Bucknell Bends Left

The Bucknell University Women’s Resource Center has sponsored buses so that students could demonstrate in favor of abortion in Washington, D.C. Its website points visitors to various pro-choice sites, including one exclusively dedicated to electing liberal Democrats, but its director has repeatedly refused to add pro-life links. Past WRC lecturers have included the campaign manager for Democrat Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential bid and radical “diversity trainer” Jane Elliott, and its frequent video exhibitions have included moveon.org project Outfoxed, which berates Fox News Channel for being too conservative.

With all of these left-of-center programs, one would think the WRC would jump at the chance to reach out to non-liberal women by sponsoring a speech by a noted ethicist and best-selling author who happened to be a conservative. One would be wrong.

As Bucknell senior Allison Kasic [pictured] exposed in the online edition of the prestigious conservative magazine National Review, WRC Director Molly Dragiewicz was offered the chance to co-sponsor a speech by American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers. Dragiewicz responded by smearing Sommers as “opposed to gender equity” and lacking in “intellectual integrity.”

Sommers spoke Thursday under the auspices of the Bucknell University Conservatives Club anyway – but the incident is just more proof of the WRC’s rank partisanship.

“If Bucknell is going to have a Women’s Resource Center,” Kasic remarked, “it should serve all women, not just the left-wing women who agree with its director’s views. A great university deserves nothing less.”

And the WRC is not alone: Bucknell’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program denied the BUCC’s offer of co-sponsorship on similar grounds, and many other administrative offices similarly push partisan political agendas on students’ and alums’ dime. For example, the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Awareness recently sponsored an entire week of programming dedicated to gay marriage, a clearly political proposition.

BUCC President Matt Gabler said, “As any sane person knows, there are many great things about Bucknell. The administration should stick to spending our money on those things – having caring professors who give personal attention to students, for example – rather than advancing a partisan agenda. This is a university, not a political party.”

The Bucknell University Conservatives Club was founded in 2001 to combat the systematic exclusion of conservative, libertarian, and classically liberal ideas from the University. It publishes a well-known magazine, The Counterweight, and has hosted many speakers, including economist and actor Ben Stein, liberal writer Christopher Hitchens, and TV journalist John Stossel. One of the most successful student political organizations in the country, it was featured on the cover of the May 25, 2003 New York Times Magazine and has also received coverage from other media including MTV, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and NPR.

Matt Gabler is president of the Bucknell University Conservatives Club.