Hippies Losing Protest Movement to Campus Conservatives - (Yes!)

CHRONWATCH.COM ^ | JANUARY 11, 2005 | JOHN C. PLECNIK

[CHARLITE]

From Yale to the University of North Carolina, liberal academia is being challenged by a new generation of conservative leadership. Credible tales of professors grading down conservative students have always run rampant. Biased lectures remain the unremarkable norm. One variable has changed, however. Liberal academia lacks its traditionally receptive audience.

During the opening weeks of the Iraq war, professors were shocked by the absence of antiwar fervor among their pupils. Leading up to the 2004 elections, record numbers of undergraduates joined the College Republicans and other conservative organizations. Ingenious student protests, such as Berkeley’s affirmative action bake sale and Duke’s “W” (Bush) T-shirts (worn in Cameron Indoor Stadium during televised Blue Devil basketball), have garnered national attention and support.

This is not to say that all collegiate scholars are voting Republican. I simply state the obvious premise that our current student population is markedly more conservative than their counterparts in professorial and administrative positions. The differing generational perspective has caused noticeable friction between the scholars of past and present, and this ideological friction is the root cause of the upsurge in media attention to the subject of liberal bias on campus. Our professors’ passion for Marxism, Stalinism, multiculturalism, moral relativism, atheism, and the Democrat Party is no more profound in the new millennium than it was in the old. The sea change has occurred within a different body politic: the lowly freshmen.

Today, incoming students are challenging their professors’ supposed monopoly on wisdom. Where their predecessors might have acquiesced or even agreed, the modern student body has objected. At UNC-Greensboro, the resident College Republican chapter protested their school’s gay “Pride Week” by organizing their own “Morals Week” to run simultaneously. Joined by politicians and reporters, the College Republicans debated their liberal counterparts to a standstill.

At UNC, a Christian student was lambasted by his professor in a class-wide e-mail for expressing his personal belief that homosexuality is immoral. Back in the day, the poor fellow might have been without recourse, quieted by his own fear. The student fought back, however, and with the help of U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) the offending professor was punished for violating his civil rights.

More recently, UNC Chancellor James Moeser arbitrarily changed his university’s policy on the recognition of religious student organizations. He declared that limiting membership to one religious group is nothing less than sanctioned discrimination, and prohibited the practice. In line with his new policy, UNC refuses to recognize Alpha Iota Omega Christian Fraternity because the group declines to admit non-Christians. In the past, Chancellor Moeser might have had the final say, but today’s Tar Heels are not so easily silenced. The group has resorted to the courts, and seeks an injunction against the new policy. Again, Congressman Jones has come to their aid, bringing national attention to the cause.

Recognizing Congressman Jones’ continued dedication to protecting the First Amendment rights of campus conservatives, at UNC and across the country, the Duke College Republicans created the Walter B. Jones Campus Defender Award. It will be presented annually “to the politician, professor or protester who best reflects [Jones’] legacy,” as “the chief defender of campus conservatives across Carolina.” A newly forming foundation (based in Charlotte, N.C.) has pledged to attach a $1,000 prize to the award. The first recipient of the award was Rachel Lea Hunter, a Republican attorney who promised to represent any victims of liberal bias on campus, in North Carolina. Hunter is currently running for Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

The protest spirit of free speech is alive and well on the American campus…but unlike the hippie generation, we protest liberal academia. Campus conservatives, for lack of a better word, are cool. College Republicans have become the antiestablishment fraternity, and their membership levels have exploded. What could be stodgier or more conformist than supporting John Kerry for president, being antiwar and anti-American? The vast majority of authority figures on campus would wholeheartedly agree with you.

The hippie generation, now the keepers of the keys to the ivory tower, has become what it once hated most: the censor, the oppressor, “the Man.” Today, it is they who advocate campus speech codes to quiet the politically incorrect. It is they who force-feed propagandized curricula, with classes on race-privilege and pornography. It is they who seek to remake an unwilling generation after their own intellectual image.

Contrary to the lament of America’s professors, our student body never lost the passion of protest. We just changed sides.

About the Writer: John T. Plecnik (JTP) is a 21-year-old law student at Duke University and a Featured Columnist at The Conservative Voice
(http://www.theconservativevoice.com), Lincoln Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Lincolnton, NC., and various other online and print publications. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting with a Minor in Mythology and graduated summa cum laude, sharing the title of Valedictorian, from Belmont Abbey College.

Email your comments to John at
John.Plecnik@law.duke.edu

[RWR8189]

The times are a changin'

[VeniVidiVici]

College Republicans have become the antiestablishment fraternity,

Ain't that a kick. Who'd a thunk.

I pity the poor liberal professor that gets my high school senior next school year.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Andrew LB]

Being one of the only conservative students with a political science major at my college www.csulb.com ... I can say that its still a left wingers paradise at my college. I've had two professors with slightly conservative viewpoints... the rest were left wing commies.

When David Horowitz came to speak at my college, not one administrator came to welcome him to campus and there were more students protesting him being there than there were actually listening.

It was sickening.

The highlight of the speech was David Horowitz pointing out one administrator who was watching the event and told everyone the admin was a convicted torturer... which turned out to be true. :)

I had a little talk with him after his speech. Great guy. Really interesting guy to talk with.

[bozzman007]

Freedom of speech has never been a two way street with the liberal academia.
Conservatives have always followed the "Golden Rule" so as to not stir the pot, get the grade in the class and move on with life. We've always had a vision further down the road than the "feelings" that we have in this class or that class, at that particular moment. But it looks like the college age conservatives have raided the liberal Coach's office and torn a few pages out of the play book before the BIG game.
What a foul taste that must be in the Libs mouth to hear their own propaganda used back at them. Tis sweet on the lips of those that have suffered.
Let us hope that this is not fleeting, but a rally. One that will show that conservatives are not a bunch of moral stuck-ups but we, too, can have that fire for what we believe in. (And the rights protected by our Constitution and our Creator to say it!}

[CyberCowboy777]

PW Ping

[spinestein]

This reminds me of Charlton Heston's speech at Harvard a few years back. I think this opened a lot of people's eyes and got the ball rolling.

Heston's speech at Harvard
http://mizai.tripod.com/

[TAdams8591]

"the resident College Republican chapter protested their school’s gay “Pride Week” by organizing their own “Morals Week”

Now these students have the RIGHT way to fight back!! BRAVO!!!!!!!!!

[TAdams8591]

Good for you for hanging in there!

[Andrew LB]

Oh i never back down from these libs. I'm quite notorious in many of my classes from getting in pretty heated arguments with my professors.

Unfortunately my grades on a few papers have reflected this. :(

[TAdams8591]

I can honestly say that though on many occasions I challenged my professors in the then most Liberal Sociology Department in the nation, it was rarely reflected in my grades. Also, our discussions were rarely heated. At least outwardly we had more respect for one another and the Liberal professors were more fairminded then. This was in the late 70's early 80's.

But we also didn't have the kind of outside support that you guys receive.

[unfortunately a bluestater]

That just isn't right---for your grades to be damaged by what you believe in. Do you have any recourse?

[Andrew LB]

Not that i know of.

I know for a fact some of my papers were A's when i received a low B or C.

Especially my 20 page paper on the history of judicial activism by the US Supreme Court. It ruled.

[torqemada]

Had a similar situation happen to me with two different "professors." I challenged both successfully by bumping my papers up to the department Deans & letting them know in clear language that I considered it liberal bias & discriminatory practice. This liberals are nothing if not hyper-sensitive to ANY claim of discrimination. BTW - once I got the Deans involved, I had no further problems with those two socialist pukes.

[superfluousdude]

Would that torturer be the one and only Dr. Ron Karenga, inventor of Kwaanza?

[Angry Republican]

There's even more help with a group called FIRE (For Individual Rights in Education). They have had a significant role in helping many students (mostly conservative) attack college bias.

[Yaelle]

Let me guess... Did this admin also invent a holiday??

[SeattlePW]

This is a glorious trend. There are signs that they are now on the defense. Education is where they started during the cultural revolution of the 60's. Why should we do it any different? Liberty lovers must keep up the good fight. Complacency, through the past decades, has put us on the defense. We must now reverse the perverse. In our coming victory, let us not be guilty of complacency again. We cannot win and retire; generational vigilance is our duty if we value freedom.

OK, enough ranting. I just can’t stand what the left has done to this country.