The Group for Independent Analysis, a think tank founded by four Wesleyan seniors, unveiled its first major project this week. Its website, beyondpartisan.org, is dedicated to open, independent “town hall” discussion of current events and issues.
According to the website, beyondpartisan.org presents an alternative to news blogs, political-action sites, and periodical-service sites by placing the focus on the opinions and impressions of site-users themselves.
“We must return American politics to the common concerns of the American people,” reads the website’s mission statement.
Instead of publishing articles or opinion pieces as end products, the website produces fact-oriented briefs outlining current issues that are then used as launch points for in-site discussion forums, where people browsing the site can take up the debate for themselves. After a discussion has run for a few weeks, beyondpartisan.org’s editors will distill the users’ arguments and ideas into a new brief, and the cycle will repeat.
“We are not forcing our opinion on the reader,” said Rob Weinstock ’06. “The idea is to use the Internet as a tool to get a detailed idea of what American people think.”
Nate Byer ’06, Adam Gomolin ’06, David Tutor ’06, and Weinstock founded The Group for Independent Analysis over the summer, and registered it as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Massachusetts.
“Early in the summer, Adam and I talked about doing something with our senior year,” Tutor said. While they debated what form their project would assume, all four agreed that it should work to remedy a political climate plagued by partisan rhetoric and dogma.
“We all agreed on a larger purpose,” Byer said. “Beyondpartisan.org is an outward manifestation of our mission.”
Instead of media outlets that cater to extreme political minorities, they decided their project would help identify points of consensus.
“We want to see if we [the American public] agree on more than what pundits and politicians tell us,” Weinstock said.
According to Gomolin, the website is an attempt to give the tools of discussion back to the American public, and in so doing, better inform the American voter. The group agreed to target “Jill Smith,” a hypothetical woman who lives in Kansas, has three kids, a husband in a local union, and who votes Democrat out of habit.
“’Jill’ can sign on and read the articles, and they might get her thinking,” Gomolin said.
The website is also targeted at people under 30.
“These are people who are fed up with partisanship,” Weinstock said.
Gomolin suggested that Americans under 30 are closer in political views than older generations, and the site aims to explore and expose a potentially neglected consensus among young people.
So far, the website has been registering about 100 hits a day. While beyondpartisan.org has national ambitions, the group maintains that it is a grassroots organization.
“We hope for huge numbers but we’re starting smaller,” Byer said.
“[The site] grows organically through e-vites on the site,” Weinstock said.
With the help of Bill Ferrell ’06, the website developed throughout the fall, with two website designs completely scrapped before the current version. The foursome eventually brought their project to dreampod.com, a premier web design team based in Houston, Texas. While dreampod.com was a more costly option, the group decided it was the best one.
“We said, ‘Let’s figure out what we want and worry [about the cost] later,” Weinstock said. The group decided not to spend money on advertising, putting their resources toward making the site accessible and professional instead.
While the people directly involved in the website’s development are under the age of 25, the group also credited members of the Wesleyan administration, President Doug Bennet in particular, as instrumental in the early success of beyondpartisan.org. Bennet helped the group find funding for beyondpartisan.org, and several members of the Administration helped with the legal aspects.
The group is currently working to acquire tax-deductible status, which will help when they start a fundraising campaign, as people will be able to write-off donations.
In addition, beyondpartisan.org is planning a major PR campaign, including e-mailing college listservs across the country and placing op-eds in various newspapers.
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