experienced Sexual Harassment or Sexual Assault #MeToo” from The Huffington Post (10/17/2017 by Adcock). We say, “X was raped,” as opposed to “Y raped X,” as if sexual crimes are a phenomenon experienced only by the victim – as if they did not have a perpetrator. We talk about sexual harassment in the work place like it is an unfortunate, and preventable, thing that just happens – not like it’s being actively committed by our coworkers. And we treat those arguments which dismiss harassment and assault – the violation and degradation of another human being – as misguided, but valid viewpoints, rather than as morally repugnant.

We seem to think that our words carry no weight in the world. Yet we’re living in a society where the federal government imposes mandatory minimum sentencing on drug trafficking crimes, but not for rape; where a full 16% of convicted rapists in the U.S. do not serve any time in jail, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Paquette, 2016; Schuppe, 2017). While our Secretary of Education doesn’t find Title IX sexual assault investigation guidelines too important to drag into a war of politics, our politicians are regularly caught victim-blaming and dismissing sexual violence concerns with misinformation (Andrews, 2016; Bailey, 2017; Morris, 2017). Only 44% of Americans agreed that, had Donald Trump been proven guilty of sexual assault, he should have been disqualified from holding the highest office in the nation (Moore, 2016). Obviously, we don’t take sexual crime very seriously.

I’m not making the ridiculous argument that words have gotten us to where we are. I do believe, however, that our thinking is to blame. A culture dismissive of sexual crime is one built out of the objectification and oppression of women, one whose ugly underside reveals an existing systemic problem with the success of women often being dependent on their appearance and fear of the men in power. And government social policy is only a reflection of the beliefs the society it represents. Studies show that words and moods infect others similar to how a virus works (Barsade & Gibson, 2007; Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock 2014). Perhaps if we made an effort to change the way we speak about sexual crimes, we might begin to change the way our society views them, and ultimately, the way our institutions and officials behave when faced with them.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” -Bobby Kennedy.

References

Andrews, B. (2016, February 29). There are still politicians who think you can’t get pregnant from rape. Mother Jones. 

Bailey, C. (2017, June 10). Indiana state rep. apologizes for ‘how not to be a victim’ of rape post. NBC News. 

Barsade, S., and Gibson, D. (2007). Why does affect matter in organizations? Academy of Management Perspectives, 21, 36-59.

Kramer, A., Guillory, J., and Hancock, J. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111, 8788-8790.

Moore, P. (2016, October 18). Most Republicans don’t think sexual assault would disqualify Trump from the presidency. YouGov. 

Morris, A. (2017, May 9). N. H. rep Robert Fisher lambasted by women at hearing about his role in misogynistic online forum. Concord Monitor. 

Paquette, D. (2016, June 6). What makes the Stanford sex offender’s six month jail sentence so unusual. Washington Post. 

Schuppe, J. (2017, May 13). Attorney General Sessions charts course back to long drug sentences. NBS News.

Since the new administration has begun its time in leadership, we have beheld the eruption of social justice issues, a resurgence of communities of hate, and further divide created amongst Americans. I, like so many others, took to the leadership to find direction, and I find it perplexing that we have arrived at a place where the majority of our communication from our President comes from Twitter, especially since eight short years ago, citizens were up in arms at the then President Elect Obama wishing to retain his BlackBerry Smartphone for use while in office. I believe we have seen a large shift in public sentiment, where the esteem of the highest position in the country can be judged in 160 characters. But are we in a moment in time where we, for the first time in history, know the fleeting thoughts of our Commander in Chief? It could be argued that while it is against the status quo, candid sentiments could be seen by citizens and that this is the most transparent it’s ever been.

We operate in a society where we thrive on facts, finding fault in facts and basing large decisions on “alternate facts.” Facts should have a standard, and while opinions can be different from one another, there has to be a baseline, a general level of “truth.” To me, the hardest thing to accept is that facts can actually have no standard and the question of “where do you get your news?” is less of an actual question and much more a statement of judgment. How much transparency is “too much” transparency? Does the left hand really not know what the right hand is doing? Is the use of Twitter, as a means to address the public, too loose? Where should the line be drawn? I find myself appreciating the fact that the status quo of a seemingly “old” way of governing is being shaken up and changed, thus making it more approachable. A new, more modernized version of presidential communication is being ushered in, but I do not think that excuses the insults, attacks on the press, and the general disregard for our international allies. To me, it is too far: it is no longer transparency, it’s showboating.

Is the cost of this level of transparency further loss of public trust? Are certain constitutional rights more important than others? Is the right to a free press less important than the right to bear arms? From where I am sitting, only time will tell.

In 2011, as part of a push by the Obama Administration to address statistics making headlines about college campus sexual assault, then- Vice President Joe Biden announced the “Dear Colleague Letter.” This letter, issued by the Office of Civil Rights, reaffirmed the responsibilities of public schools in instances of on-campus student-to-student sexual harassment and assault cases, and made suggestions as to how these institutions could improve their guidelines. The purpose was to clarify many issues within the Title IX statute regulating the role of institutions in sexual harassment and assault cases.

One of the most controversial aspects of this letter is its commitment to the use of the “preponderance of evidence” standard in educational institutions. This burden of proof is considered the lowest used in the court system today: it only requires testimonial and/or physical evidence to provide proof that a crime had a higher than 50% chance of happening. Previously, many schools had used what’s called the “clear and convincing” standard, meaning that the evidence provided needed to be more rigorous than the “preponderance” standard, but less so than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, which is typical of criminal cases. In other words, evidence needed to be highly convincing, but not necessary so high that it positively proved the event happened.

Victims’ rights advocates hailed this as a win in their fight for justice for the victims of sexual crimes. According to one advocacy worker, the preponderance of evidence standard made it easier for LGBT+ victims, who have been met with ridicule and indifference in the criminal justice system, to come forward (Waters, 2017). Others claim that the Title IX clarifications in the Dear Colleague letter help both victims and institutional administrators know what steps schools need to take in instances of sexual harassment and assault (Vaglanos, 2017).

The new leadership within the Department of Education, headed by Secretary DeVos, has decided to rescind these Obama-era Title IX guidelines. Specifically citing the burden of evidence necessary for punishment, Ms. DeVos and her office have claimed that using the preponderance of evidence standard tramples the rights of the accused, removing their right to due process (Tatum, 2017). They’ve since replaced it with their own version of a Dear Colleague letter, which argues for treating victims and defendants fairly, and insists on the use of the clear and convincing standard, in the form of a fact sheet they’ve released while they formulate new guidelines (Hefling & Emma, 2017).

The creation of the original guidelines in 2011 was done with the intention to bring clarity to a system which, in its vagueness, had failed many students across the nation. This much both sides agree on. However removing existing guidelines and creating new, interim ones while yet another document of guidelines is being formed doesn’t speak to a desire to continue making the process just and equitable. Rather, the Department of Education is muddying the waters around Title IX guidelines for schools and their students, and leaving them in limbo for an as-of-yet undetermined amount of time. Once the new guidelines are formulated and released, which Ms. DeVos claims could take several months, institutions will need to recalibrate their own policies, further extending the time it will take for the education system to have clear rules on the consequences of something as serious as sexual violence. And all of this – the uncertainty being created around how institutions should go about investigating and prosecuting sexual harassment and assault, the dismantling of protections created to bring more victims into the light – is being done in the spirit of protecting the rights of those accused of sexual crimes. This policy strategy ultimately comes off as unwise and dismissive of serious issues plaguing our educational institutions.

References

Hefling, K., and Emma, C. (2017, September 22). Obama-era school sexual assault policy rescinded. Politico. Retrieved from http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/22/obama-era-school-sexual-assault-policy-rescinded-243016.

Tatum, S. (2017, September 22). Education Department withdraws Obama-era campus sexual assault guidance. CNN politics. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/politics/betsy-devos-title-ix/index.html.

Vaglanos, A. (2017, September 10). Betsy DeVos may rescind Title IX guidelines. Here’s what that could mean. Huffington Post: Women. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/betsy-devos-may-rescind-title-ix-guidelines-heres-what-that-could-mean_us_59aff829e4b0dfaafcf443e5.

Waters, E. (2017, July 14). Betsy DeVos needs to listen to survivors. The New York Times: Opinion. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/betsy-devos-needs-to-listen-to-survivors.html.

As mid-sized farming has seen a drastic decline over the past several decades, more local mid-sized farmers have to be creative to maintain sustainability. With increasing support from local towns to create fresh farmers markets for local small town farmers, many of those who would fall in the middle ground of farming, have had nowhere to turn. It is easy for a small farmer to yield their crop and go to the local farmers market on a Saturday and sell their produce while also working other jobs to economically provide for their families. On the other end of the spectrum, we find larger farms that are producing food at an extreme level of efficiency and productivity, resulting in greater opportunities for growth and wealth. The farmer who has to work their farm in the realm of a normal 40-hour job without the opportunity to supplement it with another career is the one who finds him or herself on difficult times. Local markets are supporting the small farmer and larger grocers are supporting the mass production of produce. So where does this leave the farmer who works his or her fields every day but does not have the manufacturing aspect of many large farms? This is where the significance of value chain businesses cooperates and benefits one another.

A great example of this is the Hub City Co-op that is owned by thousands of community members who have invested in this full-service retail grocery store. Along with it being invested in by community members, 35 local vendors offer produce, flowers, beer, wine, dairy, meat, soaps, essential oils, etc. It is the only one of its kind in South Carolina. It is a community of owners who work with the non-profit Rural Development Corporation to provide the opportunity for local mid-sized farmers, such as Thicketty Mountain Farms, to join with other local farmers and businesses to meet the needs of the community while helping to sustain one another’s business ventures through collaborating together. By joining together in a value chain it makes it more affordable for businesses to survive when they join together. The co-op benefits the community by bringing various degrees of retail and grocery needs to the customer while also providing the opportunity for mid-size farmers to be successful. While smaller farms have local farmers markets and larger farms have the benefit of larger grocers, what Spartanburg has accomplished through the co-op will be foundational for future mid-size farmers and is a great example of the value chain.

In the last 20 years, the American political climate has undergone a change even Al Gore could not have predicted. 1997 had us poised at the dawn of a new millennium, full of hope and the dream of a super-technological future that would bring peace and prosperity. We were the kings of the world, as Jack Dawson in Cameron’s Titanic put it.

Compare the feeling of the 1997 climate – one of anticipation and promise – to the climate today, and Americans are no longer the Jack Dawson who stood on the bow of the ship with his arms thrown wide, but the Jack Dawson who clung to the railing on the stern as the broken aft section began to sink. “Uncertainty” and “hostility” are the terms that come to the minds of the American people when considering the current political climate, according the APA’s Stress in America: Coping with Change, 2017. Like the fated Titanic, the United States has ignored the warnings, and now our nation is divided. While each side of the ship that was the United States heaves hatred at the other, Americans are failing to realize that – unless we work together to mend what has been broken – we will all sink. Tragically, our quest for equality is the iceberg that will doom us.

Kurt Vonnegut’s short story from 1962, Harrison Bergeron, is proving prophetic, and one is left wondering how long it will be until the United States elects its first Handicapper General to shepherd us to the fiction that is equality. Every morning brings news of another event that rips open old wounds and causes tempers to flare; and it is these heavy tidings that have made our nation’s future murky and uncertain while our present is strained and hostile. Though Americans are more connected than ever due to the technology at our fingertips, an ugly divide threatens to ruin us, and, ignoring the warnings of icebergs ahead, we continue to strive for an equality that can never be.

People are not equal, and they never will be; however, instead of celebrating those differences and capitalizing on them to create strength through diversity, Americans have instead used our differences to draw lines of intolerance in the sand. The only equality that exists is that both sides are equally guilty: we have all made mistakes, harbored hatred in our hearts, stereotyped, overreacted, and refused to listen. Sure, we are equal, but only equal in guilt.

Climate change is the prime example where science can be used to settle disputes among parties for the common good. Persistent doubt about climate change has made solving the issue ineffective. Rather than argue about what we can’t agree on, what does science tell us that we can all agree on? Fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) will deplete, likely, sometime in the next two centuries. What do republicans and democrats agree on? Entrepreneurship and job growth. So, the key to common ground in this area is renewable energy.

Currently, many conservatives negatively associate restriction and regulation with climate change; two things we know republicans will never agree with because it “kills jobs”. We want to reorient the approach to climate change by advancing energy: finding new sources, making renewable energy more accessible, developing more efficient energy storage capability and sustainable building materials, etc.

Renewable energy needs to be put on the table as the future of jobs and innovation. Currently, the solar power industry provides more jobs than coal in the U.S. If the U.S. ignores developing industry in the green energy sector in favor of fossil fuels, countries like China are going to take advantage of the market because they understand renewable energy is the future and are investing accordingly. Movement away from fossil fuels is a step towards innovation and growth, and solving climate change is implicit to renewable energy. But, instead of telling people what they are doing wrong to ruin the environment, we are telling them how we can all come together to make the environment better, the economy strong, and stake our claim as a global competitor and innovator.

Climate change advocates have not done a great job making the idea of climate change easily accessible to those who are skeptical. Climate change seems to be talked about as one big, singular issue, when it involves solving a series of problems across many industries and communities. Needed are policy initiatives to encourage industry to invest in renewable energy and pertinent research as well as government funding for R&D into materials research, battery technology, alternative energy sources, etc. To do this will not be easy. We propose establishing public-private partnerships to compensate for limited federal funding and incentivize the private sector. The private sector has operational efficiency and government research agencies have the resources to accomplish tasks where science, technology, and engineering overlap.

Even though our goal in the short term will change the conversation away from climate change, the long term result will be the same: create a more sustainable society and better standard of living to protect the health of the environment and the people who live in it.

Welcome to the first edition of Clemson University’s TIGERs GPS – Government and Public Service Blog. We are excited to begin this blogging journey with you as we continue to learn from each other and share stories, best practices and other ponderings in this forum. This blog also presents an opportunity to build on skill sets that are in high demand in today’s workforce. Consistently, international and national level firm surveys reveal that of the ten skills employers want the most, written and verbal communication and analyzing and synthesizing information are at the top. Moreover, many firms see the ability to be creative and innovative as critical in the 21^st century. We hope this blog will serve as an opportunity to learn from each other about a diverse range of policy, public administration and non-profit issues, along with helping us all to be more effective ad creative communicators. It is with this in mind that I break the Champagne Bottle over the hull and christen the Blog – Cheers to TIGERs GPS. ~ Lori A. Dickes, Phd

The Soviet Union sent the first man into space, as well as the first woman and the first dog. An American was the first human to step on the lunar surface. China has built the world’s largest radio telescope. Arguably, the three countries, with Russia as an unchallenged successor of the Soviet Union, have the courtside seats to space exploration and utilization.

Before OSIRIS-REx completes its mission to Bennu or an Earthian sets foot on real Mars, not in Mars-simulated dome in Hawaii, there is something much closer to home and seemingly within an easy reach: the Earth’s devoted Moon. And specifically, it is the Moon’s Helium-3-rich top layer that Russia, the U.S., and China would love to mine and process cheaply as the new-generation energy source. Some believe that the recent SPACE Act of 2015 serving to “facilitate commercial exploration for and commercial recovery of space resources by United States citizens” (Sec. 51302, para. (a)(1) had precisely the Moon’s helium on the agenda. Roscosmos may be postponing its Moon missions, but it has never taken its eyes off the Moon’s helium and the faster the country can get to utilize it, the faster it can claim a major stake in all of the Moon’s resources. True, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, Russia would not be able to claim sovereignty, but it could successfully skirt the issue through something like the U.S.’ SPACE Act with private and state corporations engaging in “commercial recovery of space resources.”

And when American, Russian, and Chinese entities are collecting the Moon’s abundant Helium-3, do Haiti or Moldova get a piece of the Moon’s pie? Barring the often-cited parallels with regulations of international waters here on Earth, does the Moon belong to everyone or only to those who can get there? What if we divided the Moon’s surface among all countries in proportion to their population size and encouraged space leasing by foreign companies on a given country’s territory. The U.S. would still get a sizable chunk of the Moon, much smaller than China’s but more than double that of Russia’s. And if American companies wished to collect the Moon’s helium on say Haiti’s portion of the Moon, they’d pay a usage fee to the Haiti’s people, hopefully represented by the country’s government.

With territorial claims in Antarctica yet to be settled and Russia’s relentless quest to legally claim the North Pole as its own, we may need to start the conversation about dividing the Moon fairly before the much coveted Helium-3 is appropriated by the savviest explorers. And contrary to the Cadillac’s famed commercial, Americans may not be the only ones going back up there (even if they left the keys in the car https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xNzXze5Yza8 ).