Last night, the Student Government met, and as a grad senator, I attended the meeting. It was ridiculously long; we finally finished at midnight. Why? Because we wanted some sleep.

Seriously, though, the reason the meeting went on so long was because we were presenting and discussing the budget for the next semester. Representatives from different clubs were there to answer questions – and ask questions. I was surprised, though – despite the vested interest these clubs had in their budget (after all, we were deciding how much money to give them, sometimes even to these individuals themselves, through stipends), they were quite laid-back about the whole process. The people getting upset were actually the senators themselves.

Specifically, when we dealt with the pro-life group and the funding for the March for Life, there were a number of senators who thought that we should be helping more with the funding. When we finally moved on to other clubs’ requests, each new one was compared to the Students for Life, and their comparative value was questioned, especially when we arrived at the Student Government’s own expenditures, even though of course the expenditures were directed towards events we were hosting for the whole student body. What seems more important – an end-of-the-year party focusing on the graduating seniors, or subsidizing students on the March for Life?

As a senator, I was selected to sponsor no less than the Fine Arts Society – the group that subsidizes students to attend operas, ballets, symphonies and theatre productions. Luckily, we were able to go before the Students for Life, and thus didn’t have our validity called into question, much. But if we had, could we have defended ourselves? I think we could.

Ultimately, truth and beauty are mutually reaffirming: the truth that abortion is evil, and that justice ought to be done, is reaffirmed countless times through parallels in literature and art. Justice is itself beautiful; there is an awful proportion and symmetry in the death of a tyrant. If we restrict ourselves to the purely practical, I believe that sooner or later we will lose sight, not only of the beautiful, but of the intrinsic value of persons.

In such a university as this, I believe we should surround ourselves with good things, and that goodness is found in our cultural heritage as well as in political activism on the side of justice. We shouldn’t neglect either of them.