Ghetto Electioneering and Civic Responsibility

Much candidate attention has been devoted to courting the "Jewish vote" in the upcoming November 3rd New York state Senatorial election. Whether such a factionally directed approach to electioneering is useful for the political health of our republic is open to question. We, as Rousseau, believe it is not. In our view, public efforts by politicians to exploit ethnically charged points of contention, or other wedge issues, for political advantage are deleterious to attempts to approach a popular consensus on more weighty matters that affect the whole of the American populace.

To be certain, we must not fail to assert a concerted interest in matters of concern to our community, but an election that devolves into posturing for Jewish votes as if we were myopic, ghetto-dwelling political neophytes without a view to the broader interests of our polity is repellant. "Friends of the Jewish community," to our thinking, do not humiliate us with public spectacles of pandering that gratuitously politicize, indeed trivialize, that which we hold dear.

With that said, we strenuously encourage all students to vote in the November 3rd election. Voting is not simply a privilege, but an essential civic responsibility from which we, as citizens of this country, must not shy away.

For Yeshiva students this year, voting, as has become an unfortunate custom, will be a test of wills. As they have for the past number of years, University administrators have scheduled classes for November 3rd, requiring students to choose between attending classes and fulfilling a core civic duty. It is unclear whether University administrators chose to slate classes for election day out of utter indifference to the world beyond these two blocks of Amsterdam Avenue or as a result of simple ineptitude. It is, however, clear that students must defy this bit of University silliness by departing campus to cast votes on November 3rd.

It is yet not too late for the University to correct its blunder. We urge the University to cancel classes on November 3rd and provide students with shuttle service to and from regional polling stations.