Less than a week after the high-profile execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis, campus pro-life voices are silent and wishing to remain focused on the more relevant abortion issue. This, some say, brings into question how, or if, advocacy groups can effectively view capital punishment from the Ivory Tower.
The Boston College Pro-Life Club, known in the past for displaying large, anti-abortion messages around campus, has almost exclusively focused its crosshairs on abortion in recent years. Last semester, about 50 students joined the club's annual showing at the March for Life in WashingtonD.C.; the club boasts a following nearing 500, according to listserv membership.
The death penalty, however, is usually recognized in the Respect for Life Week schedule (which, this year, occurs next week). Next Thursday, the club will be co-hosting a discussion on the death penalty with Amnesty International.
Katelyn Conroy, president of the Pro-Life Club and A&S '14, said that she first heard about the Troy Davis case when approached by The Heights for comment. But, she said, "We [the Pro-Life Club] are very much against the death penalty. We're pro-life in every way there is."
The official mission of the Pro-Life Club is, in part, to " … address the injustices of abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia by providing educational opportunities and loving support."
"On campus, abortion is more of a relevant issue," Conroy said. "But, capital punishment is an issue that does need more attention."
The reason for the greater focus on abortion, Conroy confirmed, is strikingly obvious. That is, college students are more likely to find themselves in an abortion clinic than on death row.
For Alan Rogers, a professor in the history department and a scholar on the history of the death penalty in Massachusetts, this does not come as a surprise.
"I wouldn't expect [a response] to come from the Pro-Life Club," said Rogers, who will be speaking at next Thursday's death penalty panel.
The death penalty and abortion share an ideological basis – the value of human life, Rogers said. "But, at a certain point, the death penalty goes off down a different road and brings up questions of strategy … in the legal system," he said.
Plus, Rogers pointed out, "Many of the people in death penalty suits appear as generally unsavory characters." The public outcry to save the lives of death row inmates (guilty or not) sometimes just isn't there.
Yet, despite the difficulties faced by organizers at the student level, BC faculty have shown up in the arena over the past half-century.
Former University President Rev. Thomas Gasson, S.J. served on the Anti-Death Penalty League, organized in 1899 with the goal of abolishing the death penalty in Massachusetts. Another Jesuit, BC Law Dean Rev. Robert Drinan, S.J. testified before a 1957 special commission to study the death penalty in Massachusetts. Eleven years later, 85 BC and BC Law professors petitioned Governor John Volpe to commute the sentence of Charles Tracy, a black man sentenced to death for the shooting of a Boston police officer. Tracy was granted a six-month respite and was ultimately not executed.
More recently, campus members from groups like Amnesty International have responded in fits and spurts to events like the Davis case.
In a letter to the editor published in the Sept. 15 edition of The Heights, Leon Ratz, a student activist for Amnesty International and BC '11, wrote that, "… the state of Georgia may execute an innocent man," before highlighting a case for saving Davis' life.
In his final words, Ratz made a case for BC: "As members of the Boston College community, I hope that we can join together in not only trying to save Troy's life, but also calling for our country to put an end to the barbaric practice of the death penalty once and for all."
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