Tuesday night, politically-minded students crowded into a Hamilton classroom to watch the Columbia University College Democrats and Republicans debate the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
Columbia Political Union publisher Rhonda Shafei, CC’12, moderated the event.
Republican debaters Tyler Trumbach, CC ’13, and William Prasifka, CC ’12, argued that Guantánamo should not be closed. Trumbach said the detainees at Guantánamo should have “no civil rights or privileges” because they are “terrorists.”
“The United States has the right to keep them in a closed facility,” Trumbach said.
Their opponents, Democratic debaters Janine Balekdjian, CC ’13, and Sarah Gitlin, CC ’13, thought that the facility should be closed immediately because it is a “violation of human rights and the Constitution.”
Balekdjian argued that the facility is “destroying America’s reputation,” and that holding hundreds of detainees without trials goes against the constitution.
But Prasifka countered that the facility does not violate the constitution because there is “no precedent at all under the law that enemy combatants be held like United States citizens.”
The debaters also disagreed on the treatment of the prisoners at Guantánamo.
When asked what valuable information has been received from the detainees, Trumbach replied that he didn’t know of any, but that the “Department of Defense has said that it has received good information” that cannot be released because it is a “matter of national security.”
The Democrats replied that most of the information received from the detainees has been false and that the “information is not helping” the U.S.
When asked to propose an alternative to the facility, Gitlin said that “anyone being held at Guantánamo Bay … should be given a trial.” If they are convicted, she said, they should be sent to jail, and if they are acquitted, they should be set free.
“If they [the detainees] were guilty, we wouldn’t have these problems,” Balekdjian said, arguing that there are “several innocent people at Guantánamo Bay. … Many of them are not any more guilty than people sitting in this room.”
“When we have something that is wrong, ineffective, violates human values, and makes people hate us and want to kill us, we should get rid of it,” Gitlin said.
“We don’t think in Guantánamo Bay that the United States is doing something bad [legally],” Prasifka countered, regardless of moral concerns. “They are doing something legal."
amber.tunnell@columbiaspectator.com
An earlier version of this article misrepresented the position of William Prasifka of the CU College Republicans by suggesting that he found nothing morally objectionable about Guantanamo Bay. In fact, he stated more narrowly that he believed that there was no reason from a legal standpoint for the prison to be closed.
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