Paying Servants for Their Service

Even as we race towards the election, the battle to define Clinton's legacy is taking shape. Prominent in this debate is the role of Monica Lewinsky and the effects of scandal on Clinton's second term. While only history can assess whether a White House intern failed the Clinton Presidency, it is clear the Clinton Presidency failed the White House Intern Program.

Monica Lewinsky, like me and hundreds of other White House interns, worked for months without pay in a program providing civic-minded students a chance to serve in government at its highest level. Working as a White House intern is not only an excellent way to become politically involved, but also an invaluable experience that future employers and admissions committees look favorably upon.

It is unfortunate, then, that the same economic injustices that plague our society plague this internship program. By not paying its interns, the White House limits participation to those who can afford to work without pay. As a result, the intern program is as much a cause of inequality as it is a result.

White House interns, drawn from the country's top college students, are placed throughout the Executive Office of the Presidency where they work along side paid staff in departments from the National Security Council to the speech writing office. While the bulk of interns phone, fax, and photocopy their way through a summer or semester of service, many utilize their academic skills to write briefs, conduct research, and pursue assignments equal in responsibility to junior staffers.

Whatever their contribution, interns perform clerical, administrative and professional tasks that would otherwise fall to paid government servants.

Politicians, not wanting to press the public purse, have historically failed to fund intern positions, precisely because they can. No matter what housing, food, and transportation expenses interns incur, not to mention the opportunity cost of lost wages, there will always be those who pay (or whose parents pay) out of pocket for the experience.

Who wouldn't want a White House internship on his or her rsum?

For everyday Americans, practices like this are just what is wrong with our country. The American creed, if it is anything, is a commitment to equal opportunity. People in our country, we like to think, should be judged by their merit, not by the tax-bracket of their parents. Yet this is how the White House internship program operates, by default if not by intent, in running an "equal opportunity" program with the implicit understanding that only the economically privileged need apply.

It gets worse. Another less-known but far more insidious injustice infects the program. Hidden on the internship application is a box applicants check if they desire to be evaluated "only under equal opportunity criteria." This sly sentence attempts to obscure the fact that a select number of internships are doled out under a different criteria; that sons and daughters of donors and political insiders are given an institutionally sanctioned upper hand over their hard working peers. Who needs grades, skills and letters of recommendation when you have connections?

Striking a note of poetic justice in this chord of American disharmony, Monica Lewinsky has become the perfect exemplar of what's wrong with the system. Daughter of a well connected Beverly Hills doctor and family friend of a high rolling Democratic donor, Monica not only secured but was able to pursue her internship because she had the "in" and financial support to do so.

Less fortunate applicants, left in the lurch by the double whammy of average parents with average-sized bank accounts, can't cope by finding scholarships because tax codes prohibit foundations from funding participation in partisan political activity.

The White House Interns Program is not alone. In Congress, and indeed in every state house and governor's office across the country, the vast majority of political internships come without pay and most sanction less-than-meritocratic means of entry.

Politicians publicly ridicule each other for supporting programs that reinforce existing injustices, economic and otherwise. It's time for them to end the hypocrisy by paying their interns an honest wage for an honest day's work.

Christopher M. Kirchhoff '01 is a history and science concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.