Rebecca Mears ’15, president of the College Democrats of Rhode Island and Justin Braga ’16, chairman of the College Republican Federation of Rhode Island, engaged in a public debate Tuesday to discuss topics ranging from the recent U.S. government shutdown to national poverty.
The event marked the first time in over five years that the heads of the two organizations debated publicly.
Organized a year before the 2014 midterm elections, the hour-long event aimed to encourage student political involvement and awareness, Mears and Braga said. “Debate Night in Rhode Island” attracted a large audience in Salomon 101, including gubernatorial candidate and Mayor of Cranston Allan Fung. About 200 students from Brown, Providence College, Roger Williams College and University of Rhode Island attended the event, as did multiple faculty members.
Mears said she was excited to see youth get involved in a student-organized political event.
“We’re out there to show that these issues do pertain to students,” Mears said.
Braga said he hoped “that people will be able to walk away and see that Republicans support those who live on the margins of society.” He added that he realized he represented a minority political viewpoint on campus and hoped to draw more people to support the Republican Party. “I’m excited to get out there and show people what my party stands for (and) what I stand for as a person,” he said.
The debate began on a lively and playful note, with moderator Ted Nesi, a political correspondent for WPRI-TV, asking the audience about their news habits and joking about being shouted off stage in reference to the recent controversy around Ray Kelly’s presence on campus. Once the debate started, the tone became serious and high-spirited.
Braga said both Republicans and Democrats shared the blame for the government shutdown in Washington. But Mears took a more aggressive stance, attributing the $24 billion costs and 800,000 workers furloughed last month to the Republicans in Congress. She expressed the need for compromise between the two parties.
On the topic of policy addressing poverty reduction, Mears said she would like to see greater efforts to make health care more affordable, reassess minimum wage and increase investments in human capital. Mears expressed discontent with the current focus on welfare as a means of addressing the issue of poverty. “We expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they don’t have any boots,” she said.
Braga said the issue was personal, relating it to his experiences in an inner city high school in which he had classes with students who were homeless. He advocated the need for a “social safety net” for people like his father, who lost his job during the economic recession. Braga called for a focus on education, increasing economic opportunity and building more comprehensive prison reforms through youth courts and juvenile programs.
“(Democrats) will continue fighting the war on poverty but the Republicans will win the war on poverty,” Braga said.
Mears said Braga was fighting for the right reasons, but reaching the wrong conclusions. “If you want to get people to climb up the social ladder you have to provide the ladder,” by raising minimum wage, Mears said. Braga, in response, said raising minimum wage is like “pulling the ladder out from under people who are trying to get up.”
Nesi then steered the conversation toward policies meant to spur economic growth in Rhode Island. Braga suggested some solutions to combat Rhode Island’s unemployment rate — the third highest in the country — and to ameliorate the business climate, including eliminating or reducing substantially the state sales tax, ending corporate welfare by cutting corporate taxes and building a stronger education system to produce a stronger workforce.
Mears disagreed, arguing that the high corporate tax rate is countered by tax incentives and tax breaks. In addition, she said the high sales tax is balanced through sales tax exemptions for food, clothing and medicine. She shared her own ideas of how to increase economic growth in Rhode Island, which included increasing investment in infrastructure to create more jobs, improving the business climate and investing in education and human capital to retain college students within the state through student loan credit.
“They come here for four years, they learn and they leave. It’s sad,” Mears said.
The debate became more heated during the topic of gun ownership and the second amendment. Braga called for states and municipalities to prevent gun violence by employing armed guards at schools to protect students. “The only people who should have a gun in a school are the police who are there to help them,” Braga said.
Mears, on the other hand, said she believed having armed guards would only increase the number of arms on a school campus. “The easiest way is not always the best way,” she said. Mears called for a universal background check before purchasing a gun, adding that 90 percent of Americans supported this policy. This is significant, she said, because “we can’t even get 90 percent of Americans to agree that we landed on the moon.”
In addition, she said she hoped to see a limit to the amount of ammunition purchased and innovative technology to increase safety and security for the owners of the gun and for those around them.
Mears and Braga also discussed education and the role of standardized tests such as New England Common Assessment Program in Rhode Island Braga said standardized tests are a necessary graduation requirement because they ensure that the people who are “the future of our workforce and our country” are truly prepared for college.
“We cannot go back to the dark ages anymore,” where diplomas were handed out to just about everyone, Braga said.
But Mears said the NECAP exams were never meant to be used as standardized tests, but as a means of ranking students against one another. “The test is the wrong test to give,” she said.
Mears advocated improving the quality of public schools so that students will not have to narrow down their choices to private schools and charter schools.
Braga said it is important to put efforts into improving charter and private schools to promote school choice. “Don’t give a blind check to public schools,” he said. “Make them compete for those dollars.”
Mears, in response, said, “Children’s education should not be subject to market whims.”
Regardless of their differing opinions on current political issues, Braga and Mears both expressed mutual respect and admiration for each other, and both received nearly equal applause at the end of the debate.
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