In response to Thomas Emerson’s column from last week:

Emerson tried to make the case that Villanova is an extremely liberal campus and that he and his fellow conservative students should bravely oppose it. The key instance of “liberalism” Emerson cited, however, was the proliferation of left-leaning articles on the bulletin boards of liberal arts professors. However, even if he was able to correctly claim a powerful liberal bias against him and his fellow conservatives, Emerson’s justification of the conservatives’ current remedy was lacking. It is a stretch to try to argue that it is just or appropriate for the conservatives to assert themselves against the liberals by vandalizing SAC. Last time I checked, conservatives yelled and hollered on other campuses when their own newspapers and articles were destroyed. They should follow their own advice. I don’t seem to remember the College Democrats or any infamous posse of liberal professors recently vandalizing anything here.

Finally, aside from this recent spate of New York Times articles on bulletin boards, Emerson really didn’t have the ammunition to make a compelling case of widespread liberalism at Villanova. He described a few centrist, middle-of-the-road speakers like Brian Williams who dared to assert that you can be patriotic and still question a politician’s positions. After that, he was compelled to turn to other colleges for examples of campus leftism. That’s interesting in some sense but hardly a good argument about Villanova’s political climate.

The real problem is that Villanova is truly apathetic and apolitical. Most people here don’t really cares either way about politics or national affairs. It would be a good thing if those professors in SAC who fill their bulletin boards with political clippings were to thus trigger a campus-wide debate about current affairs. Instead, a small group of conservatives tear them down and declare they are fighting the monolithic liberal beast trying to corrupt the minds and hearts of the student body.

Anonymous Arts Student