Kudos to Provost Jeanne Rosenberger for ruling for free speech.
A student-led conservative activism group’s new charter on the campus of Santa Clara University has sent several left-leaning students and some professors into a massive fit of outrage.
The Santa Clara student senate had voted 16-10 to reject the student group, Turning Points USA, because opponents complained that its presence would make them feel “unsafe” — and because of the “mood” at the Jesuit bastion in the thick of Silicon Valley since Donald Trump was elected president.
In an unusual move, Santa Clara vice provost Jeanne Rosenberger then announced that she was using her power of administrative fiat to grant Turning Points USA status as a registered student organization.
At least two students have responded with very angry letters to The Santa Clara, the school newspaper.
Avery Unterreiner, a former Santa Clara student senator who is pursuing a master’s degree in teaching at the school, composed a 935-word screed assailing the decision to allow a conservative group on campus. “I have sat by my computer for an hour now with my stomach turning and my feelings oscillating between disillusionment, disgust and anger,” Unterreiner wrote.
Turning Points USA is “associated with white supremacists, a professor watchlist that seeks to silence their right to opine in their own classrooms and conservative talking heads who hold blatantly misogynistic, Islamophobic and transphobic views,” Unterreiner also fulminated.
According to Turning Point USA, the group is a national student activist group which endorses “fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
Professor Watchlist is a Turning Points USA-created website database that publishes the names and exploits of professors at schools across the country who — according to Turning Points USA — “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
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In any case, Unterreiner described herself as “infuriated” and mentioned that her “mental health was in utter disaster” during her senior year at Santa Clara.