A Reality Check On New England

This happens all the time:

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/case/742.html

stuff like this:

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/9312.html

The controversy at Colorado College started earlier this year, when the "Feminist and Gender Studies Interns" distributed a flyer called "The Monthly Rag," which included a reference to "male castration," an announcement about a lecture on "feminist porn," and an explanation of "packing" (pretending to have a phallus). As a parody of "The Monthly Rag," Robinson and the second student distributed a flyer in February called "The Monthly Bag" under the pseudonym "The Coalition of Some Dudes." The flyer included references to "tough guy wisdom," "chainsaw etiquette," the shooting range of a sniper rifle, and a quotation about "female violence and abuse [of men]" from the website batteredmen.com.

Almost immediately after the flyers were posted, Colorado College President Richard F. Celeste sent out a campus-wide e-mail declaring that "The Monthly Bag" included "threatening and demeaning content, which is categorically unacceptable in this community." The students, who came forward within an hour and accepted responsibility for distributing the flyers, were quickly subjected to a three-hour hearing and charged with "bias" and violating the college's values of respect and integrity.

FIRE wrote to Celeste, pointing out that any punishment would contradict Colorado College's own policies and advertised commitments to free expression, including a policy that states, "On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful that it may not be expressed."

Three weeks later and after an abusive trial in a kangaroo court, Vice President for Student Life/Dean of Students Mike Edmonds wrote to the students, stating that they had been found guilty of "violating the student code of conduct policy on violence" for their "juxtaposition of weaponry and sexuality." Their punishments included having the "violence" finding placed in their student files and being required to hold a forum to "discuss issues and questions raised" by their parody.

After the guilty finding, FIRE launched a national media campaign, exposing the ridiculousness of Colorado College's handling of the situation—and the backlash against the administration was intense. Still, this public embarrassment has not convinced the school to reverse the absurd punishment. President Celeste and Dean Edmonds have pretended not to realize that having a guilty finding for "violence" and "the juxtaposition of weaponry and sexuality" on a student's record can destroy their chances for future employment or post-graduate education. FIRE hopes that by placing Colorado College on its Red Alert list, prospective students will be warned that they are considering attending a school that has such poor respect for their basic rights and freedoms as American citizens and members of the school's community.

And there is bias against conservatives that is pervasive:

http://www.theamericanmind.com/2007/12/09/universities-anti-conservative...

In a quantitative analysis of a large-scale student survey, Matthew Woessner of Penn State-Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College found strong statistical evidence that talented conservative undergraduates in the humanities, social sciences and sciences are less likely to pursue a PhD than their liberal peers, in part for personal reasons, but also in part because they are offered fewer opportunities to do research with their professors. (Interestingly, this does not hold for highly applied areas such as nursing or computer science.)

Further, academic job markets seem to discriminate against socially conservative PhDs. Stanley Rothman of Smith College and S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University find strong statistical evidence that these academics must publish more books and articles to get the same jobs as their liberal peers. Among professors who have published a book, 73 percent of Democrats are in high-prestige colleges and universities, compared with only 56 percent of Republicans.

We need to fight in the universities to give conservative thought some breathing room, as the intolerant left attempts to suffocate it with political correctness, prejudice and bias.

If you dont think there is indocrination, politics and political battles waged on campus, you are beyond deluded. The Left has been engaged in using the campus thusly for decades - viz. Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" 1987.

it's not accidental that, in very bad Republican years we've had pretty close races in MA-05, ME-01, and VT-AL. 

VT-AL? Against Sanders?!? awesome. Johnny Carson mode .... "I did not know that." Interesting.

All I am saying is that throwing in the towel in major constituencies or areas is a prescription for permanent minority status. I see that we are in agreement on that point.

In a very good GOP year, we'd have won all three, or at least come close. But this is about perspective.  The fact is, we lost more seats over the last three cycles in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona than we did in New England (and again, those three states have about as many Congressmen as New England, and will have more after this round of redistricting).

Excellent point. We are losing most where the change is greatest and the biggest change is the increase in hispanics voters and their shift to the Dems. We are paying the price today for the last 20 years of an imbalanced immigration policy that gave amnesty to 4 million and is via chain migration bringing higher levels of immigrants from one country, Mexico, which in turn has shifted many border and SW states, and moved Cali over to blue in the 1990s. Perhaps we shouldnt have worried about the new amnesty destroying the GOP majority - the old one managed to kick it over all by itself.

So yes, the challenge of dealing with this demographic shift, e.g. winning more hispanic support, is certainly a bigger and more important challenge then whether we can hold zero or up to a dozen of the House seats in the Northeast.

It is still an odd thing, though: What makes, say, CT such a blue state? Is it really that liberal?