Academia has a well-deserved reputation as a citadel of the
left, but conservatives made great strides on college campuses in
2005.
There are now nearly 700 active, independent conservative groups
at colleges and universities in all 50 states. Students started
nearly four dozen new conservative campus newspapers in 2005,
bringing the total to 153.
Predictably, the advancing campus conservative movement draws a
strong reaction from the entrenched campus left. The reaction comes
in a variety of forms, from stringent speech regulations to
outright violence. But it’s always outrageous — and never has it
been more outrageous than in 2005.
Five examples of close-minded resistance stand above the
rest.
#5: Stetson University bans student magazine because of
“offensive” Jay Leno quote. When the denizens of the ivory
tower start using buzzwords like “sensitivity,” common sense is
normally the first casualty. This was quite literally the case at
Florida’s Stetson University, where a conservative student magazine
named Common Sense ran into problems for quoting
“offensive” material from NBC’s Tonight Show.
After Common Sense debuted this past fall, Stetson’s
Senior Vice President Jim Beasley sent a memo to editor-in-chief
Frank Ganz complaining about the offensive quote. Beasley also
groused about a photo featuring an unidentified dorm window with a
rainbow flag and a superimposed question mark and demanded to
preview each issue of Common Sense before
distribution.
Ironically, this crackdown on conservative speech was done,
according to Beasley, because of Stetson’s commitment to
“diversity” and “sensitivity.”
#4: Bucknell University hunts political
correctness. Major John Krenson spent a tour of duty in
Afghanistan tracking down people who wanted to kill Americans. So
when the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) announced he
would be speaking on campus, they mentioned he had served his
country by “hunting terrorists” in Afghanistan.
The phrase “hunting terrorists” struck a nerve with Bucknell’s
administration. Kathy Owens, executive assistant to the university
president, called the BUCC leadership to her office to tell them
the phrase was offensive.
For years, the BUCC has criticized the university’s restrictions
on free speech. Once again, the Bucknell administration helped them
prove their point.
#3: Western Michigan professor gets pushy with
conservative student. A leftist made national news with a
bizarre salad dressing assault of Pat Buchanan at Western Michigan
University last spring. But Buchanan wasn’t the only conservative
who had a run-in with that school’s left wing.
Student Matt Hall, one of the event organizers, discovered
Women’s Studies Professor Edith Fisher had helped organize students
to tear down signs promoting the speech. When Hall tried to recover
his group’s signs from the trash, Fisher tried to stop him,
allegedly pushing him in the back and elbowing him out of the way.
Fisher admitted to stealing the flyers and standing in Hall’s way
when he tried to recover them, though she denied pushing Hall.
Pat Buchanan tried to express his views at Western Michigan; he
certainly didn’t deserve a face full of salad dressing. Matt Hall
tried to bring new ideas to campus, and he deserved a lot better,
too — especially from a professor.
#2: Mankato State University’s student government
shakedown. Some administrators will go so far as to put a
student’s academic career in jeopardy to advance an agenda. Just
ask Adam Weigold of Minnesota’s Mankato State University.
An outspoken campus conservative, Weigold ran into trouble when
he won the student government presidency. Some administrators
expressed concern his cabinet wouldn’t be “multicultural” enough.
Then the university applied some academic policies retroactively —
punishing Weigold for semesters that had been considered perfectly
acceptable until the new policies went into place — and placed him
on academic suspension.
Showing all the subtlety of Michael Corleone, administration
officials told Weigold any official appeal would be rejected and
encouraged him to resign his position as student body president.
They gave him an administrative run-around and even mocked his
beliefs as a born-again Christian, telling that the suspension
would be a good time to do mission work.
The left dominates many campuses, but Mankato State crossed a
line by allowing that to affect a student’s academic career.
#1: Siena College boots student for posting Bible
verses. Some colleges don’t even bother trumping up
academic charges to enforce a suspension and simply punish
political speech directly.
Steven Bierfeldt wanted to educate students at Siena College in
upstate New York about the Catholic Church’s views on homosexual
behavior. So he posted relevant Bible verses pertaining to the
subject on flyers around campus.
One would think that at a Catholic college, Biblical discussions
are fair game. The administration disagreed when the head of the
gay and lesbian student group filed judicial charges against
Bierfeldt for posting the flyers.
For the crime of posting Bible verses, the nominally Catholic
Siena administration suspended Bierfeldt from campus until the
offended student graduated or left (she was, at the time, a
graduating senior).
The suspension negated all Bierfeldt’s credits for the Spring
2005 semester. And, not surprisingly, Steve didn’t get his tuition
check for that semester back.
Steve has since transferred. Siena has yet to apologize.
