Human Events: Top five 'PC' outrages on college campuses

A host of absurd, bizarre, and outrageous escapades on America's campuses this academic year demonstrate that political correctness remains a thriving menace to freedom of speech and toleration of dissent from liberal orthodox : The most outrageous incidents earned "Polly Awards" as a part of the Collegiate Network's Fifth Annual Campus Outrage competition.

"Pollys" are given each year on April Fool's Day to highlight the noxious tendencies of radical faculty and students at the nation's colleges. Over the years, both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal have recognized "Pollys" for highlighting the absurd-grip of political correctness.

The University of California at Berkeley, source of so much of the 1960s strangeness, won two Pollys this year-one for multicultural hooliganism, the other for lewd course material. Meanwhile, at Tufts University, hooded leftists assaulted a conservative student. At San Diego State and at the University of North Carolina, campus administrators blamed campus patriots and America for the terrorist attacks of September 11.

The 2002 winners are:

1. University of California-Berkeley

On February 25, student radicals broke into a Berkeley student office, stole the entire $2,000 press run of the conservative newspaper The California Patriot, and then threatened the editors with death when they filed a police report.

Students believe the thieves were angry about a Patriot investigative report about a radical student group, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA. The Patriot article revealed that the Hispanic group repeatedly refers to white people as "gringos" in its literature and calls for revolutionary liberation of the "bronze continent by the bronze people." MEChA retorted that the Patriot article was propaganda.

After the controversial Patriot article was published, staff members were harassed, and a few even received death threats. The next day thieves broke into the office and stole the press run. The university chancellor paid lip service, calling the incidents "unconscionable behavior," but copies of the Patriot were reported stolen twice in the last year and conservative speakers were shouted down twice last year while university administrators stood idle.

The sweetener that secured the top Polly Award for Berkeley was the revelation that MEChA-which receives $20,000 in university funds-maintains a racist website (www,aztlan.org) containing anti-Semitic rhetoric worthy of a white supremacist organization.

2. Tufts University

Last fall, the Primary Source newspaper at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts faced many attacks from campus radicals. Leftists stole three print runs of the paper, more than 4000 copies. Primary Source staffers were charged with sexual harassment for publishing a cartoon. And on October 1, three leftists wearing hoods physically assaulted the Source's editor, Sam Dangremond.

On that date, the Primary Source staff engaged in the Tufts tradition of painting a cannon on the campus quad. They painted an American flag and patriotic messages. That night, as Dangremond stood watch alone by the cannon, hooded students attacked Dangremond and wrestled him to the ground. They then painted over the American flag.

Dangremond called the campus police and filed charges, but when the school judicial committee heard the case, it ignored police testimony, which stated that the leftists admitted to attacking Dangremond. The leftists were sentenced to probation. Two of the guilty leftists appealed their verdict of probation. They won, beat the rap, and were released with a warning.

3. San Diego State and UNC (tie)

San Diego State

Eleven days after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, a native Ethiopian SDSU student was studying in the library, when he overheard several Saudi Arabians speaking in Arabic about the terrorist attacks.

According to the student, Zewdalem Kebede, who speaks Arabic, the Saudi students were happy about the attacks, and they expressed sorrow that the terrorists missed the White House.

After enduring several minutes of the loud conversation, Kebede approached the students and said, "How do you feel happy when those 5,000 people are buried in two or three, buildings?" After a heated exchange, Kebede assured them he was not going to threaten the students. Kebede returned to his table.

After the exchange, Kebede received a letter from SDSU's Center for Student Rights accusing him of being verbally abusive. He was required to meet a judicial officer. Kebede was put on probation.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Soon after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the Progressive Faculty Network at UNC organized a teach-in to present an "alternative" view of the attacks. The teach-in featured a number of national activists and UNC professors savagely critical of the US response to the terrorist attacks. Public statements at this "forum" presaged many of the illogical, absurd, and bitter arguments against the U.S. that have been heard in the subsequent six months.

The moderator prefaced the UNC forum: "Understanding the attack on the United States must include an understanding of different kinds of attacks-attacks not only by unknown or suspected terrorists, but attacks by us on ourselves . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence."

Speakers on the panel made such statements as, "This is an administration of oil executives," and claimed that the US foreign policies "brought on" the attacks. Bush's desire to "hunt terrorists from their holes" reminded one speaker (and UNC professor) of "the vicious history of racial hatred that has preceded, stoked, and been inflamed by nearly every one of this century's wars from the Belgian Congo to Nazi Germany to the USSR to the US."

The teach-in was sponsored by PFN, the Student Affairs Division, the University Center for International Studies, and the Carolina Seminar on Bridging the Divide.

4. University of California-Berkeley

The Daily Californian reported allegations that students enrolled in a "male sexuality" class at Berkeley participated in an orgy at a class party and visited a strip club, where they watched an instructor have sex onstage. These experiences were all part of Berkeley's "democratic education at California" program, or "de-cal," a program taught by undergraduate and graduate students and sponsored by the university.

The story received wide coverage in the southern California press, including stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee.

When the extracurricular class activities were exposed, the Berkeley administration demonstrated its traditional equivocation, first suspending the course, and then reinstating it on probation, thus presumably demonstrating even-handedness in the matter.

Some students defended the classes on sexuality as "educational gems." Others note that the courses are of questionable academic merit as they are dedicated explicitly to examining sexuality by "word and deed." Students receive academic credit, and this respected public university sponsors the courses.

Besides the sexuality courses, the other de-Cal courses appear to be as academic lightweights as well. "Body Dissatisfaction" helps you to "love your body and find peace mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally." "COPWATCH" provides "theoretical and historical discussions of the police, the Prison Industrial Complex, and the justice system at work."

And a class about Blackjack teaches students how to count cards. Students can ante-up with 4 units of credit.

5. University of Pittsburgh

In November, the homosexual group Rainbow Alliance sponsored a lecture and demonstration on the use of sex toys at the University of Pittsburgh. The Pitt News later printed a front-page story with accompanying pornographic pictures. The event wasn't an act of charity on the part of anyone involved. The Pitt Student Government allocated $1200 dollars to this event, through the use of student fees.

In its first half-decade of existence, the eagerly anticipated Pollys have become the Holy Grail for those seeking recognition for absurdly outrageous behavior. No less than The Washington Post has referred to The "Polly" as "the coveted Campus Outrage Award for loony political correctness."

"We created the Campus Outrage Awards to publicize the politicization of the college curriculum and the insensitivity and bigotry of campus radicals on college campuses," said Kenneth Cribb, Jr., President of the Collegiate Network. "Many administrators and faculty deny that political correctness exists. Here's proof to the contrary."