Posted on 11/06/2003 1:11:19 PM PST by Hobsonphile
Most parents would not knowingly send their kids to a college where radical political and sexual indoctrination by the faculty and administration was virtually inescapable. Most parents would be concerned if their offspring were taught that the Arab television network al-Jazeera was the best source of news about the Iraq war or if faculty and administrators indoctrinated students with a one-sided message about U.S. foreign policy both inside and outside the classroom, then helped them organize protests against their country. Most parents would be concerned if their kids were exhorted to have sex by campus-sponsored speakers or encouraged to get promiscuous at orgies hosted by the college and attended by both students and faculty.
But the folks who send their kids to Ohio’s Oberlin College aren’t typical parents. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Oberlin is the number-one college choice for professors’ kids in the Northwest. It’s also popular with the children of far-Left activists, many of whom attended the school themselves. And it’s become a haven for gay and “transgender” students.
All this helps explain why the leftist magazine Mother Jones named Oberlin one of the nation’s Top 10 activist colleges in 2001. It also explains why Oberlin, a school of only 2,900 students, typically sends 200 students or more to most major anti-war and anti-globalization protests across the nation. Oberlin has become the place to get an education for future radical activists.
But that doesn’t begin to capture the surreal atmosphere at Oberlin, where even the campus newspaper recently acknowledges that digging up a Republican among the student body is nearly impossible to do – they found only two – and conservative, or even moderate, voices are virtually non-existent.
Perhaps that’s why no one complains or even seems to notice the lines that faculty, administrators and campus-sponsored speakers cross in students’ lives. At Oberlin, it’s difficult to tell where activism ends and education begins.
It wasn’t enough that women studies professor Frances Hasso humiliated herself before the nation by writing a column for Newsday that argued that al-Jazeera, – the same network that referred to the Sept. 11 terrorists as “martyrs” – was the best source of fair and balanced news on the Iraq war.
The school beamed Hafez Mirazi, al-Jazeera’s Washington Bureau Chief, into a school auditorium via satellite feed for a live interview with students and faculty. Mirazi assured them that contrary to U.S. news reports, most Iraqi civilians opposed the invading U.S. forces and some of them initially tried to defend their country against invading troops, only to give up in the face of overwhelming U.S. firepower.
At Oberlin, all “education” and college-sponsored “discussion” on the war in Iraq is markedly one-sided and failure is routinely predicted. In early October, the school sponsored a talk by U.S. Major General William Nash, the director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action. Nash, who opposed the war, criticized U.S. post-war strategy and told students and faculty that time is “running out” for democratic prospects in Iraq and the time for “dramatic action” has come.
This spring, College President Nancy Dye led the faculty in what the Oberlin Review described as a “scathing critique” of the Bush Administration on Iraq at an anti-war “teach-in,” an indoctrination session considered to be a form of protest. Dye has also publicly praised and encouraged students’ protests against the war.
But then, Dye has a long history of hypocrisy on Middle Eastern policy. Oberlin, which has a large Jewish student population, recently received national attention after anti-Semitic graffiti equating Zionism to racism and Nazism appeared on campus. Dye was quick to tell the media the graffiti was “hurtful and divisive and makes it more difficult to have an open, engaged dialogue on campus.”
Yet Dye has had no public quarrels with the one-sided rhetoric that’s fueling the problem – namely vitriolic anti-Israel teach-ins and education sessions led by Oberlin’s faculty. Flyers advertising a week of pro-Palestinian propaganda by faculty and guest speakers called “Locked In: A Week of Education About Palestine,” featured pictures of Palestinian “victims” reaching their hands out between the bars of an Israeli prison. The “Jewish” point of view was presented by Jewish speakers – who opposed the existence of Israel.
In April, anti-war activist Liz McAlister gave a talk on civil disobedience. McAlister lists the fact that she is a convicted felon and served three years in prison for vandalizing (or “disarming,” as she euphemistically puts it) a B-2 bomber at Griffiss Air Force Base in 1983 among her qualifications on a biography, posted on the college’s website.
Oberlin also indulges in “hating whitey.” Demonizing Europeans and their ancestors is another dominant theme on campus. Dorm education sessions, panel discussions on white privilege and a for-credit class called “Unbearable Whiteness,” apparently weren’t enough to make the point. Hence, last May, the faculty approved an entire academic program called “Comparative American Studies” – which includes “queer studies” – the central focus of which will be how white males have oppressed all those of an alternate sex, race or sexual preference since before our country’s inception.
Although the visceral hatred of the United States is palpable, what sets Oberlin apart from the average activist college is its in-your-face sexuality.
Some 800 to 1,000 students typically attended an annual college-sponsored, administration-approved “Safer Sex Night,” an orgy held on campus. The Oberlin Review, the student newspaper, described the scene: “Educational, sexually explicit videos played on TV screens, and students sat in booths in g-strings and halter tops.” Other students, the paper reported, simply go naked. Students can enter something called the “Tent of Consent” to, shall we say, interact sexually.
In the spring, Oberlin hosts another equally popular on-campus sex party called the “Drag Ball,” which is organized by students and faculty. “Drag Ball” is the final event at the end of the school’s annual “Transgender Awareness Week,” an event created to “celebrate Oberlin College’s queer community. It is the culmination of a week of “talks and film screenings to celebrate the experiences of transgender, transsexual, intersex and other gender-variant people.”
As its name would imply, students are encouraged to cross dress for the “Drag Ball” party. “Others will attend simply baring their Birthday Suit,” the Oberlin Review reports.
While the school’s administration likes to present itself as promoting Oberlin as a “safe and tolerant space,” it has done little more than brush aside increased reports of sexual assault connected with the two events by the campus’ Sexual Assault Prevention Team and local law enforcement authorities.
After an alleged staff-on-staff rape outside the 2001 “Drag Ball,” even students protested what they saw as a dismissive attitude on the issue by the administration, which is very protective of the two events. Rather than ban the parties entirely, administrators backed the Student Union’s decision to ban alcohol at the events, under the assumption that those who attend the parties couldn’t legally or morally “consent” to sexual activity if they were drunk.
All this and more was coordinated until recently by a full-time, paid “Community Coordinator” for the school’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Union.
None of this is surprising when you consider that Dye, the school’s president, has vocally supported students’ efforts to officially charter a BDSM (Bondage, Discipline and Sadomasochism) Club at the school, which would qualify the group to receive school funds like other campus clubs. Dye considered chartering the club to be a “free speech” issue.
At Oberlin, gay faculty wear their homosexuality as a badge of honor, championing their commitment to adding a “queer focus” to their subject matter in their personal biographies, which are displayed on the college’s official website for all to read.
Many of the paid, on-campus speakers at the school in recent years have been gay or transgendered and/or promoted promiscuous sex in some fashion. Your typical hate-America politics is usually secondary in these speeches, though it is often present, as well.
Speakers have included a gay Muslim who gave a talk called “Being Queer and Muslim.” Annie Sprinkle also paid a visit to campus. The former porn star and hooker conducted a meditation for a packed auditorium of students and faculty called "Zen Pussy." Sprinkle showed graphic sexual images including a graphic to illustrate how many men she'd performed fellatio on. The rest of her presentation was too obscene to recount.
The school’s 2001 “Transgender Awareness Week” was kicked off with a lecture by a “gender neutral” person named Leslie Feinberg who arrived dressed as a man and asked the audience to refer to her as "ze," rather than he or she. Feinberg briefly bashed President George W. Bush before focusing on "past rejection of transgenders from the queer community."
In April, Carmen Vazquez, a self-avowed butch lesbian socialist, gave a lecture in which she reproached the queer movement for avoiding larger public policy issues. She enjoined queer activists to battle neo-conservative American leaders in a quest to prevent a new fascist American state. Then she encouraged students to have sex.
So did author and poet Nikki Giovanni, another campus speaker. Not to be outdone, Joani Blank, owner of the Good Vibrations sex superstore in San Francisco and Down There Press, a publisher of erotica, not only encouraged students to have sex when she spoke at Oberlin in 2000, but discussed her businesses role in providing sex toys to the customers the world over. Apparently, she is the only capitalist Oberlin could appreciate.
Whatever the radical leftist issue currently being pushed on campus, Oberlin offers students four years of extremist indoctrination for the bargain price of only $30,000 a year. Oberlin embodies a far-Left paradise of agitation, Marxist activism and sexual licentiousness. It is, in short, a model of the Left’s paradise. It is specifically for this reason that it resembles most traditional Americans’ version of Hell.
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