Maine’s collegiate Republicans have lately been spinning lies just like the big kids. On February 6, Oliver Wolf, the Bates College student who moonlights as communications director of the Maine College Republicans, posted a press release on the group's Web site titled “Bowdoin College Student Government Endorses the Academic Bill of Rights.” He then e-mailed the release to his media contacts around the state, including the Phoenix. Thing is, the Bowdoin Student Government rejected the Academic Bill of Rights on February 1 in a vote of 19 to 1.
“It’s a blatant lie,” says Frank Chi, president of the Bowdoin College Democrats, who have a contentious history with the Republican sponsor of the bill. “People here on campus are very, very angry because it’s a horrible image for the college about something that never happened.”
Passing the “Academic Bill of Rights” at the state and school levels is a major campaign among college Republicans this season. The bill requires faculty to “welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions,” among other points, which means if your fundamentalist friend wants to talk Creationism in your pre-med class, the prof has to take it on as a viable alternative. Needless to say, the controversial Bill of Rights makes most faculty skittish.
The Bowdoin student government did pass a statement endorsing academic freedom (basically saying “You’re in college, it’s safe to think and say what you want”), but it lacked the punitive teeth associated with the conservative Academic Bill of Rights. Nate Walton, chairman of the Maine College Republicans, pulls a W. when asked about his group’s ambiguous release. He says it’s completely accurate.
“The Academic Bill of Rights could be used to describe any document so I don’t think that was misleading at all,” says Walton, speaking from a recent college Republican training conference in Washington, DC. “Any school that endorses the principles of intellectual freedom, intellectual pluralism, and the marketplace of ideas in the classroom is something we will hail as a success.”
Walton says he has no plans to remove the press release from the Maine College Republicans Web site.
But saying the phrase “Academic Bill of Rights” these days is like referring to Woodstock — the term itself identifies the movement. Since conservative activist David Horowitz posted the ABOR draft on www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org in 2003, the bill has symbolized protecting conservative views on campus.
Wolf’s press release prompted Andrew Bossie, president of the USM student senate, to e-mail his counterpart at Bowdoin about the wording of the “Academic Bill of Rights” which Bossie thought Bowdoin had just passed (and a version of which, Bossie wrote, USM had rejected), according to a copy of the e-mail. Scott Hood, vice president for communications and public affairs, called release scribe Wolf last week to ask him to remove the release from the Republicans' Web site. (Wolf also promised the Phoenixhe would remove the release, something he had not done by press time.) And the Bowdoin Student Government was annoyed enough by campus chatter to pass a “Confirmation of the Rejection of the Academic Bill of Rights” on February 8.
