Egalitarian. It would have made the founding fathers’ top 10 list of favorite words.
As college students, it never hurts to learn about new words or Supreme Court justices, especially when they are polar opposites. The contrast makes each one easy to remember.
According to the American Heritage College Dictionary (great care was taken to find a suitably conservative source for its definition) egalitarian is defined as: affirming, promoting or characterized by belief in equal political, economic and social rights.
Simply put, egalitarian means fair.
Being part of a public university, ETSU students are able to experience first hand just such a concept in action. One of the greatest and most often ignored gifts of a college education is the opportunity students are given to share and experience different viewpoints, beliefs and cultures. That opportunity is an equal opportunity for every student on campus. The student body isn’t limited to a single stereotype, but is a potpourri of unique individuals. The chance to experience that is a gift, free to anyone who wants to accept it, regardless of age, gender, color or religious affiliation.
Maybe living in a society where egalitarian institutions exist spoils the people of America, who come to expect fairness to extend into other spheres of our society, for example the judiciary branch.
There is an expectation that every individual should receive equal treatment under the law, a belief so indoctrinated into our culture that it’s even a part of our daily loyalty pledge to the stars and stripes (“… with liberty and justice for all”). Justice should be fair, right? And for justice to be fair, the arbitrators of justice (the judges) should believe in fairness too, right?
That brings us to Samuel Alito, who will fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by moderate Sandra Day O’Connor.
How can college students like us gauge whether or not Alito will make a good judge?
One good way might be to examine what Alito was like when he was our age, when he was in college. Would he have liked to attend a campus as diverse as ETSU?
As a student at Princeton University, Alito joined a club called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. He was so proud of being in this particular club he listed it on his rsum when first applying for a job with the justice department during the Reagan presidency.
CAP was formed soon after Princeton abandoned its policy of male only admittance standards. For most guys in college, a coed campus makes perfectly good sense.
But how did the good old boys in the CAP group feel about the effects of integration? According to the New York Times, the group’s co-chair, Asa Bushnell said, “Coeducation has ruined the mystique and the camaraderies that used to exist. Princeton has now given into the fad of the moment, and I think it’s going to prove to be a very unfortunate thing.”
Ah yes, that pesky “fad” we call equal rights. Here’s an excerpt from the club’s magazine, Prospect, written two short years before Alito applied for his position in the Reagan administration, “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns black and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and Hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children.”
Although Alito didn’t write or speak any of these comments himself, he listed his CAP membership under “Personal Qualifications Statement” in his application to the justice department, according to the Daily Princetonian.
During his Judicial Committee testimony, Alito displayed a strikingly good memory when it came to recalling details from past court cases, yet when the inconvenient fact of his CAP membership popped up during questioning, Alito claimed he was unable to recall being in such a group.
Will Alito suffer from similar, convenient lapses in memory when interpreting the Constitution for Supreme Court cases?
The most powerful court in the land has just sworn in a man who lacks not one, but two of the most fundamental prerequisites needed to enforce justice in America – fairness and honesty.
Will the plaintiffs and defendants in upcoming Supreme Court cases be rich enough, white enough and man enough to enjoy equal justice with Alito on the bench?
Or did a sleeping America just take a giant step away from the egalitarian society we’re taught to believe we live in?

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