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| President Doug
Bennet congratulates five Wesleyan seniors on their new endeavor,
beyondpartisan.org. The students, who graduated in May, are, from left, Adam Jack Gomolin,
Bill Ferrell, David Tutor, Robert Weinstock and Nathaniel Byer. |
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| Posted 06.16.06 |
Seniors Start Web Site to Spur Balanced Political Dialogue
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Last August, four Wesleyan seniors got together for a friendly chat on
political issues, each disenchanted with the nature of Internet politics and
the few venues available for American citizens to express their viewpoints
in a neutral environment. True, there are hundreds of political-action Web
sites, such as MoveOn.org and CitizenJoe.com, online periodicals, and
single-view blogs, but the students felt the World Wide Web lacked a site
that encouraged balanced and consensus-oriented dialogue.
That’s when the College of Social Studies majors Adam Jack Gomolin,
Nathaniel Byer, Robert Weinstock and David Tutor entertained the idea of
starting their own Web site.
The group of four asked their political and Web-savvy friend Bill Ferrell,
from the Departments of Philosophy and Physics to join. After months of
planning and five design renovations, the students registered the domain,
beyondpartisan.org, on Jan. 26.
“BeyondPartisan.org is a response, on one hand, to bipartisan political
incompetence, and, on the other, the hyper-speed, unilateralism and
overwhelming partisanship of the blogosphere,” Gomolin says. “We believe
that it represents a new wave of youth-oriented and Web-based politics, the
‘anti-blog’, or at least ‘multi-blog’.”
The site, co-engineered with the design firm Dreampod.com and software
architects of Pacific Northwest Software, currently gets more than 500
visitors a day and has close to 1,000 registered users.
“On TV, you have all these talking heads yelling their viewpoints, and it
becomes a contest of who can shout the loudest,” Tutor says. “Our goal with
Beyond Partisan is to get viewpoints out there and constructively challenge
each other. You may think you are red or blue, but read others’ viewpoints,
engage with those you don’t necessarily agree with.”
Beyond that, Weinstock and the others see100 U.S. senators and 435
congressmen preaching partisanship and screaming sound bytes.
“The result is a vain discord that impedes honest legislation capable of
helping Americans of all creeds and classes,” Weinstock says. “What are we?
We’re honest solutions, or at least, honest starting points.”
The Beyond Partisan process begins with an issue-article, a brief and
accessible piece focusing on a single policy area, meant to prompt dialogue
with and between users. They offer article-specific commentary, independent
forums and personal messaging. Ferrell says the site offers a level of
administrator-user parity offered in few other venues, certainly none
political.
“Simple, short and open dialogue,” Byer explains. “It is a conversation to
which each American is invited. We must, as citizens, reflect upon our
discussion and draw from it the shared values upon which we may move
forward.”
The editors have posted articles on gay marriage, stem cell research,
educational vouchers, abortion and ports-management, among other topics.
BeyondPartisan.org, they explain, is partly about going “beyond the beltway”
mentality and myopia. For instance, in the cleverly punned "Our Civil
Union", co-written with another Wesleyan student, they offer a simple
solution to the hotly-debated topic of gay marriage: limit the government to
‘civil unions’, while devolving the ‘religious bond’ to independent bodies.
“If the Catholic church does not want to marry two gay Americans, that is
their choice,” they note, “but no tax-paying American should be denied the
secular privileges consistent with marriage because of their sexual
orientation.”
This is not a new solution, they point out, just one roundly ignored by
elected officials.
Charles Lemert, the John C. Andrus Professor of Sociology, is a
BeyondPartisan.org reader and contributor.
“I’ve followed this project for most of the year and can honestly say that
it is one of the most brilliant student projects I’ve seen in a long while,”
he says. “The student leaders are themselves very smart of course, but the
brilliance is in their ability to pull together BeyondPartisan.org. I’m
pleased but not surprised that the site has attracted so much notice. The
essays are very compelling and the political theme quite obviously needed.”
The students used their own out-of-pocket money to start the site and also
received additional financial help and enthusiastic encouragement from
President Doug Bennet.
Although the students graduated in May and are now in various locations
across the country, they will continue to co-manage the site via the Web.
Weinstock says the site will become self-sustaining by allowing other
writers and patrons themselves to make lead story contributions: “The more
patron-produced the site is, the more successful we have been.”
“This is a perfect opportunity for people our age who want to be engaged in
politics to log on and discuss today’s issues,” Byer says. “It’s a place to
bring and share ideas.”
Beyond Partisan is located online at
http://www.beyondpartisan.org.
Users can log on and sign up at
http://www.beyondpartisan.org/login/register. |
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| By Olivia Bartlett, Wesleyan
Connection editor |
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