The University of California Merced College Republicans are (again) dealing with the all-too typical method by which campus progressives fight ideas they don’t like — they shut them down.
Earlier this month the CRs were threatened with a cutoff of funding by the UCM Associated Students due to its “controversial” advertisements supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The CRs’ signs saying “I love undocumented firearms” and “I.C.E. I.C.E. baby” were considered “violent actions” by the Associated Students’ legislative branch.
The California College Republicans threatened legal action if the funding cut is carried out; such actions have been “struck down in court as unconstitutional when applied to public universities.”
Now, the CRs say UCM students and faculty have distributed “White Supremacy Timeline” fliers on campus which “demand the [UCM] administration condemn the CR chapter at a press conference by April 30th or face consequences.” It refers to the CRs and Campus Reform as “alt-right” organizations with “white nationalist audiences,” and says I.C.E. “constitutes a terrorist threat.”
The fliers also contain the personal information of CRUCM members.
In a statement, CR member Harry Duran said
The pamphlets they’re distributing are directly targeting individuals in the club. This absolutely does not establish an inclusive environment when specific students are targeted for holding beliefs that are different than those of the majority. They are slandering us, fabricating events, stalking us, all in an extreme, pathetic and almost humorous overreaction towards the irrational fear of discourse and ideas that contradict their own. As someone who is being personally targeted by these students, I am ashamed that my administration would allow this type of bullying to occur just because I am a Republican.
The White Supremacy Timeline’s preface says the fliers document the
white supremacists’ coordinated campaign of harassment and intimidation at UC Merced and the fascist deterioration of the campus climate. We call on all our communities and comrades to stand with us and help us fight the fascism developing on our campus, roll back the fascism developing in the larger Central Valley, and crush the fascism developing everywhere else.
Accusations against the College Republicans include:
–MAGA graffiti (since President Trump rescinded DACA, this is “racist”) and Pepe the Frog graffiti (because the Southern Poverty Law Center says the image is “hate speech”)
–satirical postings of “Go Black People Yay!” “Black People are Great,” and “I love minorities.”
–recording a professor’s lecture and sending it to Campus Reform “with the explicit purpose of doing professional and personal harm” to the prof. The prof was “targeted” because of his “Marxist analysis, vocal defense of students of color against the racist vandalism by the College Republicans, and his opposition to allowing the racist, sexist, anti-Trans Ben Shapiro speak on campus.”
–due to the above, the professor began to receive hate mail from the “white nationalist audiences” of Campus Reform, The Daily Wire, and “other alt-right media groups who carried the story.”
–online “harassment” of students who criticized “alt-right” attacks; these included defending colonialism and making “anti-Marxist arguments.”
Gasp!! They made fun of … Marxism??
The rest of the list is equally dubious.
The flier concludes by noting if the chancellor does not hold a press conference on April 30 to “acknowledge the discrimination of UCM students” and “allocate resources” that are needed, “major news outlets will be informed to raise awareness of the Chancellor’s negligence of students’ rights.”
I say let them inform the media. Most outside the insulated womb of the academy will see right through their nonsense, the same nonsense which has been addressed by The College Fix several times now.
Assistant Editor Daniel Payne said it best:
The message imparted […] is clear: Academics are upset that reporting outlets like The College Fix, Campus Reform and others are shining so much light on so much of the indefensible lunacy present in academia today [and] reporting on these nasty opinions, the professors claim, represent […] “attack[s]” …
Consider the astonishing progression of events here: A professor tweets a gross and ignorant series of opinions, a news outlet reports on it – and it’s the news outlet that gets criticized! Only in academia could such pretzel logic ever be taken seriously.
The Fix cannot control what others do and say after reading our stories … just as major media outlets cannot.
If there remains any doubt, when it comes to trollish, harassing, and/or threatening online behavior, we condemn it. As Payne says, “We have zero interest in threatening or intimidating anybody for any reason, and we denounce in no uncertain terms the losers and halfwits who feel it necessary to do so.”
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