Young America’s Foundation is “proud” to present our annual Top Ten Politically Correct Campus Offenses. The Foundation team reviewed 2010’s “best of the worst” campus outrages, and compiled them into a top ten list. The list this year was very competitive, so those schools “honored” should be very “proud” of themselves.

            Below are the 2010 Top Ten P.C. Offenses, ordered from least outrageous to most outrageous:

#10: University of Arizona graduate student Jeffrey Koessler logged on to his CatMail, the public email server provided by U of A, only to discover a racist and discriminatory “quote of the day” provided by the administration in charge of the CatMail. The quote stated, “Two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.” “I didn’t expect to ever read anything like this on a public server,” responded Koessler. “I was under the impression that public Universities were non-partisan institutions.  I found it discriminatory and racist in nature, while re-enforcing the double standard that exists regarding liberal and conservative philosophies.”

#9: Students at Langley High School in McClean, VA were studying World War II this year. Their teacher showed them a doctored image of the Iwo Jima flag raising, with the McDonald’s logo in place of the American flag, during a "graded discussion" on how McDonald's is trying to take over the world. The insinuation was that service members are in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for McDonald's to have the ability to sell their delicious “Big Macs” and “Quarter Pounders w/ Cheese.” The class then began discussing the significance of the altered image and a book called Fast Food Nation. The school’s principal responded to emails from concerned parents with a lack of understanding on the issue and why veterans would find it so offensive.

#8: For several weeks, student groups at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania have called for a boycott of Sabra brand hummus, the number one selling hummus brand in the United States and the only brand sold on the two campuses. Alleging that The Strauss Group, part-owner of Sabra Dipping Company, has sponsored “human rights abuses” as a financial supporter of the Israeli Defense Forces, these students were successful at making this “important” matter into a national controversy. Arguing that individual members of the Golani Brigade have been prosecuted for human rights abuses in the past, protesters claim that The Strauss Group and Sabra brand hummus should not be the only available hummus option on campus. However, the protestors did not provide any proof of the Brigade’s wrongdoing. At Penn, students have been protesting outside of dining halls and local supermarkets chanting “No Justice, No Chickpeas.” Thankfully, a three-day referendum vote on the Princeton campus to have Dining Services offer an alternative brand of hummus was defeated decisively. Dining Services has expressed their willingness to continue to “work” with student activists on this matter.

#7: Winston Salem State University’s chancellor of student affairs, Michelle Redford, sent out an email to all 6,400 students, staff and faculty, urging them to vote early and Democrat. The email also solicited volunteers to work at the polls to distribute Democratic Party Candidate Listings so that “all candidates are fairly represented and supported!”

#6: Similarly, a University of Texas at Austin conservative group and other students received an email on their school accounts from the local Democratic Party, urging them to “vote straight Democrat.” The email was not sent out over a list serve, but had been sent to individual students through the school’s password-protected student directory. Someone with access was either sitting at a computer and randomly typing in names and pulling email addresses from the directory, or a professor, student, or an administrator gave the Democratic party access to these emails.

#5: Amy Hagopian, a professor of global health at the University of Washington, has been on a crusade to end military recruitment at local high schools. In 2005, she was behind the first successful effort in the U.S. to ban military recruiters on a high school campus. She is also partly responsible for having JROTC programs banned on nearby campuses. Recently, under the guise of scholarship, she co-authored an article for the American Journal of Public Health that compares military recruiters to child sex predators. Hagopian’s article  is titled “Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?” and argues, “Military recruiter behaviors are disturbingly similar to predatory grooming… behavior is defined as the process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child’s confidence and trust.”

#4: 13-year-old Cody Alicea rides with an American flag on the back of his bike. He says he does this to be patriotic and to honor veterans, including his own grandfather. He had the flag on his bike for two months, but during the week of Veterans Day, Cody was asked to take it down. A school official at Denair Middle School in Modesto, California, told Cody some students had been complaining about the flag, and it was no longer allowed on school property. "In this country we're supposed to be free," said Cody. "And I should be able to wave my flag wherever I want to. And they're telling me I can't." Apparently, the school was concerned the American flag would cause racial tensions or uprisings.

#3: A student at Claremont McKenna College discovered that one of his professors signed a pro-Hezbollah, anti-Israel petition that condemned “the Zionist killing machine.” Rather than dismiss Professor Bassam Frangieh for sympathizing with the terrorist’s cause, the school has said that Frangieh is just exercising his First Amendment rights. It took the school more than week to come up with that “response,” and this story will most likely continue to develop in 2011.

#2: Student Activists at Buena High School in Sierra Vista, Arizona wished to participate in Young America’s Foundation’s “No More Che Day” event by hanging up posters that expose Che as a Communist murderer. When one of the students approached the principal about hanging up YAF’s posters, abiding by the standard procedure for any club or student to hang up posters around school, the principal told her that she needed to learn more Latin American history and that saying that Che Guevara was an International terrorist and mass murderer was simply an opinion. The principal added that it was offensive to those who think of him as a hero, and denied the request.

#1: Loyola University Chicago refused to allow Karl Rove to speak on campus in October, citing the importance of maintaining “impartiality” so close to election season. The director of student and Greek affairs said that the Rove event would be “problematic given the campaign cycle,” even though Howard Dean and Ralph Nader were allowed to speak in the month of September in past election years. Administrators also said that having Rove speak would jeopardize the school’s 501(c)3 tax status, which Young America’s Foundation’s lawyers and partners and found to be blatantly false.

 Have a PC Offense that didn't make the list? Comment about it below! We could write a future blog post about it!