ShareThisCome on, Liberty University, confess. Conan O'Brien's producers, anxious to get his "Tonight" show off to a roaring start, bribed you to do this. So the school gets ridiculed a bit -- well, a lot -- but it gets great network exposure.
The university recently scrutinized all of the school's student clubs and organizations in search of any that were subversive of the school's conservative Christian mission and found only one -- the Democrats.
So, seven months after Liberty allowed formation of the College Democrats the school booted the club off campus. The reasoning is that even though the members of the club do not necessarily support abortion and gay rights -- judging from the ones interviewed in the press accounts, many do not -- they endorse candidates who do. This is called guilt by association and is generally considered a bad thing although apparently you can't be too careful around young Democrats.
The club gets no university recognition, no student activity funds, may not use the school name and can meet in only certain locations. One thing about meeting in the back of the university heating plant is that it's warm in winter.
The longstanding College Republicans club gets to stay, only fitting in a school founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell who helped fuse conservative Republicans and fundamentalist Christians into the Religious Right, to the detriment of both, many might argue.
You would have thought Liberty's political science and history departments would have stood up to this academic backhanding of the party of Thomas Jefferson, now the longest running political organization in the world, but press accounts are silent on this score.
That's because this has to be a deal with a comedy show. Now, who is it? Stewart? Colbert? Leno? Letterman? Kimmel? Come on, admit it. It's a set up.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
You have the facts wrong, in
You have the facts wrong, in the third paragraph. The Democratic club has not been booted off campus. It cannot use university funds or the university's name, but it can still meet on campus, which you noted in the fourth paragraph.