Posted on 05/12/2015 8:31:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ah, the beauty of our nation’s college campuses, the traditional hotbeds of free speech and open debate. I wonder what ever happened to those? Out in Washington State, some students at Western Washington University have come up with interesting new techniques in the field of debate. For example, one of their state senators, Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) was found by the upset underclassmen to be a heretical non-believer when it comes to the issue of global warming. Ericksen, as it turns out, is an alumnus of WWU, so rather than debating him on the hot topic, they have issued demands to have his diploma revoked.
This isn’t an election year for state Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, but challengers do seek to wrest something from him — not his elected office but rather one of his college degrees.
A group of students with ties to Huxley College held a meeting at 5:30 p.m. today, Thursday, May 7, on campus, to start what promises to be an uphill — if not Quixotic — battle to convince university administration to strip Ericksen of his diploma.
“We’re framing it in a more radical way,” D’Angelo said. “We’re not just trying to have a conversation with him or hold him accountable. We’re trying to revoke his degree and get people to pay attention.”
The Republican senator has been at odds with Democrats over how to craft policy on climate change and carbon reduction. He butted heads with Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, on the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup. Ericksen removed language in the bill creating the workgroup that mentioned “climate change” and the threat it posed to the state.
While Ericksen may have stripped the phrase “climate change” out of a bill, upsetting the young Democrats, he had primarily worked to prevent any tax increases which were supposed to pay for carbon capping. But but does that make him a “climate change denier” in the full sense of the word? Not exactly.
The students refer to Ericksen as a “climate denier” on their Facebook page. He told this blogger a couple years back he was a “climate agnostic,” which may be more accurate. While he stripped the words “climate change” from the 2013 Climate Legislative and Executive workgroup bill, he at least conceded the possibility of human-caused climate change in 2015 legislation that would give utilities more flexibility in meeting state-mandated alternative energy goals. (Ericksen’s bill, SB 5735, passed the Senate on March 9 but has not yet made it through the House.)
In an amendment Ericksen introduced, the bill’s intent section reads, “The Legislature finds that climate change is real and that human activity may contribute to climate change.”
This is apparently the bar which must be met when dealing with college campus activists. Publishing legislation which says that climate change is real and human activity may contribute to it isn’t going to cut the mustard, folks. You’re going to have to do better than that. And if you don’t, your opponents will work with the university to strip you of your credentials. So I take it Doug was a scientist and these positions demonstrate some lack of technical savvy in his field? Nope. He studied Political Science and Environmental Policy.
But don’t let that stop you. The point here isn’t whether or not he earned his degree or is an authority in his own field. Nor is it whether he is serving the interests of his constituents. The purpose is to punish him for disagreeing with the new herd. After all, by your own admission you said that you were “not just trying to have a conversation with him or hold him accountable” … you wanted people to “pay attention” to you. So I suppose that justifies everything.
We need to just start walling off some of these schools. And flooding them. And filling them with sharks. With lasers.
A newspeak thoughtcrime?
I actually spent a year there before I had to go to work in the family lumber mill. What a bunch of loons. It makes me glad that I didn’t get a degree there.
So when are they going to start demanding that the heretics be burned at the stake?
All I can say it thank God for the Internet. These idiots won’t be able to runaway from what they’ve said and done. The truth is a force of nature and it will come out sooner or later and they will be exposed for what they are.
They also threw Chick-fil-A off campus a few years ago.
Buncha nutcases.
I hate College Stalinists.
If I were he, I’d tell them publicly to go screw themselves, and in so many words. College degrees are not contingent upon adopting every politically correct idea to come down the pike for the next half century after you earn it. If the administration caved and pretended to revoke it, it STILL wouldn’t matter, except publicity-wise. A degree is a degree.
Unfortunately them, the only way to revoke a degree is to prove that the person in question didn’t meet all academic requirements for the degree in question.
We’re trying to revoke his degree and get people to pay attention.”
Believe me we are paying attention and it should be noted you are complete morons.
Little totalitarians in training.
Commie public shun tactic.
Ahh, I remember dear old Huxley and President Wagstaff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6GbYdB1c
WHATEVER IT IS, I’M AGAINST IT
From the Marx Bros. film “Horse Feathers” (1932)
I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is
Or who commenced it
I’m against it!
Your proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
And even when you’ve changed it
Or condensed it
I’m against it!
I’m opposed to it
On general principles
I’m opposed to it!
(He’s opposed to it)
(In fact, he says he’s opposed to it!)
For months before my son was born
I used to yell from night to morn
“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
And I’ve kept yelling
Since I first commenced it
“I’m against it!”
Thanks to students like those, a university degree is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Brown-shirts for progress...
We’ve seen it before. Hitler Youth, Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot, 1930s USSR nonpersons,,,,
The only thing that keeps us safe is our guns. They cannot fully imitate their revolutionary brothers, though they badly want to. They cannot do what the really wish because they would meet rifle fire.
The senator should introduce a bill to revoke all state funding, accrediting and research grants from this so-called “university”, and then issue a statement on how he’s “not trying to have a conversation with them, but is simply revoking their funding so that people will pay attention”
The sane people need to go on offence.
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