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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.
Elon University senior Andrew Bennett has pledged to donate fifty thousand dollars to his school’s “Safe Rides” program, a service that provides students with free rides home from parties and bars on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.
“Safe Rides” is a student-operated service that currently gives rides to about a hundred students a night. The program currently operates two cars, and Bennett’s donation will allow them to increase staffing and publicity. In the wake of the gift, the university announced that it would be donating a van to Safe Rides to allow it to extend its reach still further.
Story via SAFER Campus, which also covers the possible shutdown of a similar service at Coastal Carolina University. One distinction between the two programs that SAFER Campus doesn’t mention — Elon’s is student-run, while CCU’s is an administration-sponsored project.
The Wisconsin state supreme court has dismissed a student lawsuit over drink specials. Students from UW Madison had sued local bars, claiming that their agreement to limit drink specials on weekends amounted to an illegal price-fixing conspiracy.
The court found that the agreement was lawful because the bars had implemented it in the face of regulatory pressure from the university and local government officials.
A similar lawsuit is still pending in federal court.
Cue the Dr. Evil jokes — a major Clinton donor secretly offered to give the Young Democrats of America one million dollars if YDA’s two remaining superdelegates endorsed Hillary.
An unnamed “high-ranking official” in YDA tells the Huffington Post that billionaire Clinton supporter Haim Saban made the offer in a phone call to Young Dems president David Hardt in advance of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.
YDA leadership is said to have “agonized” over the proposal, which would have increased their operating budget for the year by a third. Support for Barack Obama was “overwhelming” within YDA, however, and the organization ultimately turned the money down.
The YDA has three superdelegates. Crystal Strait recently announced her support for Obama, while Francisco Domenech endorsed Clinton in January. Hardt, the group’s only uncommitted super, stated on Friday that he will make no endorsement “until every young voter has made their voice heard.”
Update: According to Wikipedia, Saban is the 102nd richest person in America … and the co-author of the Inspector Gadget theme song.
“A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.” –Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
(via Cambridge Common)
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