President Bush will give this year’s commencement address at Furman University in South Carolina, and the invitation has sparked bitter division on the campus.

A group of more than two hundred students, faculty, and staff have signed a petition opposing the decision to host Bush, saying his actions on military, civil liberties, environmental, and budgetary issues “violate American values.” The petition has been posted on the university’s website.

After the first petition appeared, a second was circulated. This one challenged the claims made in the first letter, supported the decision to invite Bush to speak, and made three requests of the university:

 

1. We ask Furman University to hold professors to their contractual agreement to attend commencement exercises in recognition of Furman’s graduating class and its accomplishments by refusing to grant any “conscientious objector” releases. We also request the names of all faculty members who have submitted such a request, as well as an update of any additional faculty members who do so between now and graduation. Students who have worked hard to earn a degree deserve to know who has decided not to honor their achievements, and surely such “conscientious objectors” would want their names to be known.

2. We further ask that Furman refuse to post the political views of a fraction of the faculty and student body on our Web site. Professors have the right to express their views, but we are under no obligation to reward their publicity stunt by providing a link to it from Furman’s home page. Their letter contains no objection relevant to the fact that President Bush will be coming to Furman to congratulate the Class of 2008.

3. If Furman continues to post the contents of their letter, we expect this response will be postedimmediately next to the professors’ letter on the same page and for the same duration. We also expect that all other responses from any students, parents, alumni, faculty, staff members, trustees, or anyone connected with the Furman community will be given the same privilege and posted in their entirety. To do otherwise would be placing a higher value on some expressions of “free speech” than on others.

 

The authors of the second petition claim that it has garnered nearly six hundred signatures, more than three hundred of them from students.

More news on this story as it develops.