Brainwashed at ECSU

As every busy student at Eastern Connecticut State University knows, we are regularly inundated with highly annoying junk emails from the university itself every single day. The subjects span from gonorrhea to not-so-subtle hints about whom we should be voting for in the elections.

On a particularly exasperating day I imprudently fired back an angry email using words I should not have used. The subject was a state-sponsored propaganda lecture series about “Peace and Human Rights”. What set off my fuse was among the list of all-liberal speakers was State Rep. Denise Merrill (D-Storrs). For Merrill of all people to preach human rights is mockery of the term. Merrill spent this last session in the general assembly taking away the expressly enumerated First Amendment rights of workers in Catholic hospitals. Merrill delights in the knowledge that her new law forces practicing Catholic caregivers to violate their faith -- or violate the law.

The reason for this is plain. Merrill is intolerant of practicing Catholics. Their very existence offends her. Merrill thinks Catholics should not be Catholic. And yet she is held up as an authority by our university on the subject of peace and human rights?

Freedom of Religion isn't a human right now a days?

My responding email which again included a few inappropriate four letter words was swiftly followed by a call from one of the Deans scolding me not to respond in that way to a man who is only doing his job.

Fair enough. The larger point however is that ECSU should not be using the taxpayer and student funded email system to push their Nanny State agenda. Despite their claims to the contrary ECSU does not subject students to diverse viewpoints.

When was the last time a conservative speaker spoke here?

In my three years I have yet to see a single one.

What I do see is the monthly featured reading list outside the library’s café and not one single time has a conservative writer been featured. Lots of liberals though!

Republican Rob Simmons was this district’s congressman for 6 years yet I don’t recall ever getting an email inviting me to some function where he would be in attendance much less delivering an important speech. If Congresman Simmons was ever here, I curiously missed the invitation.

I was informed however in the same email in question that liberal Democrat Congressman Joe Courtney will be giving his “The Nation and Peace” speech at 5:45 November 15th in the Student Center Theatre.

I am sure ECSU's paid staff will be repeatedly reminding me by email so I won’t forget.

The only Republican I know of that has ever been invited – and I was made aware of – is liberal Republican Jodi Rell for a strictly ceremonial function.

Next door at UCONN best selling conservative author Ann Coulter got as far as the podium but a crowd of liberal thugs was allowed to make sure she was not heard. UCONN can at least say they tried.

ECSU can not say the same.

As Ben Shapiro correctly observes in his book Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth: "Universities accept into their waiting clutches young open-minded students ready to learn. They turn out mainstream liberals spouting the Democratic Party line”. The cover of the book illustrates the point even better – Cloned Stepford Students appear in lock step with roboticly dead stares.

Why can’t ECSU have a lecture series with conservative thinkers instead of just liberals all the time? Why is it so unthinkable to invite Coulter or some other noted conservative to speak, inform us by email

-- and then actually let her speak?