Treasury denies College Republicans appeal for economist speaker

| Junior News Editor

Student Union (SU) Treasury Representatives chose not to fund an appeal from the Washington University College Republicans (WUCR), who were requesting $6,977.85 to bring conservative economist Dr. Arthur (Art) Laffer to speak on campus, March 21.  

Art Laffer is best known for his position on former President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and his creation of the Laffer Curve, which demonstrates the relationship between tax rates and government tax revenue. In recent years, Laffer served as an advisor to former President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump in 2019. 

Junior Nathaniel Hope, President of WUCR, and sophomore David Tabarez-Cisneros, Social Chair of WUCR, directly appealed to Treasury representatives for the funds, explaining how a talk from Laffer would align with the club’s goals.

“He is really one of the most prominent economists in the Republican movement and in the country,” Hope said. “Being able to hear from someone who might have new perspectives would give students the opportunity to think more critically.” 

Throughout the discussion over the appeal, Treasury representatives focused heavily on the request for $1,586 in order to have the Washington University Police Department (WUPD) officers stationed at the talk for security purposes. 

Hope explained that the request was based on a previous incident where Laffer had been unable to speak at a talk due to protests. 

“When the speaker spoke at a peer institution, he was basically shut down,” Hope said. “We can’t have any speaker funded by Treasury be shut down because then that’s just money that could have gone into any number of different causes. Imagine if he had to leave the venue just because he was shouted down.” 

The event Hope referenced occurred in 2019 at Binghamton University, when Laffer was scheduled to give a talk for the University’s College Republicans club that was canceled due to protests that began as soon as Laffer got up to the podium. 

After Hope brought up the issue, Treasury representatives shifted focus to talk about why protestors had shut down the event, however, there was miscommunication about how the protest had actually unfolded. 

“The more I look into it, the more I see that there is evidence of the speaker saying something inflammatory at this event,” Treasurer sophomore Sam Hogan said. “At the Binghamton event, something happened that made students very unhappy that he was on campus.”

Videos of the event at Binghamton show that the protest occurred before Laffer even started his talk, as it was pre-planned and based on his previous political associations and beliefs. 

Hope explained why he believed Laffer’s talk was disrupted. 

“If you look at colleges across the United States these days, it’s not uncommon for speakers of a divergent view to be shut down,” Hope said. “I’m not just saying only conservatives get shut down, only conservatives face discrimination. It’s just the case that sometimes speakers get shut down on college campuses.” 

As the discussion continued, Treasury representative sophomore Leena Rai expressed her concern that security was seen as a required cost in order for Laffer to come to campus. 

“I’m also against intentionally bringing a speaker to campus that requires security,” Rai said. “First of all, I think it’s an entirely unnecessary cost, purely just based on that. Additionally, if we’re concerned about if we can control whether the speaker says something bigoted, I think it raises concern whether the speaker should be on this campus.”

While in the past the Treasury has funded certain line items in appeals without funding all of them, some representatives explained that they felt it would be irresponsible to fund the honorarium, or speaker fee, but not the security.

“I just think if we were to fund line items to bring Laffer to campus, we have some obligation to fund security because we want this to be a safe event,” Treasury representative sophomore Sadie Karp said. “If you don’t feel comfortable funding security, maybe that means you don’t feel comfortable funding the event.”

After approximately thirty minutes of discussion, Rai made a motion to fund their appeal for $0, effectively denying their request, and it passed after representatives voted. Treasury representatives Justin Kouch and Reed Caney were the only votes of opposition to not funding the event.  

In a follow-up interview with Student Life, Rai explained that another piece of reasoning was a video clip that had been sent in the Treasury Slack channel, which the representatives typically all look at during the meetings. 

While the contents of the video were never brought up explicitly or stated during the meeting itself, the Fox News clip went viral in 2021 after Laffer stated that he believes some demographics are not worth a $15 an hour minimum wage. 

“For those people who are coming into the labor force fresh, not old-timers who’ve been around, the poor, the minorities, the disenfranchised, those with less education, young people who haven’t had the job experience, these people aren’t worth $15 an hour in most cases,” Laffer said in the news clip. “Therefore when you have a $15 an hour minimum wage, they don’t get that first job, they don’t get the requisite skills to earn above the minimum wage and after a few years they become unemployable and after becoming unemployable they become hostile.”

After the appeal, Hope was interviewed on the television program News Nation, which also featured a response to the Fox News clip from Laffer himself. 

“They missed the point,” Laffer said. “This was not a value of worth of a person, this was in the marketplace in the inner city, these people who are basically untrained and have not gotten the requisite skills, they’re not going to find a lot of employers who were going to employ them for $15 an hour.” 

Additionally, in the interview, Hope stated that Laffer agreed to waive his honorarium fee and speak at the University for free after hearing about the appeal.

While the show’s host, Leland Vitter, said that Laffer told News Nation he had agreed to speak for free the entire time, Hope told Student Life that Laffer only told WUCR he would waive his speaker fee after the appeal was denied. 

In a follow-up interview with Student Life, Hope stated that he believed Treasury representatives were engaging in viewpoint discrimination. 

“By saying that the speaker could incite a protest like the one that occurred at the other institution was not only baseless, but really left us with the implication that if Dr. Arthur Laffer, of all people, is too controversial to speak on college campuses, then any conservative is,” Hope said. 

In a follow-up interview with Student Life, Treasury representative freshman Meris Damjanovic said that he believed if WUCR appealed for a speaker who did not have a history of saying problematic things, he would have no issue with them coming to campus.

“I definitely think there are Republicans that don’t make inflammatory statements that could come to this campus,” Damjanovic said. “I mean, if they found a speaker that I couldn’t immediately find problematic things about online, I’d be fine.” 

In a follow-up interview with Student Life, Treasury representative Junior Jason Zhang stated that one of the main reasons he chose not to fund the appeal was because of the high cost per person.

“The most important thing for me was the fact that this was $7,000 going towards 60 people, so that’s more than $100 per person,” Zhang said. “So it’s just a lot of money being put towards a small number of people, if it was maybe a little less or something like that, it probably would have had a higher chance of passing through, but just that amount of money seems like an unfair and inequitable use of resources.” 

Rai emphasized that her decision was based solely on the cost of the event and whether the rationale to fund it was compelling.  

“I don’t think the conversation was ever that we weren’t funding him based on what he believes or that the College Republicans never deserve to have speakers,” Rai said. “I think that they chose a speaker who required something that we weren’t comfortable funding for the security and it didn’t prove to be worth the price point for the number of potential attendees.”

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