Generation Magazine

The U.S. political three-ring circus keeps getting nuttier. Generation sat down with members of the political clubs on campus—Travis Nemmer, vice president of the College Republicans, Leland Murphy, communications coordinator for the College Democrats, and David Noll, who says he is a member of both groups—to get their thoughts on the latest political goings on. We cover water boarding, tea baggers, and midterm elections. But if there’s one thing all three can agree on, it’s that guns are fun.

Given the recent events at Lockwood Library, do you think it’s a good idea to allow concealed weapons on school grounds?

Leland Murphy: No, certainly not, definitely not—an unequivocal no. The presence of more guns just presents a greater opportunity for shootings to occur. Who says the people concealing the guns on campus are people you’re going to trust with guns? That’s literally any crazy who goes to this school—and there’s a lot of them—can have a concealed weapon on campus and I don’t agree with that.

Travis Nemmer: No, not this [university]. Apparently Students for Concealed Carry did wonders in Utah, but this isn’t Utah.

David Noll: The big problem with having a concealed carry movement on a campus like Buffalo is that people, even adults, not just college students, aren’t responsible enough to put down their fire arms, lock up their fire arms, before they start drinking. And because drinking is such a huge part of the college student lifestyle, even though it’s had slight successes in some regions, the number of accidental shootings you get without legal firearms due to alcohol related issues makes it just a bad idea, especially when you have this many students in such close proximity.

TN: I’m for increased gun rights in society as a whole but not at this school, because like Dave said, there’s a lot of factors—it’s predominately young people here, there’s drinking, there’s drug use. This is just a bad place for people to be wandering around with guns.

LM: I do that with my friends at home; go out drinking with shotguns, but not in a highly urban area—that’s out in the middle of the boonies … Guns are fun. **Laughs**

TN: **Laughs** That is the official stance of the College Republicans on that—guns are fun.

LM: I even have to support that whole-heartedly, guns are lots of fun … They’re dangerous but lots of dangerous things are tons of fun.

The New York Times released statistics showing that the economy is improving. Who do we credit with this?

DN: Would it be crossing the line to say it might have been recovering regardless of the control? … We had a national bailout to our national crash. But there was this global bailout in response … it was … Keynesian economics, on a global scale, all at once.

TN: The American people. We’re buying a lot of stuff, and also the natural cycles of the economy. This society hasn’t really evolved much beyond the rain dance, blaming our chief when it doesn’t rain. There are some things that we just can’t control, and our economy is certainly one of them. There are a lot of people—as much as I don’t support the guy—a lot of people’s anger toward President Obama is misplaced because he wasn’t able to wave his fairy wand and make the sun rise and the rain fall for the American people, as far as the economy went. These things correct themselves. Did the stimulus play into that? I don’t doubt that was a factor but the rest, just people getting out, buying stuff again, just natural cycles of the economy.

What does Scott Brown’s Massachusetts win mean for your party?

LM: It’s kind of a shame, but the people of Massachusetts have spoken. That’s democracy. It’s definitely unfortunate for our standing in the Senate but those kinds of things happen. It’s not something to really complain about. We’re all in support of democracy.

TN: Symbolically, it’s huge for us. This is a Republican taking Massachusetts, but let’s be honest here, it’s not like the Democrats had a coherent voting block anyway. Sixty looks great on paper but we’re talking about lots of conservative Democrats who were voting with us on health care. It looks great but we’ll still be just as gridlocked as before. Harry Reid [Senate Majority Leader] was sitting on a super majority and he was able to do nothing with it. He had less of a super majority, but you can’t do less than nothing.

What are your thoughts on the Tea Party? Re-invigorated base or fringe characters?

LM: Can you just answer “LOL” for that for me? I just can’t really take them seriously.

DN: I’d say that from the Democratic standpoint, it’s a powerful point because it’s going to separate the party. It’s going to pull a lot of the more radical, lower IQ Republicans away from the party platform and in the next election, if they run a legitimate candidate, not necessarily Sarah Palin, you’re less likely to see a Republican elected.

TN: I’m not a fan of the Tea Party movement, I’m not a fan of Sarah Palin, [and] I’m not a fan of the Club for Growth. There are people in my club who are; but I think [the Tea Party is] divisive, they’re under informed, and quite honestly they’re fucking stupid.

DN: The Tea Party movement can really go either way at this point because the Republican Party has kind of reached a vacuum for powerful leaders. Either the Tea Party leaders can step up and make legitimate arguments for the Tea Party and then join the Republican Party by becoming a little more mainstream. Or they can try and steal the lime light from the Republican Party, come in as a third party and then neither of them will win and it will just ensure that the Democrats re-elect Barack Obama in 2012, and possibly in the future, depending on how many times they try to run.

TN: While they’re in a great position to offer constructive solutions—they can talk about things for the future, plans for the growth of the Republican Party, they provide this energy that if we had it in the mainstream Republican Party would be fantastic—but they haven’t been able to propose any of these coherent solutions, so really they’re a real buzz kill. Fuck ‘em.

What’s worse: a TelePrompTer or hand notes?

LM: Definitely, definitely a Teleprompter. I’m going to say that for sure; I mean, that’s just classy. Teleprompters, that’s sort of how politics works now. People sort of accept Teleprompters; I don’t know about hand notes. If I ever actually saw an elected official look at his hand—that would just be bad news for him.

TN: A TelePrompTer has a whole speech on it…

DN: The thing with the hand note incident—I don’t really know why it became such a controversy. She had three points written on her hand. These are less tips than pretty much any presidential candidate or even people in gubernatorial elections have as tips. They were just basic topics to remember because often times when you’re speaking, giving a speech or just general public speaking, you’ll forget or you’ll skip over an entire point and then when you go back and look at it, it’s a serious problem.

TN: But you shouldn’t be skipping over these points. I mean, these are generic points and this is a former vice presidential candidate, and she has to forget energy?

DN: OK, raising the American spirit is a very important point to make sure you don’t forget. **Laughs**

TN: You’re at a Tea Party rally, that’s what they’re for.

DN: There were some serious problems with Sarah Palin’s use of having notes on her hand; however, [they were] less complicated notes than a speech on a TelePrompTer. I think it’s a very good thing in politics, having our politicians involved in what they’re saying instead of being given a speech for the first time to read and look over when they’re giving it. That’s pretty much a fall of American democracy—our candidates don’t even know what they’re saying before they start speaking

TN: As you can tell, I’m not the biggest Sarah Palin fan in the Republican Party, [but] if she’s making her own speech, if she’s using her own information, if she’s got to write a few things on her hand, I’ll overlook it, because it’s her work.

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