Wisconsin Interest 

A Conservative Campus Pushback?
Don't Look Now, But there are Conservatives on those Campuses

By Charles J. Sykes

Conservatives dominate the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s student government.

If you’re surprised to read that, imagine the surprise of UWM’s ever-so politically correct administrators, who now quite unexpectedly find themselves facing a conservative student pushback on issues ranging from free speech to the allocation of millions of dollars in student fees.

The result is a new dynamic on campuses like Milwaukee for students and academics alike. For decades, the leftist sympathies of the student body were simply taken for granted and university administrators became accustomed to treating non-radical student groups as virtually invisible. That’s getting harder.

The Conservative Mandate

Last spring, conservative students, running for seats on the UWM student Senate, on a platform of lowering segregated fees (paid by students) and fiscal responsibility, won the student election by a 2-to-1 margin.  “We saw this as a mandate,” recalls A.J. Piwarun, who is now deputy speaker of the student Senate. “At the first college republicans meeting in September, I recruited about nine members to run for open Senate seats. During the course of the semester, more Senate seats opened up, and we recruited additional conservatives to the cause.”

As of mid-January there are 40 student senators: 16 are members of the College Republicans; 8 are non-affiliated conservatives; 10 are moderates; just six are considered liberals. Piwarun says that about half of the moderates vote with the conservatives, “giving us a clear majority.”

The rise of the right on campus has lead to clashes with other student groups and school administrators.

The Tax on Speech

The most publicized incident came last December, when conservative groups hosted a visit to campus by Walid Shoebat, a former Arab terrorist who speaks on “Why I Left Jihad.” The Muslim Student association, which praised the UWM administration’s “constant support for diversity, cultural awareness, and tolerance,” demanded that Shoebat’s speech be cancelled. While allowing the speech to proceed, the administration decided to impose an unusual $2500 “security fee” for the event.

Conservatives on campus immediately challenged the move, saying that fee was an attempt to stifle their free speech rights. The usual fee for such events, according to Tyler Draheim, chairman of UWM's student-run Senate Appropriations Committee, was between $300 and $500, but never more than $1000.

UWM officials insisted that the special fee wasn’t an attempt to kill the event, but merely to assure that they could maintain security in the event of protests.

But the security fee came under immediate fire from free speech advocates. Marquette University Law Professor Rick Esenberg (a UWM alumnus) wrote that the administration’s decision to charge conservatives an excessive fee was unconstitutional.

“The government has the right to charge for the cost of policing an event, but, in general, it can't set that fee based upon an assessment of the speaker's views and the likely reaction to it,” wrote Esenberg.

“UWM is a public university and, while it may impose reasonable time, place, and manner regulation, it does not get to engage in viewpoint discrimination,” he wrote. “Basing the amount of a fee upon what a speaker will say and how others may react to it does that.”

Within days, the administration backed down, announcing it would waive the fee.

Different Campus, Same Story

UWM’s decision, however, did not put the matter to rest.

State Senator Glen Grothman (R-West Bend), noted that liberal administrators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had similarly imposed exorbitant fees for events sponsored by conservative groups on that campus. When College Republicans, for example, invited controversial author David Horowitz to campus last fall, campus police socked them with a $1300 bill.

Grothman said that “it is clear the UW is using ‘security fees’; to try to silence any voices which may be out of step with the hardcore left-wing orthodoxy found in so many liberal arts classrooms. The UW has been unable to name any similar fees charged for left-of-center speakers.”

The UW administration also came under fire from conservative student groups on campus. Sara Mikolajczak, the chair of the University of Wisconsin College Republicans noted that “when Michael Moore, George Galloway and Howard Zinn came to our campus, no fees were charged to anyone who sponsored those events. Isn’t it ironic that the only student organization to be assessed these exorbitant fees is the College Republicans? I really don’t think so.”

Grothman asked the Board of Regents to “take immediate action forbidding its campuses from charging security fees for on-campus speakers.”

The Backlash Against PC

Is the rise of conservatives at UWM a false positive? There is, of course, always that possibility, especially as polls indicate a shift to the left among younger voters. But there are also indications that students at UW-Madison are pushing back against the orthodoxies that have been embraced by university administrators, especially against heavy-handed enforcement of “diversity” and “sensitivity” agendas.

In 2006, for instance, the University of Wisconsin unveiled an ambitious “diversity” campaign designed to root out inappropriate speech and behaviors on campus. The “Think Respect” campaign was not as controversial as the University of Delaware's re-education program that required students to confess their racial guilt and demanded that they demonstrate “correct” attitudes toward sexuality and environmentalism.

But UW's program was just as creepy. Posters appeared around the campus that included suggestions how students could “Put Up a ‘No Hate’ Sign in Your Room,” “Become a Big Brother or Sister,” and “Confront Inappropriate Jokes.” (“How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” “That's not funny.”)

When not confronting such inappropriate humor, students were also encouraged to inform on one another.

At the center of “Think Respect,” was a “bias reporting mechanism” that encouraged students to report oppressive and racist worst, attitudes, and behavior. Students could download a form to make their allegations, which would then be investigated by the administration. The university's website encouraged a liberal use of the system:

A bias incident is a threat or act of bigotry, harassment or intimidation—verbal, written or physical—that is personally directed against or targets a University of Wisconsin-Madison student because of that student's race, age, gender identity or expression, disability, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, veteran status, or other actual or perceived characteristic. (Emphasis added.)

Students can report anything, from a hate crime to graffiti to verbal harassment.

When the reporting system was unveiled, UW Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse commented:

Students can report anything? And remember [Chancellor John] Wiley's statement: “We will not tolerate bias, racism, disrespect or hate.” We will not tolerate disrespect? You know, I want students to feel good about campus life, but isn't part of campus life having rowdy debates and vigorous arguments? . . . This program should make students worry that anything other than bland pleasantries is going to get them in trouble with the administration."

Free speech champion Donald Downs, who is also on the UW faculty, noted that the program “encourages campus citizens to report not only acts of harassment or discrimination that constitute official misconduct, but all forms of ‘bias,’ verbal and non-verbal, without that term being defined in a manner that is consistent with First Amendment principles. In other words, the present policy amounts to a speech code, as it encourages people to file reports on other people's attitudes and speech that informants deem insufficiently sensitive.”

At the University of Delaware a legal challenge from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a media firestorm, and accompanying widespread ridicule, forced the university to abandon its North Korean-style indoctrination program.

At Wisconsin, the “Think Respect” program died from indifference. It simply withered away.

Even at one of the most political righteous campuses in the nation, it turned out that students did not want to rat one another out to the diversity police. As the student newspaper the Badger Herald reported recently:

The campaign now is relegated to its spot in the vast bank of inactive organizations occupying the Student Organization Office's web space and the bias reporting mechanism fills a similar role on the Dean of Students' website.

The dean who launched “Think Respect” now admits that the campaign “didn't gain momentum for subsequent years” and they “haven't had many reports” of bias or oppressive behavior.

UW Law student Robert Phansalkar wrote the epitaph for the program, whose origin he traced “to our downright insatiable desire to legislate and litigate everything.”

The diverse-o-crats assume that college students are unable to deal with issues like racism on their own. But the reality, he wrote, is that “we have the ability to do so.”

This is precisely why students did not turn to campaigns or reporting forms to deal with those who offended them during the past year.

It seems obvious; we simply do not rush to a computer to fill out a form online when someone has offended us—we confront the person. We do not go to counseling to discuss an offensive remark—we talk it through. . . .

The assumption that students simply cannot take care of themselves is the root of the very kind of paternalism that the “Think Campaign” perpetuates. The campaign and reporting forms advance the mentality that we cannot deal with these problems on our own.

But, as lack of enthusiasm and disuse of these programs plainly show, we are more than capable of dealing with the racism of today on our own.                             

Even without Big Brother looking over their shoulders.

Pushback

The higher profile of campus conservatives has also changed the traditional dynamic of student protests on the UWM campus: the left no longer has a monopoly.

In January, a group of antiwar activists, including member of the Students for a Democratic Society, staged a protest against U.S. Marine recruiters at the campus’s Klotsche center. Conservative student groups quickly mobilized a counter-protest that included members of the Conservative Women’s Movement, “Panthers for a Better Tomorrow,” and other members of the Conservative Union. “Within minutes,” the conservative group later said, “a crowd of conservatives rallied behind the USMC recruiters to show their love and support.”

Allyson Wartick, a U.S. Air Force Veteran and chair of the Conservative Women’s Movement at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee issued a statement declaring:

We cannot let this egregious offense against freedom go uncountered.

Our men and women in uniform who are ready and willing to give their lives to protect those who would readily criticize and slander them require our support, and this unpatriotic behavior on campus cannot go unopposed.

We stand behind our ROTC students, we support our men and women in uniform, and we thank our veterans for doing what's right.”

In the wake of the protest, Wartick and other campus conservatives announced the formation of a new group: “UWM Supports You!” to “work as a student advocacy organization for the military recruiters who visit the UWM campus.”

Double-Standard

Meanwhile, at UWM tensions between students and administrators have also intensified since the conservative takeover of student government.

Student government at UWM has control over the allocation of a portion of the segregated fees paid by students. According to Piwarun, the new conservative majority controlled roughly $360 per student—or more than $10 million in fees. When the senate’s finance committee voted to cut the allocations to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center, Women’s Resource Center, and a tutoring program known as LINKS, administrators bristled.

Last fall, Dean of Students Jim Hill sent out a mass email to all 29,000 UWM students alerting them to the possibility of cuts, which he painted in dire tones. The email was, says, Piwarun “an unprecedented event. The dean of students has NEVER sent out a fall update. . . . These are student segregated fees, OUR tuition money to appropriate as we see fit.”

Within days of the administration’s missive, says Piwarun, the email boxes of the student senators were filled “calling them ‘brown shirt members of Hitler's militia,’ and other various references to Nazis. Additionally, [someone is] releasing the personal phone numbers of the Speaker of the Senate and the President, in hopes to sway their policy from that of fiscal conservatism to that of liberalism. This is being done on campus computers, using campus wide email lists. This tacit, if not blatant support of the far left by the UWM administration has become an everyday occurrence.”

In the end, the conservatives were able to cut the budget by $175,000 ($6 per student off tuition), says Piwarun, and more cuts are on the way.

“On the horizon is working out a deal on Differential Tuition (added fees paid by students in certain academic majors), downsizing our own government, and, of course, planning to win the elections again this coming April.”

They expect opposition from the administration.

The Conservative Student

Do conservative students came to campus as conservatives or do they become conservatives in reaction to the liberal orthodoxies they encounter once they got there?

“I believe it works both ways,” he says. “More and more students are coming into the university with a political ideology.  I believe some come to UWM with a conservative attitude, but others see the far-left organizing every other day in the union and cannot identify with them.  I think there are far more conservatives on campus than we think, but they just need a little push to become more active.”

At least publicly, the intellectual environment on campus remains uncongenial for conservative students. “Every day,” Piwarun notes, “there are demonstrations or literature tables by left-wing organizations.” As a result, some conservative students might be reluctant to speak out. Piwarun thinks they “might see the liberal dominance as untouchable and keep their opinions to themselves.”

But obviously not all conservatives opt for quiescence.

Charles J. Sykes is the editor of Wisconsin Interest and a Senior Fellow of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. He also hosts a talk-radio show on AM 620 WTMJ in Milwaukee.