I saw Justice Brett Kavanaugh at a tailgate. I spotted Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a private box at halftime. I walked right into a stalled motorcade for President Joe Biden. I missed the forum with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice because of an essay, but I promise I meant to go.

It felt like the federal government invaded Notre Dame in the fall. Yet in spite of these A-list D.C. residents paying us social calls, many students, including myself, closed their doors to political debate. Perhaps even as a student news publication, Scholastic ought to have made itself a better venue for debate and discussion.

In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Toqueville wrote, “A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world.” Then, he wrote of a nascent America. world, one in desperate need of a new science.

The digital sphere expanded horizons of communication. Nowadays, we can reach anyone, anywhere, at any hour of the day. We can share our thoughts without opening our mouths or showing our faces. It’s so much easier to talk to one another.

But ease and convenience can have consequences. We grow accustomed to sharing our thoughts behind the privacy and safety of a screen instead of in front of the open and unpredictable human person. We rejoice at the ability to friend with our words. Speaking to another person online poses no immediate, inescapable threat to your emotion, psyche or body. In real life, though, we must trust our companion not to harm us as we share our hearts and minds. And they trust us, too.

Talking to people who disagree with us is scary, and it should be. But our tendency to run to echo chambers and internet forums can prevent productive dialogue and leave mere political gossip in its place. I think we owe it to each other to take up the challenge of dialogue.

Our cover story for this issue deals with the dilemma of debate on Notre Dame’s campus. In Perspectives, one student questions our comfort with the political silence on campus. In News, we look at what the various political clubs on campus do. Sports highlights a rising star on our football team, Adon Shuler. Shuler idolized the Eagles, a team that shares a mascot with our country (this one is a stretch, I know). Humor presents some of the arguments against participating in democracy, for those of us on the fence.

Overall, this issue presents democracy as it is in our new world; weird as hell. But at least we’re talking about it.

Peace, 

Claire Early