Senator Rick Santorum, who is slated to speak at The George Washington University as part of YAF’s Fred Allen Lecture Series on November 29, is the latest YAF event to be targeted by PC thought police. Despite previously speaking at GW without incident, administrators cited the “national dialogue” and the “campus atmosphere” in their decision to slap a security fee on the event titled “Locked and Loaded: Shooting Down Liberal Gun Myths with Rick Santorum.”
According to an email from a senior event administrator at GW last week, university police initially decided to ban the public from attending the November 29 lecture and institute a no-bag policy “due to the notoriety of the speaker and subject matter.”
That’s right. The Second Amendment, literally the law of the land, is apparently too much for GW’s elite liberal ruling class to handle. Pathetic.
After pressure from YAF activists at GW for administrators to explain their rationale for barring the public from the November 29 lecture with Rick Santorum, The George Washington University has agreed to allow non-students to attend the event, but maintains foisting the security charge on GW YAF is necessary.
“Just because the topic we chose to focus on was deemed ‘controversial’ by the university, we are unfairly being forced to comply with their demands,” said GW YAF Chair Shannon Bell. “Other student organizations are bringing speakers with the same level of notoriety as Senator Santorum, but have not indicated that their events were threatened by security fees or restrictions on attendance,” Bell explained. “We want this event to be safe for all attendees, but as the university itself pointed out, this new security requirement is being pushed on us specifically because of the content of our event.”
In just the last week, liberal US Senator Chris Coons addressed a leftist student organization on GW’s campus, and the GW chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine hosted a radical professor to tell her story of allegedly being bullied by Zionists. Neither event’s description mentions the event being closed to the public nor any restriction on items brought into the venues.
To top it all off, intolerant leftists on GW’s campus tore down posters advertising GW YAF’s Santorum Lecture, yet another instance in a long-standing pattern of vandalism carried out against the YAF chapter.
GW YAF is doing the job their university won’t—providing a diverse viewpoint for their peers and community by hosting Rick Santorum. The George Washington University campus is desperately lacking conservative ideas, specifically the values and rights enshrined in our Constitution.
Frankly, their knowledge about guns in general could use some work too. Just check out this man-on-the-street video YAF released asking GW students about their thoughts on banning assault weapons.
Rick Santorum’s message is what GW’s community needs to hear, but never would without bold YAF activists.
More info on the lecture can be found here.