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Collegiate Network announces 7th annual Campus Outrage Awards

WILMINGTON, DEL. April 1, 2004 — Professors won't teach the Federalist Papers, but they will lecture on the "History of the Vibrator."

Nominate an Outrage Past Winners: 2003 - Duke University/Columbia University 2002 - University of California - Berkeley 2001 - Princeton University 2000 - San Diego State University

Colleges refuse to fund anything having to do with "morals," but they readily provide money to bring porn stars to speak. Where there was once History 101, there is now "Sex Toys 101." Professors claim to respect intellectual diversity, yet say that conservatives are too stupid to hire. A student is lauded and given course credit for his thesis on "Gay Men of Color in Porn," while students and professors are incensed when a Cardinal in the Catholic Church cites church doctrine on sexual ethics during a commencement speech at a Catholic university.

Outrageous politicization and double standards continue to abound in higher education, and the Collegiate Network has once again chronicled the worst of those abuses in its Seventh Annual Campus Outrage Awards.

The 2004 Campus Outrage Award recipients are:

1st Place Tie: Sex-Week at Yale co-sponsored by Wicked Pictures

Yale University student sponsors "Sex Week at Yale" using Yale funds, Yale facilities and with the support of Yale faculty and administrators. Several of the events were co-sponsored by Wicked Pictures, an adult film company that provided one of the keynote speakers—porn star Devinn Lane. [more]

Multicultural porn considered "scholarship" at the University of California Santa Barbara

A University of California, Santa Barbara student received acclaim from professors and administrators for his Chicano Studies thesis on "Gay Men of Color in Porn." The project was presented as part of the UCSB Multicultural Center's tax-payer funded "Race Matters Series" in an effort to legitimize pornography as an academic pursuit. [more]

2nd Place: UC Berkeley appropriates student funds to oppose Racial Privacy Initiative

At the University of California, Berkeley the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) and Graduate Assembly (GA) illegally spent $31,000 of mandatory student fees on a campus campaign to defeat Proposition 54, a racial privacy initiative that would ban the state from collecting race data on school admissions forms. The move violated ASUC's own spending rules, which forbid the use of student funds for off-campus political activities. The administration granted the ASUC and GA a "one-time exception" for their illegal spending. Perhaps "one-time exception[s]" can be made for every student group that openly defies the University's spending rules? [more]

3rd Place: The boy who cried hate at Northwestern

Xander Saide speaks in front of a crowd of supporters.

Northwestern University student Xander Saide filed a police report claiming that he found racial slurs written on his door and was later attacked at knifepoint by thugs who called him a "spic." To demonstrate solidarity against "hate crimes," NU students quickly organized a "Stop the Hate" rally, where Saide tearfully spoke to the audience about his apparent harrowing ordeal. After police began to doubt parts of Saide's story, the Northwestern freshman confessed to police that the "hate crimes" were a hoax. The school has yet to take disciplinary action against Saide, despite his being charged by local authorities with two felony counts of disorderly conduct for filing fake police reports. [more]

4th Place: Conservatives are too stupid for Duke

Robert Brandon, the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Duke University justifies the 17-1 Democrat-Republican ratio among Duke professors by claiming that conservatives are generally not smart enough to teach at Duke. "We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire." It appears that when University President Nan Keohane said, "Diversity is an important value that must be nurtured and used in higher education," she didn't mean intellectual diversity. [more]

5th Place: God Forbid! Cardinal Arinze chastised for taking Catholic positions at Georgetown

Cardinal Francis Arinze

Many Georgetown University students and faculty were shocked when commencement speaker, Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, gave a speech reiterating the Church's teaching on sexual ethics. His assertion that "the family is...mocked by homosexuality," led some students and faculty to walk off stage and the Dean of Georgetown College, Jane McAuliffe, to write an e-mail apology to all students offering counseling sessions to those who suffered psychological trauma as a result of the speech. What's the next step for Georgetown; throwing all the priests off campus? [more]

These awards for the worst campus outrages are given each year to universities to remind the public that political correctness, curricular decay, and violations of academic freedom and free speech remain an unfortunate reality throughout much of higher education. For the outrageous details of the winning entries, visit www.pollyawards.com.

Contact outrage@isi.org for more information.