Posted on 01/17/2006 5:47:21 AM PST by Enterprise1788
AMHERST - Just before Christmas, Edward Cutting and friends hauled a 12-foot evergreen down a muddy stretch near the University of Massachusetts pond, armed with a rope, a shovel and a disclaimer.
"This display is sponsored by the UMass Republican Club. The purpose of this display is to promote holiday cheer. This display is not sponsored by the University of Massachusetts."
While the stilted disavowal may seem fitting for separation-of-church-and-state purists, to Cutting, one of few admitted Republicans on the left-leaning campus, it smacks of something else entirely. Liberalism? No, he says.
"They're far too close-minded to be liberal," said Cutting, a doctoral candidate in math and science who is so vocal about his conservatism he has been lampooned in the campus newspaper and maligned by students and faculty. "They," he says, are "the majority thinkers at the university and the town at large."
Amherst, a farming town turned college town, has a population of roughly 35,000, saturated with academics and social service workers, according to U.S. Census information. More than 41 percent have graduate or professional degrees, the data show, and nearly 52 percent work in education, health or social services.
The demographics make for a brainy, mainstream-eschewing population, one longtime resident said, but do not necessarily cultivate "free" thought.
"In Amherst, I can't watch a production of 'West Side Story' but I can see the 'Vagina Monologues' at the high school and watch a junior throw up her arms like (Olympic gymnast) Mary Lou Retton and shout the c-word," said fifth-generation Amherst resident Larry J. Kelley.
Kelley recalled Amherst Regional High School's 1999 ban on the Leonard Bernstein musical and the protracted debate over its racial themes that followed. Five years later, the school put on the feminist "Monologues," a sardonic script filled with profane anatomical references and sexual themes. Kelley said he, parents and local residents were upset by the subject matter and language in "Monologues," but their complaints fell on deaf ears. He tried to introduce a motion to forever ban the production at the annual Town Meeting last year, only to have members refuse to take up the issue.
However, Kelley said, the electorate voted overwhelmingly to declare the town a nuclear-free zone.
"They spent an hour talking about it and passed it overwhelmingly," said Kelley, 50, who owns a health club.
Also banned in Amherst: American flags as a regular presence (the Select Board voted unanimously to give them only limited play); the word "freshman" at the high school (not gender-neutral enough); and a set chairman on the Select Board (too patriarchal).
Instead, the United Nations flag flies over the Town Green, high school newbies are ninth-graders and the chairman's role rotates among members.
Among a community of rebels, dissidence is scarcely tolerated, Kelley and Cutting believe. For Kelley's part, he is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control - and still considered one of the town's token conservatives.
Cutting, in his 40s, is a bit less compromising.
The Republican Club's office at the university is plastered with photos of Ronald Reagan and other right-wing icons. The club shares space with the university's defunct Right to Life coalition, though their banner still hangs in what Cutting calls the conservative ghetto, tucked in a corner on the fourth floor of the Student Union.
He and a handful of regular members tossed around examples of how seemingly conservative symbols have been snuffed out in Amherst. Club members are routinely denounced as racists and fascists when they hold recruiting drives, they say, and their Christmas tree is defiled each year.
"My favorite was the lady who tore down the Puerto Rican flag," one piped up. In 2004, one town resident, angered over President Bush's second-term win, tore down a Puerto Rican flag she mistook for the state flag of Texas, Bush's home state.
She was thrown by the similar color palette, she told reporters at the time, and thought someone had the audacity to actually celebrate the president's victory.
The community quickly forgave her, sympathizing with her ire.
"There's a lot of conformity in noncomformity," said Western New England College government professor William S. Mandel, recalling the 1960s when war advocates were shouted down at "free-thinking" college campuses across the country.
At the same time, Mandel said he understands town members' lofty sensibilities and global pursuits at Town Meetings.
"It's tough to be voting on whether there should be a stop sign on a particular corner when what you really care about are soldiers dying in Iraq."
I'm a member of the Republican club at Westfield State College in MA, which isn't too far from Amherst; in fact we've done several events with the UMass republican club, including going to their campus and standing outside in 7 degree weather for the dedication of the Christmas tree mentioned in the article.
Do these folks not understand their job descriptions?
Captain Obvious is the Editor.
It goes with the whole mentality; they think that they're much more important than they really are, when in fact they're actually elected to decide where to put a stop sign.
As the recipient of two degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst... yep, that's how it is. I was not politically interested while I was in school, though, so I just kind of ignored it all in favor of the computing that I love. I will say that me and a friend used to have a great time going down to the student union (where you can smell the patchouli oil a mile away) and get coffee and have heated arguments about math. No one ever seemed to want to join our conversations though... I still think it's a pretty good school, in general, but like all schooling, what you put in is the biggest determinant in what you get out...
You can tell just by the disproportionately high amount of VW Beetles Amherst is commietown!
Nonconformity is double-plus good. Everyone agrees with that.
More stunning news:
Houston is hot in July
The Pope is Catholic
Liberals control Hollywood
The Pacific Ocean has lots of salt water
The bitterness runs deep. I once saw this townie biker-guy cut a long line of pizza-buyers (they were all college kids). He went straight to the front and they served him, nobody had the balls to complain.
I was mad then (at him and at the kids who did nothing about it), but looking back now - I totally side with him, 100%.
Imagine living in a country that was like Amherst. :-(
Canada?
I got my M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from UMASS Amherst and even the engineering faculty was communist and totally anti-business. Every other day there was some kind of protest on a human rights issue and then these kids went back to drinking thinking their protest actually made a difference. The place is crawling with commies and for a liberal town there is absolutely no diversity of opinion allowed. It is right up there with Ithaca as the home of the enemy within.
Surely your location was the doppleganger-analogue of Amherst... the townie I saw may have been a dirtbag too, but since morals are relative in Massachusetts - he is more like a Marine to me!
Ottawa and the loopier parts of Toronto, sure. Most of Canada is a lot saner than Amherst.
Surely no truer words were ever spoken about liberalism.
I have a Conservitive friend (and a conservationist too) who went to Amherst in the 80s. From what I gather from her, they don't lean left....they fall over and roll left.
"They're far too close-minded to be liberal."There is nothing liberal about the Left.
The word liberal should not be applied to Leftists. When they refer to themselves as "Liberals" it is an Orwellian paradox, like "love is hate", "war is piece", and "freedom is slavery".
"More than 41 percent have graduate or professional degrees, the data show, and nearly 52 percent work in education, health or social services.Such credentials once indicated education and suggested "free thought", liberalism, open mindedness, and openness to freedom of inquiry and ideas. Today they indicate indoctrination."The demographics make for a brainy, mainstream-eschewing population, one longtime resident said, but do not necessarily cultivate 'free' thought. "
American academic institutions, once bastions of liberalism, freedom of though, free inquiry, and intellectual honesty and once the envy of the world, have become indoctrination centers, madrassas for Leftist consensus and groupthink.
Arguments based on the fallacy of logic "appeal to authority", that once held some influence on the logically naive or indiscriminant, are now considered risible when applied to academics and those with academic degrees. They are looked upon as the fools they are and their arguments as nothing more than the parrotting of the catechism of their indoctrination centers.
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