The

Regents Day lobbying of the Iowa Legislature by ISU Ambassadors and

groups of students from the University of Iowa and the University

of Northern Iowa sought to stem the tide of budget cuts to Iowa’s

universities by the government. The ISU Republicans counter-lobbied

in support of the budget cuts. 

Last

week and over the weekend, the disagreement between the ISU

Ambassadors and ISU Republicans was picked up by KCCI news as well

as Jan Mickelson’s WHO radio show. 

During the discussion surrounding

Regents Day, several claims seemed to be made. One of

them is that the universities should not lobby the state government

for support. 

Logan Pals, president of the ISU

Republicans, alleged partisanship in the e-mail about Regents Day

that was sent to all students. Aside from urging

students to support the Regents Day effort — an annual one expected

by all the staff and politicians at the Capitol — to preserve state

funding for its universities, the message was not

partisan. 

More

than anything else, Jessica Bruning’s e-mail urges students to make

themselves heard and to go capture the attention of the powers that

be. The e-mail says that, to help stop cuts to funding, students

should “Get involved!” She

then goes on to detail the annual plan of Regents

Day. 

I

worked for the House of Representatives from the 2008 session

through last year’s session. I assure you, Regents Day

is as much a part of any legislative session as are the visits of

the cities of Pella and Cedar Rapids, or any number of other events

by special interest groups. 

Even

if the e-mail is partisan, that follows from the purpose of the

event as a matter of

course. It goes without saying that, in lobbying a

politician, the lobbyist would make some kind of claim or argument

in support of or opposition to a particular proposed

measure. 

The

lobbyist would hardly be doing his job if he didn’t. He wouldn’t be

lobbying if he didn’t speak in support of his employer or

organization.  Why

shouldn’t ISU students lobby their duly elected representatives for

a show of solidarity? 

If

the tobacco, energy, Israel, corn, pharmaceutical and aged lobbies

are allowed “to petition the government for a redress of

grievances” — allowed in our American Constitution’s very own First

Amendment — then why cannot students lobby the government on behalf

of their own interests? 

The

future belongs to the young; to deny them a place in shaping it is

to deny the future control of its own destiny. That is the

principle upon which America was founded, and a key distinction

between the successful, fulfilled American Revolution and the

despotic bloodbath that the French Revolution

became. 

America was founded upon the idea that

the body of citizens is always changing, hence, elections to the

House of Representatives every two years. Thomas Paine

wrote that “every age and generation must be as free to act for

itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded

it.” The same way that “man has no property in man,” earlier

generations have no “property in the generations which are to

follow.” 

Paine identified “the vanity and

presumption of governing beyond the grave” as “the most ridiculous

and insolent of all tyrannies.”

The Terror of the French

Revolution, by contrast, resulted from an understanding that men

cannot resist the tide of history — that they are swept along by

it, rubber-stamping the inevitable. 

The simple fact is, the men of the

French Revolution were wrong. There is a political

role to be played in the world, and because of it, the American

Constitution protects political liberties as its first order of

business. 

Allow me to quote at length:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging

the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people

peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress

of grievances.” 

The ISU Ambassadors did not plan to make an

armed, violent, destructive protest on the Capitol

grounds. The assembly,

therefore, should not be criticized. Students today

are all too apathetic.<span style=

“mso-spacerun: yes;”> Maybe that’s because we’ve been

taught, during the past several decades — a veritable Renaissance

and resurgence of the GOP — that we should go to school with a mind

focused on making a living after that.<span style=

“mso-spacerun: yes;”> 

We’ve been taught for decades now

to go to class, graduate and then go to work and collect our

paychecks. We’ve been taught to become the mindless drones of

corporate capitalism and businesses enormous enough to disregard

what a few customers think of their

practices. 

The universities of a country,

state or even city are its last bastion for instilling

education. That education should be a meaningful one. I mean this

in two ways: first, it should be meaningful in that it teaches its

students to interact with their fellow community members and

cooperate to constructively, peacefully resolve

issues. 

The second way of making education

meaningful is to make it useful.  And how can a

university effectively educate its students so they become

employable people with skills if it has no funding for professors

and infrastructure  This question applies whether

education’s purpose is to provide an economic support for their

action within the public view of the community or whether it be to

make them the hosts of corporate

parasites. 

The whole purpose of the ISU

Ambassadors is to lobby for state support of the universities it

chartered. They depend on its funding. The state

depends on them for jobs and education of its youth.<span style=

“mso-spacerun: yes;”> It is an unwelcoming state that has no

educational institutions, researching in all the developing fields

of science and engineering. What economic progress can be made

without innovations? 

Adam Smith — author of “The

Wealth of Nations,” which provided the basis for much of

capitalistic business practice — worked as a university

teacher. And the existence of our universities can be

compromised? No, their existence cannot.<span style=

“mso-spacerun: yes;”> 

Students who support cuts to the

Iowa Regents budget are more than free to do so.  But

they should not expect the Ambassadors — whose purpose and interest

is to oppose cuts — to assist them.<span style=

“mso-spacerun: yes;”> Ayn Rand wrote that the right to free

speech does not mean the right to be given a microphone by your

opposition. 

The supporters of Regents Day did

not have a monopoly on the Capitol Building on Monday. Anybody who

wished was at liberty to come and go as he

pleased. 

So why all the

fuss? Why is it that so many groups expect to be given

the tools with which to make themselves heard? Even if they were

given that equipment, it still cannot be guaranteed that any person

would listen to them. 

If I wrote a column suggesting

that the university and GSB defund the Iowa State Daily, I wouldn’t

expect it to be printed in the Daily. That would be absurd

[editor’s note: I’d allow it]. Why

should they be compelled to make an action against their own

interest? 

As Smith wrote, a man “could have

no interest to employ [workers], unless he expected from the sale

of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace

his stock to him; and he could have no interest to employ a great

stock rather than a small one, unless his profits were to bear some

proportion to the extent of his

stock.” 

That is, if it is against a

businessman’s interest to employ people, he cannot be expected to

do so. 

If it is against a student

lobbying organization’s interest to bring along its opposition, why

are they expected to do so?