A: actor Ted Danson 
Posted on 12/08/2003 8:40:56 PM PST by StopGlobalWhining
The controversy surrounding the photographs posted last week on the Web site of the Penn State College Republicans' chair has caused the resignation of at least one member and many statements and apologies from others. Leaders of the group met with university administrators to discuss the gravity of the situation.
Brian Battaglia, the group's chairman, said he met with Vice President of Student Affairs Vicky Triponey this weekend to discuss possible resolutions to the situation and group members' safety on campus.
"There is definitely a double standard," he said. "Our members and the officers and myself really do feel threatened almost more than [Black Caucus does]. I think they're using this to their political advantage and the threats are actually against conservatives at this point."
Penn State President Graham Spanier in a written statement Friday called the photographs "patently offensive to anyone with a modicum of decency." While the Web site is protected by the First Amendment, he said, they are unacceptable by appropriate standards.
The photographs, which appeared on Battaglia's Web site, http://botag. net, depicted an "oversodomized frat pledge," "sorostitutes," and an unidentified white man wearing blue bed sheets with a caption referring to the Ku Klux Klan. A fourth photograph showed a white man in blackface and a bicycle chain over his shoulder, mocking Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and former Black Caucus Vice President Takkeem Morgan.
The College Republicans held an emergency meeting Friday night to discuss the situation and voted to support Battaglia, the party's host and owner of the Web site on which the photos were posted.
"As a club, College Republicans hopes that Chairman Battaglia will ignore the calls for his resignation by clubs hostile to the CRs. The members of the College Republicans praise the integrity and vision of Battaglia's leadership and thank him for his continued and steadfast service during stressful times for the club," the statement read.
Late Thursday, College Republicans Treasurer Cathy Carré resigned from her position because said she could not support group members' actions; she said she was not at the party and was unaware of the situation until Thursday. Matthew Ritsko, an East Halls senator, said he resigned yesterday because he could not support the group's response to the outcry.
"The actions they've taken haven't reflected the message they should be representing. I don't feel they're in the best interest of the conservative movement," Ritsko said. "It's unfortunate, and I hope both parties will be able to settle their disputes."
Jason Covener, the former USG member who dressed as Morgan, said that while he thinks some of the costumes in question were in poor taste, group members did nothing "beyond the realm of legality."
"There's no way I'm going to apologize," he said.
Matthew Valkovic, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) vice chairman, another conservative group, said he resigned from his position after his group's meeting Thursday night because he could not endorse YAF's support of the College Republicans or Battaglia.
"The portrayal of Takkeem in blackface and the use of a hood as a Klan member was not freedom of speech, it was hate speech," he said.
Valkovic said he was not in attendance at Battaglia's party.
He added the College Republicans and YAF need to talk with Black Caucus and USG to make amends.
"We're here to get an education, and I think some people have forgotten that and kind of used student groups to run their own agenda," he said.
Sean Clark (senior-political science) said a debate he was moderating between the College Republicans and College Democrats was postponed Thursday night because of a protest Black Caucus members staged beforehand.
Black Caucus President Tiffanie Lewis said the group arrived shortly before the debate was scheduled to begin and began chanting a poem and praying.
"We said we would not support their existence on Penn State's campus," she said.
Battaglia said a member of Black Caucus threatened members of the College Republicans. He said the man turned to the group when leaving the debate and said someone would die, but it wouldn't be him.
Lewis said the Republicans misunderstood his statement, and the member was voicing unsafe feelings by telling the College Republicans he would not be a victim.
She added that Black Caucus felt disrespected by the College Republicans' claims of victimization "in a situation they ignited on campus."
Clark, a former YAF chair, said the protestors violated university policy by disrupting an academic event, and a statement released late yesterday said the College Republicans were considering filing charges with the Office of Judicial Affairs.
The Undergraduate Student Government issued two written statements on Friday condemning the actions by student leaders attending the party. Five USG members were at the party -- Frank Camarota, governmental relations director; Julia Graham, USG Supreme Court justice; and Sens. Andy Banducci, Vicky Cangelosi and Ritsko.
In separate written statements yesterday, Banducci and Cangelosi both expressed regret over the offensive photographs, but both reiterated that they were not in the controversial costumes and do not endorse them.
Banducci added he only felt responsible for his own actions.
Camarota did not return phone calls seeking comment yesterday. Tiffany Iriana, also a College Republicans member, spoke for Graham, and said she would not comment on the situation except through a lawyer. All five were in photographs on the Web site, which spanned five pages, but none appeared in the controversial photos.
Two press conferences addressing the issue are scheduled for today -- one held by the College Republicans at 11:30 a.m. in the HUB-Robeson Center and another by Black Caucus at noon in the HUB.
Brian's e-mail adress is bbattaglia@psu.edu
Brian is intensely disliked by the left at PSU for several reasons:
Although these fringe extremist groups are tiny in comparison to the conservative student majority, they manage to make a lot more noise, plus they have the liberal Spanier administration behind them.
Additionally, they have a lot more free time on their hands to agitate and stir up trouble. If you are a upperclass student in Aeronautical Engineering at Penn State, you have far less free time to "raise hell" than if you are in such pseudo-academic courses such as African-American studies or "Womyn's Studies".
The College Republican photos were posted on a private web site without using any Penn State computer or network resources. It's none of Graham Spanier's business!
Please let Brian and the College Republicans know that many of us in the community, along with members of the PSU Alumni Association, support the PSU CR's!
And the media won't say anything about it.
The Death of the West continues
Front page of the Daily Collegian Collegian and a story featured on the old establishment alphabet broadcast news networks nightly news shows that fewer people watch every day.
I would question the validity of that statement.
Black face, KKK mentioned?
These are "young Republicans?
I need far more info in this before I fully judge them but I would ask two things:
Does Penn State have any admissions criteria, or can any idiot get in? (OK, I pre-judged them)
As a minimum, they should be banned for poor taste.
If saying "niggardly" can get a white man fired (yeah, yeah, officially he resigned, under duress). Then who the hell, in this day and age, is stupid enough to dress in black face?
"The actions they've taken haven't reflected the message they should be representing. I don't feel they're in the best interest of the conservative movement," Ritsko said. "It's unfortunate, and I hope both parties will be able to settle their disputes."
Jason Covener, the former USG member who dressed as Morgan, said that while he thinks some of the costumes in question were in poor taste, group members did nothing "beyond the realm of legality."
"There's no way I'm going to apologize," he said.
This is where the weak get separated from the strong, the sissies from the men.
I wouldn't apologize, either.
I would like to know, however, whether Battaglia posted the party pictures on his website (I presume his own, personal website) for the benefit of his friends so that they could view images taken at a private party, or whether he posted them with full knowledge that they would likely be viewed by members of the general public.
In other words, was he looking for a fight?
So, unless these YRs were running some sort of Hindu ceremony, they were off-base.
In fact, even if they were engaging in Hinduism, they forgot that most Indian-Americans support the most mind-numbed of robot-like Democrat Liberals, which means they have a lot more to account for than they thought.
Still, somebody should look into that threat of physical violence. No one misunderstood that guy FUR SHUR!
Everyone knows that if the college gays held a pride parade and dressed as nuns and priests sodomizing each other, the administration would defend them to the death against complaints that they had offended Catholics on grounds of free speech.
There's a total double standard, and I salute these students for not backing down
. . .is 'stupidity' a realm?
. . .they need to find a way to 'move on' and quickly. . .into safer more 'intelligent' territory.
It would be more stupid, for any other student to decide a personal retribution.
A: actor Ted Danson
The ghost in A Christmas Carol had chains too.
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