Posted on 04/02/2002 6:57:53 PM PST by Kermit
The University of California at Berkeley won two of five "Polly" awards today for outrageous political correctness, in the fifth annual competition sponsored by the Collegiate Network "to highlight the noxious tendencies of radical faculty and students at the nation's colleges."
Berkeley's first award came for a case of what the CN calls "multicultural hooliganism": In February, a group of left-wing students broke into the office of The Patriot, a conservative student newspaper, and stole its entire press run, valued at $2,000. Editors who filed a police report were then met with death threats. The incident apparently was occasioned by a Patriot article critical of a radical Hispanic group, MEChA, which calls for the revolutionary liberation of the "bronze continent for bronze people." The Berkeley chapter of MEChA receives $20,000 from the university.
Berkeley's other award was for its now-famous sex-education class, which featured "an orgy at a class party and [a visit to] a strip club, where [students] watched an instructor have sex onstage."
Tufts University won a Polly in the aftermath of activists stealing 4,000 copies of The Primary Source, a conservative students newspaper, and attacking its editor, Sam Dangremond. He filed charges with the campus police, "but when the school judicial committee heard the case, it ignored policy testimony, which stated that the leftists admitted to attacking Dangremond. The leftists were sentenced to probation. Two of the guilty leftists appealed their verdict of probation. They won, beat the rap, and were released with a warning."
San Diego State University and the University of North Carolina shared a Polly for what the CN calls "anti-American events." SDSU put an Ethiopian student, Zewdalem Kebede, on probation for arguing with Saudi Arabian students who "were happy about the [September 11] attacks" and "expressed sorrow that the terrorists missed the White House." The Saudis made their remarks in Arabic, a language Kebede also knows. He confronted them, saying, "How do you feel happy when those 5,000 people are buried in two or three buildings?" Kebede later received a letter from SDSU's Center for Student Rights accusing him of being verbally abusive and was put on probation.
UNC's share of the award was for a teach-in organized by the Progressive Faculty Network after the terrorist massacres of last year. A moderator introduced the forum this way: "Understanding the attacks 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."
The final Polly went to the University of Pittsburgh, where the gay group Rainbow Alliance "sponsored a lecture and demonstration on the use of sex toys." The student government allocated $1,200 in student fees to pay for last November's event.
"Many administrators and faculty deny that political correctness exists," says Kenneth Cribb Jr., president of the CN. "Here's proof to the contrary."
The Collegiate Network, a project of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, is a consortium of alternative student newspapers. It awards the Pollys every April Fools' Day, even though they're no joke.
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