Because while a Northern Colorado spokeswoman acknowledged Monday that a complaint had been filed, she also said that the test question was not the one described by Horowitz, the grade was not an F, and therewere clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given. And the professor who has been held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics? In an interview last night, he said that he’s a registered Republican.

In addition, the university was able to directly refute other statements made by Horowitz supporters. For instance, Students for Academic Freedom, a group that backs Horowitz, on Monday posted an articleon its Web site (which was then widely posted by conservatives on other Web sites) with the headline “University of Northern Colorado Story Confirmed.” The article, among other things, said that the professor in the course had been unable to produce any copies of the test questions. But the university has had the test the entire time — and the question isn’t the way it has been described by Horowitz ....

[College Spokesperson] Reynolds added that the student did not receive an F, and that although the instructions on the test said that answers were supposed to be at least three pages long, the student submitted only two pages on this question. In addition, Reynolds said that the student never had to answer this question. The test, she said, had four questions: two required questions and two others (including the disputed one) from which a student needed to select one.

The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated, “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal?

Since when is higher education supposed to make you feel comfortable, anyway? In a largely unexamined triumph of marketplace values, college has come to be seen as a consumable product. Parents invest through the nose hoping for practical payoff. What follows is grade inflation, epidemic cheating, scorn for a common curriculum, and an all-around supermarket attitude. Consumer choice—embrace whatever turns you on, avoid what- ever turns you off—is elevated to a matter of high principle. But weren’t conservatives supposed to be fixing our minds on higher values?

Here’s the contradiction inherent in this right-wing crusade. In their sudden sensitivity to the comfort of minorities—ideological ones, in this case—the advocates of legislative intervention on campus speech discard one of the virtues that conservatives have long embraced: the insistence on standing strong. They tend to cast students as frail, helpless victims of “abuse” who need institutional muscle to defend them against forces of evil they dare not confront on their own.

[conservative blogger] Big Trunk calls Robinson and Zywicki "insurgents" ("insurgent candidacies" was the exact term he used). Can we please stop using this term? The petition candidates are not terrorists, and I'm hugely surprised that conservatives, who are usually the first to point out bad examples of moral equivalence, are implicitly making such comparisons.

Since when is higher education supposed to make you feel comfortable, anyway? In a largely unexamined triumph of marketplace values, college has come to be seen as a consumable product. Parents invest through the nose hoping for practical payoff. What follows is grade inflation, epidemic cheating, scorn for a common curriculum, and an all-around supermarket attitude. Consumer choice—embrace whatever turns you on, avoid what- ever turns you off—is elevated to a matter of high principle. But weren’t conservatives supposed to be fixing our minds on higher values?

Here’s the contradiction inherent in this right-wing crusade. In their sudden sensitivity to the comfort of minorities—ideological ones, in this case—the advocates of legislative intervention on campus speech discard one of the virtues that conservatives have long embraced: the insistence on standing strong. They tend to cast students as frail, helpless victims of “abuse” who need institutional muscle to defend them against forces of evil they dare not confront on their own.

JUSTICE SCALIA: And when somebody goes by that monument, I don't think they're studying each one of the commandments. It's a symbol of the fact that government comes — derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds. (link)

Zete sex papers not a new tradition.
House was derecognized in 1987 for similar offenses, but tradition reemerged.

On a warm, bright day in April, 1987, Dartmouth awoke to news that one of the College's fraternities was in trouble. Already on social probation for alcohol violations, Zeta Psi fraternity, The Dartmouth reported, was under investigation for a newsletter distributed at meetings that depicted the alleged sexual exploits of a house member.

The publication showed a personified hog asking to be sexually abused by a member of the fraternity. "The newsletter shows a woman being raped and acting as if she wanted to be raped," a woman who had seen the publication told The Dartmouth.

A College investigation was launched, top administrators made statements deploring the newsletter, opinions raged in the opinion pages of The Dartmouth and the fraternity's porch was littered one night with tampons covered with mock blood.

Less than a week after the initial revelations, the College announced that Zeta Psi would face a year of derecognition.

Todd Zywicki, a former Zeta Psi member who graduated in 1988, says many of the college's Greek alumni are outraged over what he describes as the administration's decades-long campaign against the Greek system.

"The sex newsletters were clearly disgusting, but the college's response was completely disproportionate," says Mr. Zywicki, who is now a law professor at George Mason University and one of many Dartmouth graduates to have criticized the administration in the college's alumni magazine recently. "To permanently de-recognize an entire fraternity on the basis of speech is an inappropriate and irrational punishment that can only be a pretense for a larger goal."