The moral dilemma of a Biden presidency

By Anjali DasSarma

I know that there are people who aren’t voting at all this presidential election. Though I will be voting for Democrat Joe Biden this fall, lately I prefer stating that “I’m settling for Biden.”

The motto “Settle for Biden” has been flitting around social media , specifically pointed toward voters like me: progressive Americans who care deeply about equity and equality and are fully aware of Mr. Biden’s harmful rhetoric and actions in the past. This is truly a painful election, and I want to stress that I am not telling anyone how to vote, nor am I aiming to invalidate the pain anyone feels from Mr. Biden’s actions or words.

Mr. Biden opposed busing in the 1970s, and he wrote the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that disproportionately harmed people of color and led to the state of mass incarceration we now live in. He’s been accused of sexual misconduct, and has even insulted my own heritage as a mixed-race American, with his stereotyping comments in 2008 about Indian-Americans: “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

This year’s vote for president is a choice between the lesser of two evils: Joe Biden and his past or Donald Trump and his present.

Over the past four years, President Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly attempted to obstruct justice. He has called white supremacists “ fine people ,” pulled our country away from crucial organizations and agreements, including the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement , and consistently spewed hateful words about women , immigrants and countless others. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, so we must stop him by voting.

It’s an uncomfortable choice, but Joe Biden is the right one. He can help steer us away from Trump’s America.

If Mr. Biden wins office, he will have a lot of work to do, including cleaning up Mr. Trump’s mess and moving our country forward, quickly. He’s going to need to create policies that protect oppressed communities, and he’s going to need to actually listen to people of color.

Settling for Mr. Biden means a more diverse Supreme Court. Mr. Trump has already had the opportunity to nominate two conservative Supreme Court justices . In the next four years, another justice is likely to step down, spurring another nomination. If it goes to Mr. Trump, the high court will further erode the rights of immigrants, women and people of color.

Though I’m settling for Mr. Biden, I know many who are not. Mr. Biden must understand that he is not entitled to anyone’s vote. Running an election based on being the “anti-Trump” is frustrating true progressive Americans, who have time and time again outlined what the country needs for a successful future. That often means dismantling systems that are set up to fail people of color, and it always means going beyond words and listening to people of color when they speak up.

Mr. Biden has already formed policy working groups to tackle many of the major issues facing this country and the world, including health care, immigration, criminal justice reform, education, climate change and the economy, according to the New York Times . I was cheered to see Mr. Biden taking on the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations after his meeting with Bernie Sanders, stating that the United States will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement if he becomes president and will “commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency.” As we know by now, Donald Trump doesn’t care at all about climate change, which is hitting oppressed communities first.

This is an entirely frustrating election cycle. But based on the past four years (my entire adult life so far), this country and the people of this country cannot achieve equity while Mr. Trump is in office. Having seen the destruction from the Trump White House as it stands, I’ll “Settle for Biden.”

Anjali DasSarma is a rising senior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the incoming editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, The Retriever; and the summer editorial board intern at The Baltimore Sun. Her email address is adassarma@baltsun.com ; Twitter: @anjalidassarma.

Phil Hands/TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY

Anjali DasSarma is the summer editorial board intern at The Baltimore Sun.

She is a senior Humanities Scholar in Media and Communication Studies with a minor in Journalism, Editor-in-Chief of The Retriever, as well as a Humanities Senator and a member of the Honors College.

This commentary is from The Baltimore Sun July 6, 2020

As quickly as my Instagram feed swells with people my age gathering together sans masks — grinning, holding drinks and pressing close to one another — it seems the youth COVID-19 rate also rises. Forty-one percent of the total cases of COVID-19 in Maryland, where I live, are people under the age of 39. And my growing frustrations with this increasingly lax approach to social distancing are directly correlated to my concerns about university life this fall, as stay-at-home orders are lifted in states all over the country and people rush to reunite.

When students return to campuses across the nation, there is an implied expectation that they will somehow be eager to enforce one another’s mask-wearing and social distancing. But after watching people of all ages fail to follow through in restaurants, beaches and boardwalks over the past few weeks, as well as on social media, it’s obvious these expectations are unrealistic.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told a Senate committee during a hearing last week that the country is going in the “wrong direction” on social distancing, and he singled out young people in particular.

“It is critical that we all take the personal responsibility to slow the transmission of COVID-19 and embrace the universal use of face coverings,” he said. “Specifically, I’m addressing the younger members of our society, the millennials and the generation Zs — I ask those that are listening to spread the word.”

To Dr. Fauci from a rising senior in college: My experience suggests the social contract of “positive peer pressure” will almost certainly fall flat. Just look at the attempts to rid campuses of binge-drinking or drug use. Or look at this worst case scenario: Young people in Alabama are throwing “coronavirus parties” and giving a cash prize to whomever contracts COVID-19 first.

But if our federal and local governments largely don’t enforce mask wearing, leaving retail and customer service workers to enforce mask policies, why does it make sense to expect students to be policing one another? The expectation that students will see one another engaging in specific “no-no” behaviors and call each other out is impractical, and campuses that expect to enforce a “mask-on” policy have no real way to ensure that students are actually wearing masks properly — if at all.

Administrators at my school, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, have said they will require everyone to wear a mask on campus when social distancing isn’t possible, and overall are taking a relatively conservative approach to reopening. Ninety percent of classes will remain online during the fall semester, and housing will be prioritized for those who must be on campus and can’t commute.

I hope to be one of those people. I’m set to become the executive editor of The Retriever, our campus newspaper, in the fall, and need to be on campus for reporting purposes as well as for one of my classes. This raises another concern. Part of the “college experience” is found in social gatherings. In fact, many freshman-year courses have remained in person in order to uphold the bonding opportunities for these students. But I’m more concerned about the time outside the classroom, when there’s no professor around to push mask wearing.

“Even very small rates of contact in large group settings like dining halls or parties may be sufficient to sustain an outbreak on campus regardless of any other protective measures which have been put into place,” professors from Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania wrote in a recent paper about the spread of COVID-19 in the university setting.

From sharing a bathroom with your roommate to grabbing coffee with a classmate, contact in shared spaces throughout campus is nearly inevitable. What do administrators actually know about college students?

The implications of an outbreak on campus are just as disruptive as those in workspaces, causing lost revenue and learning opportunities. And while healthy young people usually suffer less severe disease complications on the whole, they’re not immune from illness and can pass COVID-19 on to others, including professors, who might not fare as well.

There is no easy solution to the issue of reopening college campuses. But universities should stop pretending as though students will begin scolding one another about not wearing masks or throwing parties. Administrators need to be prepared for an inevitable outbreak and likely shutdowns. If post-college age adults can’t follow the rules and social distance, college students are sure to break them, too.

That makes bringing students back on campus, at the most primitive level, a return to normal, even with the stated precautions. As we’ve seen with Gov. Hogan’s decision to drop the stay-at-home order, which inadvertently endorsed “a return to normalcy,” phased reopenings mean almost nothing when the social contract doesn’t exist.

Anjali DasSarma is a rising senior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the incoming editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, The Retriever; and the summer editorial board intern at The Baltimore Sun. Her email address is adassarma@baltsun.com; Twitter: @anjalidassarma.

Harini Narayan - Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication and Asian Studies

“A Picture Paints A Thousand Words: Examining Linkages Between North Korean Propaganda and U.S.-Bilateral Relationships"

Mentors:
Kyung-Eun Yoon and Renee Lambert-Bretiere

Undergraduate Research Awards for 2020-2021 have been awarded to 95 students from disciplines and departments across campus. Mark your calendars to attend Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 to see these students present their research findings.

Reinforcing Evidence-Based Argumentative Writing In The Social Studies Classroom

The use of credible evidence when writing arguments is central to the Social Studies discipline. It is a stepping-stone toward connecting our divided world with its ability to foster constructive discourse. This project supported and examined 24 ninth and tenth grade American Government students at Catonsville High School and their ability to write strong responses to open-ended questions. The students were graded on their ability to develop a claim and cite evidence from more than one source that would support the validity of their claim. 

Read the complete abstract here.

Hear presentation on Voice Thread.

Mentor: Timothy Johnson, Education