Collegiate Network – Members – 2002 Campus Outrage Awards:

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1. Berkeley conservative paper faces censorship, robbery, and death threats:
University of California-Berkeley

Last month, campus radicals stole an entire press run of the Berkeley conservative newspaper the California Patriot, valued at $2000. Students believe the thieves were angry about a Patriot investigative report about a campus student group, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA. The article challenges one of the group’s central documents which repeatedly refers to white people as “gringos” and calls for revolutionary liberation of the “bronze continent by the bronze people.” MECha claimed the article was nothing more than white supremacist rhetoric spewed by the likes of groups such as the Aryan Nation.

After the controversial article was published, some of the 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 called 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; the university did nothing about these incidents.

2. Tufts conservative student attacked, newspapers stolen
Tufts University

Last fall semester, the Primary Source, a CN paper, faced many attacks from campus radicals. Leftists stole 3 print runs of the paper, more than 4000 copies. They were charged with sexual harassment for publishing a cartoon. And on October 1, three leftists 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. After all but the editor of the staff had left, hooded students with bandanas covering their faces wrestled Dangremond to the ground and painted over the American flag. Dangremond called the campus police, but when the hearing came, the judicial committee ignored police testimony, which stated that the leftists admitted to wrestling Dangremond. In fact, two of the three leftists appealed their verdict of probation and were let off with a warning.

3. Anti-American events at San Diego State and UNC (tie)

SDSU punishes student for reacting against terrorism
San Diego State University

Eleven days after the terrorist attacks, a native Ethiopian SDSU student was studying in the library, when he heard some Saudi Arabian 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 were sorry that the terrorists missed the White House. After several minutes of the conversation, Kebede approached the students and said, “How do you feel happy when those 5 to 6,000 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 and put on probation.

Blame America teach-in at UNC
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 who were critical of the government’s response to the terrorist attacks.

The moderator prefaced the 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. Berkeley’s sex ed courses include orgies, strip club field trips
University of California-Berkeley

University of California-Berkeley suspended—then reinstated on probation—a course on male sexuality. Class members reported that some students in the class 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,” sponsored by the university.

Some students defended the classes on sexuality as “educational gems.” But the courses are for academic credit and dedicated explicitly to examining sexuality by word and deed, and are sponsored by the public university.

Besides the sexuality courses, the other de-Cal courses are not exactly serious scholarly works either. One “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 receive up to 4 units of credit.

5. Gay sex toys fair at Pitt
University of Pittsburgh

In November, the homosexual Group the Rainbow alliance sponsored a lecture 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 Student Government allocated several thousand dollars to this event, through the use of student fees.