Fighting for the Filibuster, Winning a Lot More

A student activist reflects on what was really gained during the national student protests against the “nuclear option.”

By Asheesh Siddique, Princeton University

Every four years around election time, a considerable amount of ink gets spilled decrying the supposed political “apathy” of college students and first-time voters. Despite recent assessments of youth civic engagement, we’re still told by pollsters and pundits that students don’t feel like the issues of the day are relevant to our lives, that we don’t care about the candidates, and that politicians consequently don’t put in the effort to win our votes. But that belief was dramatically challenged late this spring. The response of progressive students nationwide—including those of us at Princeton University—to the Senate leadership’s effort to bend the rules in order to confirm a few of President Bush’s most extreme judicial nominees prove that the rhetoric about youth apathy is pure political spin.

After gaining seats in the 2004 election, Senate Republicans began threatening to change the number of votes required to force a vote on a presidential appointment in order to overcome the filibuster of ten of President Bush’s most controversial and extreme federal appellate court nominees. Led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, a 1974 graduate of Princeton, the GOP threatened to overturn the 217-year-old tradition of the filibuster in order to force the confirmation of the few, out-of-the-mainstream nominees Senate Democrats had declined to confirm during President Bush’s first term. Collectively, these ten men and women had spent their legal careers working to curtail reproductive freedom based on personal opposition to abortion rather than actual interpretation of the law; defending the torture policies that resulted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal; and arguing for the permissibility of racially harassing speech in the workplace, despite Supreme Court precedent to the contrary. Although Democratic and Republican senators had worked in a bipartisan fashion to approve 95 percent of the President’s judicial appointments, Bush, Frist, and a coalition of right-wing extremists insisted on having it all—to the point that they threatened to rescind the right of the minority party to engage in extended debate on these highly controversial nominees by overturning the current rules, which require a supermajority of 60 votes to end debate on any nominee or pending legislation. The “nuclear option” would upend the delicate checks and balances at the core of our democratic system of government, turning the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world, into a rubber stamp for the nominations of the Executive – no matter how extreme or unqualified.

Though their level of political experience pales in comparison with Senator Frist’s, progressive students nationwide proved this spring that they have a better grasp of the true intent of the Constitution’s framers. Way back in the late 18th century, the founding fathers designed a government with three co-equal branches, with each delegated some amount of authority over the other so that none became tyrannical. They wanted to ensure that the new nation’s government maintained a sense of balance that would prevent any individual or party from gaining too much power. Because the filibuster stands as one of the most crucial tools in this “checks and balances” system, protecting the rights of the minority party in Congress and encouraging the Senate to fulfill its charge of being the deliberative branch of our bicameral legislature, progressives on college campuses realized the emergency of defending it against an attack motivated by the short-term interests of a political faction.

Originating in the nation’s capital at Howard University in early April, then spreading northward to Minnesota’s Carleton College from April 18-22, hitting Princeton University right before final exams, and then ballooning out to campuses and communities in thirty states, young citizens declared their solidarity with Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans, including Senators Lincoln Chafee and John McCain, in demanding that Senator Frist back down from nuking the Senate. Following in the tradition of famous Senate filibusters in American history, students from Alabama to Alaska, and 33 other states led their local communities in protest, standing in front of campus centers, courthouses, and on campus throughways to speak for hours in an act of tribute to the tradition of senatorial filibusters.

Our filibuster at Princeton, led initially by a coalition of a few concerned progressive students from the Campus Progress-supported Princeton Progressive Review and other undergraduate organizations, lasted 384 hours in front of the community building donated by Senator Frist and his family, a highly symbolic location. When we began reading at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26th, using a music stand adjacent to the Frist Campus Center, we had no idea that our protest would involve so many students and faculty or help spark a grassroots movement during the waning days of the academic year—let alone last beyond a few hours.

To our surprise, the Frist Center Filibuster for Democracy caught fire on campus, sparking debate, engaging students and the Princeton community, and attracting the attention of the nation. After the initial four hours of filibustering, we decided to establish a sign-up sheet with half-hour blocks of reading time to cope with the demand of students interested in expressing their opposition to the nuclear option. Within days, slots were booked well into May, to the point that we began cutting allotments down to 15, then 10 minutes. In the coming hours, days, and weeks, we were joined by Congressmen Rush Holt (who read from Aesop’s Fables) and Frank Pallone (whose son read from Goosebumps); Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek (Einstein’s papers); literary scholar Jeff Nunokawa (To Kill a Mockingbird); freestyle rappers; and vaudeville artists. In their unique ways, every individual expressed his or her opposition to Frist’s political gamesmanship through their presence at the podium and in the supportive audiences that inevitably formed when particularly interesting readings occurred. As important, we were able to engage conservative students supportive of Senator Frist in several respectful debates over the merits and drawbacks of the proposed nuclear option. The highlight of the experience for me was sitting in the dining halls during the filibuster and hearing classmates discuss the merits of changing the Senate’s rules over dinner, instead of the latest sports scores and celebrity gossip.

While the considerable publicity we garnered due to the particular symbolism of our protest was certainly enjoyable on its own merits, the most important reward was the sense of community and empowerment the students felt. I made extraordinary connections during those three weeks with some of the most talented and thoughtful people, both at Princeton and in the larger progressive community, that I have ever known. When I think back on this experience a few years from now, I probably won’t remember our concerns about the activist record of Priscilla Owen, or our worries about the temperament of Janice Rogers Brown. (Though they both certainly merit concern.) Instead, I’ll remember jumping out of bed at 3 a.m. at the end of the first week of filibustering to argue with campus police officers who questioned whether we had a proper permit to protest (we did); I’ll remember our hours-long strategy meetings held over black coffee at a local café; I’ll remember the thrill of receiving calls and emails of support from as far away as Thailand. The sense of mission, friendship, community, and trust that guided us during those three weeks gives me renewed optimism that our daily struggle for a stronger, more just, and free America—on our campuses, in our communities, and at CampusProgress.org—is one worth every ounce of energy we devote to it, irrespective of the setbacks inevitably endured.

Organizing the “Fristabuster” was the most physically and emotionally taxing endeavor I’ve ever engaged in (at one point, it knocked me into the hospital for several days), but also the most rewarding. In the end, what counted was not that a few of Bush’s controversial nominees got through in the Senate’s compromise agreement, or even that the filibuster was preserved (for now). From California to Connecticut and Washington to Wisconsin, progressive students found our voice as engaged citizens participating actively in the political process—and caring passionately about what we were fighting for. That was the real achievement of the student filibuster movement. Maybe even Bill Frist would at least applaud at that.

Asheesh Siddique is the Editor of the Princeton Progressive Review.

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