American Magazine: November 2016

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Four decades after the death
penalty became legal again in the
United States, the issue remains
as polarizing as ever. School
of Communication professors
Richard Stack and Maggie
Burnette Stogner are staunch
opponents of capital punishment,
but they’ve taken a decidedly
nonjudgmental approach to
examining it in their forthcoming
documentary, In the Executioner’s
Shadow, which explores how our
decisions about the death penalty
define who we are as individuals,
as a society, and as a country.
“We’ve tried very hard to make
this a balanced piece so that a
vast range of perspectives are
represented,” Stack says. “We’d
like the public to begin talking
about the death penalty in deeper,
more meaningful ways, and we’d
like to get people getting beyond
their differences and talking about
some common ground.”
The film follows three main
characters whose beliefs and
experiences vary widely. Vicki
and Sylvester Schieber’s daughter,
Shannon, was raped and murdered
when she was 23, yet they opposed
the death penalty for her killer.
For years, it was Jerry Givens’s
job to carry out death sentences.
As Virginia’s executioner, he
ended the lives of 62 men
before he resigned and began
advocating for the abolition of
capital punishment. This summer,
Stogner filmed Givens in the nowdefunct,
crumbling old Eastern
State Penitentiary in Philadelphia,
capturing strong images she thinks
will impact audiences this subject
normally doesn’t reach.
“It’s the perfect metaphor for a
decaying, nonfunctioning criminal
justice system,” she says. “Putting
him in that situation is visually
powerful and engaging. It’s also
a metaphor for what haunts
him every day, which is that he
came very close—within days—of
executing an inmate who was later
found to be innocent.”
The final protagonist is Karen
Brassard, who was wounded in the
2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
She struggled with what would
constitute justice for the man who
carried out the terrorist attack.
“We’d like the
public to begin
talking about the
death penalty
in deeper, more
meaningful ways.”
-Richard Stack
“She let us into her thought
process as it unfolded over
the years,” Stack says. “As
she wrestled with it, she very
thoughtfully explored a lot of
issues around what it really
means to want the death penalty.”
The collaboration, which has
also included many graduate
students, started in 2013. In
addition to the film, Stack and
Stogner are developing a suite
of materials about the death
penalty that they hope can be
used to reach wider audiences
and stimulate conversations in
classrooms or discussion groups.
It’s a timely issue. Twenty
states have now outlawed the
death penalty. If that number
reaches 26, opponents may
attempt to take a case to the
Supreme Court, arguing that the
punishment is not only cruel, but
unusual as well.
“That is the heart and soul of
what this is about,” Stogner says.
“What is justice?”
In recent months, the role of university
endowments has come under renewed
scrutiny. Some believe that as nonprofits
that enjoy tax-exempt status, institutions of
higher education should be required to spend
more of their endowments on improvements
like reducing student debt and making
college more affordable for low-income
students. US Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) supports
legislation that would penalize institutions
with large endowments that do not spend
enough on student aid.
AU’s $600 million endowment is
comprised primarily of gifts that have been
designated for specific purposes—and cannot
legally be used for anything else.
“Our spending policy is 5 percent of the
endowment value, based on a rolling threeyear
average,” says Doug Kudravetz, AU’s
CFO and vice president and treasurer. “We
are required to spend it based on restrictions
imposed by the donors, primarily on
scholarships, fellowships, and faculty chairs.”
Endowments are intended to provide
a long-term economic buffer, says
Terry Flannery, AU’s vice president of
communication.
“A strong endowment roughly equal to
the annual operating budget is important for
bond ratings, so the university can borrow
money or issue bonds for important projects
and pay the debt back over time,” she says.
“We have reduced student debt and increased
affordability through other means.”
While AU’s endowment has increased
113 percent since 2005 and is now about
the size of its operating budget, some of
its competitors have endowments many
times larger than their operating budgets,
Kudravetz says.
“[Ours] does not yet have the value or
flexibility of some of the nation’s wealthiest
institutions to contribute to operating
resources in a meaningful way,” he says.
“For many years AU has been primarily a
tuition-driven institution and will continue
to be so in the near term. But with careful
investment and more ambitious fundraising,
we will ensure that AU will be less dependent
on tuition alone in the long term.”
BROOKINGS BOUND
RESEARCH WITHOUT BORDERS
SPA’s Bradley Hardy has been awarded the Brookings Institution’s Okun-Model Fellowship for
the 2016–2017 academic year. The prestigious fellowship—typically given to academics with two
to six years of experience—will enable Hardy to build relationships with Brookings scholars
researching poverty, social policy, and economic instability. “I’m looking forward to working with
such talented economic scholars on issues that matter to the American people,” he says.
SIS and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies have launched
the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative, named for the late
scholar. AU will recruit six to nine academics from Canada, Mexico, and
the United States, who will convene twice a year to share research and
brainstorm promising new directions for policy, advocacy, and scholarship.
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