The Dartmouth

Do We Need Another Apartheid?

Shanty-towns, vigorous demonstrations, demands for accountability -- this wasn't only the condition of South Africa in the 1980s, but the image of many college campuses across the United States as students rallied their respective administrations to not only make university investments public knowledge, but also divest any and all funds benefiting from the system of apartheid in South Africa.

Opinion

The Rhetoric of Violence

By Jennifer Carlson | April 2, 2002

As the coming week marks the annual National Week of Student Action, which focuses on the death penalty this year, it is time we evaluate capital punishment and some of the arguments that help keep it in practice. Many arguments for the death penalty attempt to justify the status quo by logical "facts:" the death penalty deters criminals, it costs less for the state, the state does justice by vindicating the victim's family with the execution. While these arguments may on the surface seem sufficient to determine matters of life and death, they are in fact coping mechanisms which not only distort the truth surrounding the effects of the death penalty, but mask the fact that the death penalty is nothing less than state-administered killing. Let me start by enumerating each of these "arguments"-- if misinformation can be deemed an "argument." The death-penalty-as-deterrent argument is dubious at best.

Do We Need Another Apartheid?

The Rhetoric of Violence

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