Ten weeks have come and gone in the blink of an eye and here I am, putting a neat little bow on the tidy story I have composed of my adventures in and around the Capitol this summer. From first meeting Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in Part 1, to attending Senate and House Committee hearings in Part 2, to speaking to individuals from both sides of the aisle over the intense debt ceiling debate in Part 3, and even attending the Congressional Baseball Game in Part 4, this summer has been like no other. It has certainly been a blast getting to know everyone in Senator Paul’s office, and Senator Paul himself, and I will not forget any of my experiences anytime soon. Many would be reduced to tears at the mere thought of completing such an enlightening and altogether enjoyable internship, but as Churchill so aptly put it, I look at the past as the beginning of my immersion into the “liberty” movement and the future as the continuation of a more durable and long-lasting political journey.  Let me shift gears, though, before I become sappy and insufferable.

The journey has not ended because the internship has.

The Last Week

My final week as an intern could not have come at a more wild time, in retrospect: the debt ceiling deadline was Tuesday, Aug. 2^nd, and as events turned out, I would be in the nation’s capital for a bird’s-eye view of the historic vote. The Monday before the deadline, a compromise deal was struck between Republicans in the House and President Obama to raise the debt limit by over $2 trillion now, and giving powers to a 12-man “Super Committee” to hash out guidelines for deficit reduction. While on the phones that rang incessantly on Monday, I heard it in both ears from Tea Partiers and Democrats alike: the former felt the compromise was a half-hearted political stunt, and the latter felt it was a “Satan sandwich” that overly favored the GOP.

One individual from the right thought that “President Obama was not one to be trusted,” while someone from the left thought the “Tea Party was hijacking the economy” for political gain. Both stuck to the major theme of the debt negotiations: compromise was either a necessary force for good or antithetical to a stand on principled fiscal policy.

Combine this with the noted spike in faxes from Americans sick of Congress’s job in handling the debt crisis, and my first day back on the Hill was quite eventful. Try hearing, seeing, and saying the word “debt” about three thousand times in a single day – wow, what a day.

If my internship were a story, then Tuesday, Aug. 2 would undoubtedly be the climactic moment. Moments before the vote, Senator Paul summoned the interns to his office. Much to our surprise, he requested our presence to accompany him to the Capitol to watch the procession from the Senate Gallery. Along with his Chief of Staff and Communications Secretary, we walked outside with Senator Paul to the front doors of the Capitol (about a two-minute walk). Along the way, we saw a modest group of individuals holding up signs urging the legislators to oppose any compromise short of a balanced budget amendment, and had to walk past rather tight security around the Capitol since Vice President Biden was in attendance.

Senator Paul made his way in through the member’s entrance, while we entered through the upstairs Gallery entrance, which was filled to absolute capacity. The vote was rather predictable, but the gravity of the matter was obvious. Every Senator congregated in small partisan pockets on the Senate floor, buzzing with political talk, while staffers outside all typed into BlackBerry’s at a feverish rate. We interns and the spectators were all hushed, half-deferential to the decorum of the Senate Gallery and partly acknowledging of the ponderous nature of the compromise bill. We all knew what the final vote would be like, but to be there was nonetheless surreal.  Senator Paul cast a “No” vote with 25 other Senators since he felt it lacked a balanced budget amendment and would add $7 trillion in new debt over the next decade. Afterwards, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) convened an early recess, citing the long hours and hard work put in by both sides and their staffs over the past few weeks.

Well, I finally got my recess, but afterwards, Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) e-mailed supporters of his Senate Conservatives Fund PAC with a list of conservative Senators who had voted against the debt compromise, urging them to take a moment to thank them. Even though we were in recess, we received calls for the next two-days from people all over the country thanking Senator Paul for his vote. The average call only lasted about 45 seconds, and all were supportive, making it a whole lot easier than the tall task of placating detractors.

On Thursday, we were all invited to a staff luncheon, at which the Chief of Staff surprised us all with pizza and informed us that the office would be closed on Friday as a thank you to those staffers who had worked late over the weekend. That means it would be my last day as an intern. After lunch, I counted down the hours and minutes to the end of my stay, and when that time arrived, I said my final goodbyes to every staffer I could find and turned in my Senate ID badge. It was a fun ride, and I was getting back into the New York groove, after all.

Looking Back…

It has been the experience of a lifetime, that much is certain, but if I were to generalize and share some lessons that I have taken away from my experience, these would be the ones:

1. Enjoy Every Minute On the Job. No matter how you are feeling on a given day, it is always encouraging to reinforce your place in the world. “You are interning on Capitol Hill,” definitely does the trick. Constituent calls can be draining, but it is doubly gratifying to assist an individual answer a question or resolve an issue. Logging correspondence online could be monotonous, but it means someone out there is getting his or her voice heard. There really is no way to look at the internship in a negative light: the essence of public service is helping others with a smile and that stands out most. Well, there are the infinitesimal perks associated with Capitol Hill interning, too…
2. There Is Always Something Happening on the Hill. At any given hour of any given day of the week, there is always some random event occurring. Be it a free lunch hosted by the CATO Institute or National Rifle Association, or a Committee Hearing in the House or Senate, or an ice cream social on the Capitol lawn, you can never go a day without a semi-busy schedule.
3. Volunteer As Much As Possible. Ostensibly, running errands around the office buildings does not seem so glamorous, but it is quite the treat for political junkies. I cannot count how many times I have run into Senators and Representatives by walking the halls of the Capitol. I have seen everyone from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.). It is especially intriguing to ride in the same underground Capitol subway car with a Senator and his staffers before an impending floor speech.
4. Take Initiative. It reflects well upon you and can fill a vital need in the office.
5. It Is Possible to Have Fun on the Job. Even if dealing with a seemingly insurmountable pile of work, it is possible to have fun doing it. Just by striking up a conversation with a fellow intern or staff member and living vicariously through their experiences, you can increase your net enjoyment twentyfold. Washington may be like a stalled automobile, but the individuals who keep the wheel turning are unlike any you are likely to find out there, so make the most of every minute.

Before I punch out, I would just like to thank Senator Paul and his staff for putting my résumé aside in the spring and bringing me aboard. It was the experience of a lifetime.

The opinions of this blog are solely those of Naji Filali and do not reflect the beliefs of Senator Rand Paul or his staff.

Photo Credit: The Christian Science Monitor

Even with the Senate in recess my first week on the job, the last two weeks have been quite eye-opening nonetheless. Working non-stop, exploring every nook and cranny of the Capitol Hill complex, and interacting with such exciting staff members who are equally, if not more, dedicated to Senator Paul’s message will do that to you.

Russell Senate Building

I began my intellectual odyssey the day after Memorial Day, a bit nervous, excited, and above all struggling to find my bearings in the Russell Senate Building. Take a trip to the building some time and try finding your way without a GPS. For the wide-eyed newcomer, the cavernous and stunning corridors are enough to distort your sense of direction. As I inconspicuously glanced into every open office door, I could not help but notice the uniqueness of each one’s character. Senator John Kerry’s (D-Massachusetts) is replete with photographs from his many travels and acquaintances, while a sharp-looking LCD monitor in the far right-hand corner of the office greets the passerby, while Senator James Inhofe’s (R-Oklahoma) features beige Victorian furniture and encapsulates the living environs of another era in American history. If I was not fully cognizant of the fact that I was in the Senate building, I would think some offices served the dual-purpose of a high-class customer service station, with up to four staffers in the main office behind tall and polished mahogany desks, glued to their computer screens and hooked up to telemarketer headsets. After absorbing practically all there was to be seen on the second floor of Russell, I finally stumbled into SR-208, that of the junior Senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The start of the daily grind at the Russell Senate Office Building.

Two high bookcases flank both sides of the door, stocked with tomes of various political import. Three mahogany desks for staff members, a red carpet, bare beige walls, a couch, and two chairs with newspapers and magazines sprawled atop a wooden coffee table: efficient, polished, and respectable. The simple, yet elegant office set-up had me spellbound from the moment I passed the threshold. However, little did I know that the basic office schematic was just the tip of the iceberg! The 20 or so people with whom Senator Paul has surrounded himself on his maiden voyage are nothing short of awe-inspiring and in many ways reflect the upstanding image the Senator has accomplished in carefully arranging his office. I am not saying this because I am naïve to D.C. or inherently biased toward a like-minded politician. In my opinion, they are the reason Senator Paul has become such a central fixture in the national discussion.

The People

The staff assistants in the front are a case study in calm and effective handling of every conceivable request – from endless strings of phone calls to White House tours to appointment requests. The legislative assistants tirelessly slave away at their respective areas of expertise. Be it scrutinizing the burden of military operations in Libya or working on proposals to reform entitlements to share with the Senator, they are so well-versed in their areas of expertise, and so strong are their convictions that being around them is like learning via osmosis. The legislative correspondents (with the help of interns, which I will get to in a bit) respond to every bit of correspondence they receive – be it via phone call, e-mail, fax, letter. It makes no difference if it is from a Kentucky constituent or not, because in the end, every concern should be addressed if it is within reason to do so. The press team does an excellent job of saturating the airwaves with the Senator’s message and getting the Senator himself out and about, as was the case early last week on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the upper echelons of the administration, which truly serve as the glue of the entire staff and keep the sails adjusted properly.

As for the interns, there are five of us in total and we pretty much tend to the miscellaneous work that does not directly fall under the others’ purview. Every day, each of us is assigned two two-hour blocks of answering phones at the front desk and logging unanswered constituent mail into an online software called “Senate Voice,” which routes individual correspondence to one of three legislative correspondents depending on the issue for a response.

Daily Discoveries

One would be surprised by how much there is to be learned by logging correspondence; the pulse of the nation (or irascible middle-aged and elder Americans) is right at my fingertips on a daily basis. I personally route quite the eclectic mix of form letters for the legislative correspondents to deal with. These past two weeks, I must have processed over 500 letters alone, and the trending topics include proposals for the Senator to stop Shariah law from somehow being introduced in the United States, overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kentucky v. King (2011), defend Israel’s borders from the President’s 1967 border proposition, and either support or oppose the Tester-Corker amendment to S. 575 (the debit interchange fee cap amendment that failed in the Senate last week).

More importantly, we interns undertook quite the project in poring over 13,000 “Thank You” letters sent from around the country in support to Senator Paul’s attempt to deny the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act on grounds of its violation of the Second and Fourth Amendments. One letter in particular made me proud to be an intern in the Senator’s office, in which a fellow New Yorker stated that he was a classic Hubert Humphrey liberal that did not see eye-to-eye with the Senator on many issues, but respected him more than he did any other liberal for his unequivocal defense of the same civil liberties his party once fought tooth and nail to defend. Similarly, National Rifle Association members flooded our inbox with disgust at their organization’s acquiescence to the intrusive gun record inspection in the bill, urging the Senator to “keep up the good fight from the gun-grabbers.” Such crosscutting ties over core Constitutional issues were surprising, and portend only the best for the Senator as he takes such principled stands on controversial matters. To those who choose to make snide comments at my choice of internship, I ask you to look long and hard in the mirror, appraise the track record of the Democratic Party on civil liberties in the past three years, and then hold it up to Senator Paul’s actions on the floor of the Senate.

No matter how entertaining it is for me to dissect individual opinions from behind the computer screen, nothing quite beats interactions with actual people on the phones. Amusingly, in listening to one of our staff assistants from Kentucky answer the phones so often (and might I add with such command and professionalism), I have not been able to help myself from catching onto the nuances of his Kentucky accent and even answer some of the phones with it. “Good afternoon, Senator Paul’s office.” Heck, one of the staffers even thought I was him once. Accent or not, the phone calls of appreciation for the Senator’s stance on fiscal issues are refreshing amidst similar reports of irate constituents flooding the phone lines of other offices.

Nevertheless, not all phone calls have been laudatory and positive in nature. It has admittedly been a challenge to deflect some of the criticisms lodged at Senator Paul by individuals citing a recent radio interview with Sean Hannity. As is typical of our sound bite culture, the Senator’s comments were taken out of context, painting him as a racial profiler for stating that those attending protests advocating the violent overthrow of our government be deported. Did it sound hateful and antithetical to the same American values Senator Paul has so passionately defended for the past several months? Yes. Should he be vilified for the intent of his extemporaneous comments? Absolutely not. As I explained to constituents, at the very least, the Senator made a well-intentioned stand to streamline otherwise invasive TSA procedures that would take on a more targeted method of ensuring airline security without patting down grandma and Little Billy. Though I may not agree with everything the Senator says – the vitality of our democracy is indeed dependent on such differences of opinion – he should be represented fairly in the media, especially since he is still getting a hold on things as a recent ophthalmologist-turned-statesman.

Senator Paul

Though the Senator was back in Bowling Green for recess during my first week on the job, I had the honor of meeting Senator Paul during the middle of Week Two when I handed him the newspapers for the day. It was surreal at least on my part to shake hands with the same individual I had watched on YouTube and blogged about for months while studying several hundred miles away in Cambridge. My excited-anxious state was completely and utterly belied by the Senator’s serene, calm demeanor. I cannot get over how well-collected and self-assured the Senator is – an intrepid captain sailing straight into the political squalls ahead, as I see it. I assume those qualities are necessitated by the perpetual political turmoil and angst in a city of big egos. As I would come to learn, he is also in a league of his own when it comes to his devotion to his first class of interns (not as cool as X-Men: First Class, but a close second).

We all sat down with him in his office the next day, introduced ourselves, and were collectively delighted and shocked to discover that he would like to meet with us regularly every two weeks so we can share our experiences and the progress we have made. Considering the fact that the vast majority of Senators go only as far as taking a picture with their interns or going out to lunch once or twice. Not to mention the generosity of his chief of staff, Doug Stafford, who went out of his way to purchase each of us a primer in libertarian education – an assortment of five books ranging from F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom to Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined. To top it all off, the Senator expressed his desire that each of us look beyond the office to broaden our knowledge base and more fully appreciate all D.C. has to offer by attending the various events organized for interns on and around the Hill. As such, I recently saw Ralph Nader tackle corporatism and look forward to attending several CATO Institute events in the near future.

The Closer

I will not bother boring you with the miscellaneous tidbits about errands run and mini-projects completed for legislative assistants; suffice it to say the past several weeks have been pretty awesome. Before I finish typing these pixels, I want to leave you with a unique intra-office e-mail exchange, one you could only find at the office of Senator Rand Paul:

Assistant to Chief of Staff: “Rand wants an office face book. Please send me a headshot by tomorrow COB.”

Legislative Correspondent: ”I feel that this would be an unwarranted investigation and acquisition of my private information by the government.”

Chief of Staff: “And he says you’re right. You can do a drawing instead if you want.”

The opinions of this blog are solely those of Naji Filali and do not reflect the beliefs of Senator Rand Paul or his staff.

couple

That is, if an unpaid internship is more like an apprenticeship than a job that happens to be unpaid, then it’s okay. But if you’re assigned to the facilities department to “wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu,” as one aspiring animator profiled by the New York Times in April had been, that’s not okay. That’s taking a job away from a janitor, that’s mistreating an intern who thought she was going to learn something, that’s exploiting the fact that most interns won’t complain about doing grunt work because they’re so desperate to have seemingly impressive experiences on their résumés.

This weekend, the Times followed up on this subject, announcing that “Students Chafe Under Internship Guidelines” and that summer internships had become “elusive.”

It was a very silly article.

The thesis: “many students have had a tougher time than they anticipated in landing résumé-enhancing experience this summer.”

The proof: ehh… not so much.

Let’s check out each of these “tales of frustration,” as the Times describes them. But first, let’s note that the thesis, even if true, wouldn’t prove a causal relationship between the Labor Department’s regulations and the experiences of these students. In any case, on to the anecdotes:

1. A “junior at Penn State had his paid corporate internship offer revoked during the last week of classes this spring.”

— A sad story indeed. Oh, wait, we find out later that he found “a six-week paid position at another firm.” And this must have been in late spring, by which point most spots are filled up. Still, with all that working against him, in the midst of this supposed internship drought, he found an internship, and a paid one at that.

2. “A journalism student in Washington had to walk away from three internship opportunities because she wouldn’t receive academic credit.”

—That’s unfortunate, though it would seem to be the fault of her stingy school, not regulation-fearing employers. What’s more, “She ended up finding a part-time paid internship, but it’s not in journalism; it’s a post at the federal Food and Drug Administration.” The way this punchline is set up, the author clearly wants us to pity the student. Alas, somehow an article that set out to prove that employers wouldn’t even offer unpaid internships is instead proving that paid internships abound.

3. “Emily Lennox, a 25-year-old M.B.A. candidate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the academic credit requirement hadn’t arisen last summer when she took an unpaid internship at a venture capital firm, a position she said provided a valuable “quick immersion” into the business world. “This year it was more difficult,” she said. She finally found two part-time unpaid internships, though she said she has since quit one out of dissatisfaction. But, she added, she is learning a lot in the other — a 15-hour-a-week stint at a start-up retail firm.”

— First, contrary to the author’s implication, the unpaid venture capital internship, if it were truly so “valuable,” would probably not alarm the Labor Department. Second, this woman found not one but two internships. One of them happened to be lousy, so she quit. Good for her. But if that internship really was so lousy, why would we bemoan its possible disappearance? And wouldn’t we want to require this employer to actually teach its interns something?

4. “Sarah Green, a 20-year-old art history major at Emory University, landed a prestigious internship last summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year she hoped to return to the New York art world. She applied to every auction house and museum she could find for both paid and unpaid spots. Every place turned her down, with some explaining they’d cut back on the number of interns they now hire. The experience may have been a career-changer for Ms. Green. “I took this as a sign that I was not meant to work in the fine arts,” she said. Instead she enrolled in summer courses in graphic design and advertising and has now decided to apply to a graduate program in art direction for advertising.”

— How resourceful of her. A sob story this is not. But it comes pretty close to supporting the author’s thesis: “some” employers explained that they’d “cut back.” Of course, that could just be a line they feed to disappointed applicants. Anyway, it sounds like Sarah had some rotten luck, but the Times could have just as easily interviewed the people who got the internships she applied for. Without any statistical evidence that the number of internships offered this year is lower than in previous years, there’s no reason to cherry-pick her story over anyone else’s.

5. “Kathryn Ciano, a law student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who aspires to become a legal journalist, worked through a group called the Institute for Humane Studies, which helped place her in an unpaid internship at Fox Business News in New York and awarded her a $3,200 stipend. But Fox still required her to obtain a letter showing she was receiving academic credit for the work. Her law school wouldn’t grant credit for a journalism internship, however. So she found a community college in Los Angeles that would award her credit and furnish the required letter for $200 — much less than she would have had to pay George Mason.

Ms. Ciano’s internship sounds like the type of post the new rules might call into question — 40 to 50 hours a week working on the development of a new show. But Ms. Ciano said the hands-on experience has been terrific. “It’s really wonderful,” she said. “They’re really nurturing, great mentors.””

— Again, if the internship is really so “wonderful” and “nurturing,” then no, it would not be called into question by the Labor Department’s rules. The point of the regulations is to make sure that unpaid internships are “hands-on” and “terrific.” The author of this article should have gone back and read the Times’ April piece: packaging and shipping apparel samples, making coffee and sweeping bathrooms, photocopying and filing—now those actually sound like the type of internships the new rules might call into question.

So, we have five detailed anecdotes, none of which is particularly compelling or tear-jerking, several of which prove the opposite of what they were intended to prove. I’m usually not a fan of anecdote-based newspaper articles, especially when there’s absolutely no statistical evidence backing up the selection of certain anecdotes over others. But this article isn’t just of a bad type; it’s a terrible execution of a bad type.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Serfs Up! – Unpaid Interns and the Culture of Dependence

The Obama administration has resolved to crack down on for-profit employers who take advantage of their interns, neither paying them nor offering relevant training and experience. Arguments in favor of this decision abound. Of course employers should pay for work from which they gain—otherwise we’ll enable their inefficiency. And everyone will benefit when employers try to get their money’s worth by training interns to contribute in substantive ways. Finally, the prevalence of unpaid internships hurts students who can’t afford to take

Well-dressed serfs

them, and who therefore have a narrower range of possible experiences than their wealthier friends.

But my preferred argument against unpaid internships is this: when you’re getting up to 20, 22, even 25-years-old, like one unpaid colleague of mine last summer, it’s time to cut the cord already. At some point, rich kids need to stop relying on their parents to bail them out—to stop capitalizing on the fact that, in Mommy and Daddy’s minds, they’re too big to fail.

Ironically, this culture of dependence can be traced to the same sources as the better-known culture of greed. Among a certain segment of the economic and educational elite, a generation of high-achievers has been raised on inflated conceptions of their own brilliance and importance—lavished with SAT tutors, private college counselors, personal trainers, and prescription-happy psychologists. Even those who have been deprived of such luxuries know what I’m talking about: the overwhelming expectations of families, friends, and teachers; the drive for “success” without taking care to define the term; the sense that we’re going to do something great—down the line, eventually, not soon enough.

It’s obvious how all these things conspire to lead us into temptation, attracting us to careers in which “success,” if defined economically at least, can be most immediate. Less obvious, perhaps, is how these same cultural factors—the self-importance, the dreams of a golden future—can serve to justify not making any money at all. From the student’s perspective, present-day dependence can be excused by the anticipation of future fortunes—after I go to law school, after my talent is recognized, after my work is published, after my big break. From the parent’s perspective, paying for rent in Williamsburg seems a rather modest cost compared to four years (or perhaps 20?) of private-school tuition. Why stop the gravy train now, when Junior is so close to breaking through?

The idea that Junior ought to live within his means, earn his keep, and learn how to manage a budget is a foreign one. To force a decline in the comfort and style to which he has grown accustomed is thought unconscionable. Last month, The Crimson’s James McAuley lent his support to profligacy among Harvard’s economic elite, praising it in the name of “honesty.” “Our wealthier peers,” he wrote, “should have no qualms about exercising the spending habits with which they were raised and that many of them will resume practicing immediately upon kissing Fair Harvard goodbye.” McAuley wants to liberate those who, out of respect and decency, have refrained from flaunting their wealth in the face of their classmates. As one letter-writer alleged, McAuley assumes that all rich people secretly want to “rent stretch-Hummers and spray Dom and Henny on us poor plebs.” And he wants them to feel good about doing it.

But if you’ve got it, does it really follow that you should flaunt it? College students of an earlier generation didn’t seem to think so. Roughing it used to be a source of pride. It was once kind of cool to live in unglamorous neighborhoods, gather in cramped flats, search for deals on microwavable mac-and-cheese, and frequent dollar draft nights at local dive bars. For spring break, our parents went on road trips in old junkers. Their kids jet off to Mexico or the Caribbean.

McAuley praises honesty, yet it’s anything but honest to spend someone else’s money as if you earned it. College graduates should make their own way in life, relying on their talents and energies to attain the living standards they desire. And college students should prepare for this struggle by earning money in the summertime. To do otherwise is to perpetuate class privilege, and a lazy sort of privilege at that. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, but we shouldn’t just get a piggyback ride.

Photo credit: Institute of Politics

Investment banking was never something I thought I wanted to do. But the recruiting culture at Harvard is extremely powerful. In the midst of anxiety and trying to find a job at the end of college, the recruiters are really in your face, and they make it very easy. One thing is the internship program … if that goes well, you have an offer by September of your senior year, and that’s very appealing. It makes your senior year more relaxed, you can focus on your thesis, you can drink more. You just don’t have to worry about getting a job.

Really? Extremely powerful? I’ve gotten a few emails from recruiters, and a ton more from career services people promoting their recruitment events, and I just have to say: I don’t see how you could get dragged into this “culture” if you weren’t already having, just a little bit, maybe even sub-consciously, visions of becoming a Wall Street tycoon.

I mean, really, if it was something you thought you never wanted to do, then why on Earth did you respond to the emails and go to the schmooze-fests? Let’s not pretend we don’t have a good degree of control over where we end up. If anybody in this world should be held responsible for their choices because they have just so darn many of them, it’s Harvard students. Being able to drink more in your senior year does not have to be an overwhelming consideration.

The majority view was that, even though stricter regulation “might result in fewer internship opportunities, this cost is worth the elimination of discrimination” against interns who can’t afford to work for free. The dissenters, meanwhile, insisted that the Labor Department’s move “would even the playing field, but it would do so by reducing opportunity for all.”

I appreciate the temptation to chalk up differences of opinion to ideological disagreement (you like opportunity, I like equality), but I think this is a case where the real disagreement is over facts. The pro-payment Crimson editors started to get at this when they wrote that “the number of opportunities for internships might not decrease as much as would be presumed.” They pointed out, for instance, that Atlantic Media has already magically discovered that it can pay its interns after all. But they don’t really elaborate on the reason why this would be so. What’s going on here?

The reality, I believe, is that many firms that don’t currently pay their interns can afford to. (Obviously many non-profits are excepted from that generalization, but probably not all.) So why wouldn’t they pay? For one thing, they don’t have to because there’s such a glut of talented, eager, well-credentialed, and well-heeled college students. But I also think that part of the reason is that, if you don’t pay interns, you don’t really have to take responsibility for them. That is, I take the opposite view from Jeff Kalmus, who commented on Max’s post, saying that “the lack of pay reminds the employer that the intern should receive nonmonetary benefits such as interesting projects.” On the contrary, I think that when you pay someone, you try to get your money’s worth; and when you don’t, you’re more likely to assign trivial tasks or none at all.

Of course some employers will be virtuous and will think like Jeff. The place I worked at last summer certainly gave me substantive work, even though I wasn’t paid. But we’re talking in broad strokes here. I think that there’s a perverse culture of unpaid internships from which nobody, not the interns and not the employers, benefits. The interns don’t benefit from being made to clean bathrooms, like one intern interviewed for the Times article. And, crucially, employers don’t benefit from that sort of thing either. I think that many firms just crowd up their offices with well-dressed warm bodies, not giving them much to do because what’s the point, they’ll be gone in two months anyway and it’s not like we’re paying them.

If that’s true, requiring that internships either provide meaningful educational experience, or fair pay, will actually benefit both students and employers. It won’t reduce opportunity at the cost of fairness, but increase opportunity for many interns who will now be assigned more substantive work and paid for it to boot.

At the most basic level, all I’m really saying is this: If you want someone to provide the services of an employee, pay them. If you can’t afford to pay them, then you really have no business hiring them at all. Or, feel free to hire them and not pay them, but give them a genuine internship, where they shadow an actual employee and get a lot of hands-on experience. But you just can’t tell me that “opportunity” is so important that we need to be scrubbing toilets and doing coffee runs for free.

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

Slaves?

No — that would be a tasteless joke. But they do perform a lot of work for free! As The New York Times explains in a piece that should have been, in retrospect, pretty obvious: Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say

“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.

Kathyrn Edwards, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of anew study on internships, told of a female intern who brought a sexual harassment complaint that was dismissed because the intern was not an employee.

“A serious problem surrounding unpaid interns is they are often not considered employees and therefore are not protected by employment discrimination laws,” she said.

I’m divided on this. On the one hand, the unpaid internship is pretty unseemly. You’ve got a system that (a) inflates the premium on pre-job work experience, increasing the opportunity costs for students pursuing other (potentially much more useful) things during their free time; that (b) regressively benefits rich students, or students with access to rich grant programs; and (c) tends to reduce available work for paid workers. The evasion of payment creates an effective subsidy for the inefficient, plantation-like company.

But on the other hand, creative, non-monetary economies are important. Consider, um,practically all of the internet: Wikipedia/Flickr/Blogspot/Twitter/Facebook. These are sites that tap into some mysterious mix of human urges — the need to express oneself, to gain status, to be less lonely — creating free culture and making our world a better place. Not all free labor is slavery; indeed, it’s opposite: it’s liberating.

So the original question begs another one: if interns are slaves, then what about HPR bloggers? If so, is our world better for that?

Photo credit: The Institute of Politics