Anyone hear about this late afternoon campus occurrence today?

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Boca Raton, FL - On Wednesday March 3, 2010 at around 5:20pm Florida Atlantic University (FAU) campus officials shut down and called campus police on four students and an alumnus of FAU to stop an informational meeting about starting a conservative organization on campus.

Diaz said, “If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives.” Diaz added, “This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

Full Story from Groups Website

Did they have a room reserved on campus? It seems to me that's the reason they got the boot.

No clue…however, the article said "previous verbal permission to talk on public property"…

The article doesn't mention not having reserved a room…guess that would be a prerequisite…unless you are going to the lawn in front of the admin/cso building…then there is no reservation required ;D

TeamBeer said

Did they have a room reserved on campus? It seems to me that's the reason they got the boot.

Give me a break. It sounds to me like they didn't reserve a room and tried to use one anyway. You don't get verbal permission to book rooms in the Student Union; you need to do the proper paperwork ahead of time and get written permission from SU officials, even if you're not an established club with an adviser, COSO budget, etc

Although the police have the right to their own views and probably weren't thrilled about having a "tea party" group forming here, FAU has allowed much worse on campus. The (short-lived?) FAU PETA club used to do some characteristically-inappropriate things, Brother Micah has been condemning nearly everybody he comes across and that one anti-abortion group came through with incredibly gory "genocide" pictures on the Free Speech Lawn.

So I highly doubt a handful of people talking about their displeasure with the Obama administration really broke the camel's back.

Agree…

Although the main "complaint" they had was that any group doing the same thing (who was pro-socialist) would have not been dealt the same treatment, it is up for debate with no counter example presented…

If they desired the argument for maltreatment to carry weight, it would have been better served with such…

Rick said

Although the main "complaint" they had was that any group doing the same thing (who was pro-socialist) would have not been dealt the same treatment, it is up for debate with no counter example presented… If they desired the argument for maltreatment to carry weight, it would have been better served with such…

Right, well, in order for it to be a valid comparison it would have to be a group on the opposite end of the political spectrum who also did not have written permission to use Student Union facilities.

owlcountry said

TeamBeer said

Did they have a room reserved on campus? It seems to me that's the reason they got the boot.

Give me a break. It sounds to me like they didn't reserve a room and tried to use one anyway. You don't get verbal permission to book rooms in the Student Union; you need to do the proper paperwork ahead of time and get written permission from SU officials, even if you're not an established club with an adviser, COSO budget, etc

Although the police have the right to their own views and probably weren't thrilled about having a "tea party" group forming here, FAU has allowed much worse on campus. The (short-lived?) FAU PETA club used to do some characteristically-inappropriate things, Brother Micah has been condemning nearly everybody he comes across and that one anti-abortion group came through with incredibly gory "genocide" pictures on the Free Speech Lawn.

So I highly doubt a handful of people talking about their displeasure with the Obama administration really broke the camel's back.

That's what I was getting at. No matter what their discussion centered around in the meeting, if you don't follow the protocol to get a room reserved on campus they have the right to boot ya. The fact is, you've gotta follow the rules to a T if you are organizing anything that will rock the boat.

They MAY be able to argue that FAU admins or faculty have a left bias (like at most Universities) but to say that FAU police do?  I think policing is generally, like the military, a haven for conservatives and I seriously doubt they would have any sympathy for a meeting of the FAU "Socialist" party if it had failed to reserve a room.

If you want to have an impromptu gathering, go outside and exercise your first amendment right to your heart's content.

I would think all universities are liberal havens, but to me this stinks of a publicity stunt.  Things like this are embarrassing to me, but at the same time, both liberal and conservative personalities and groups do the same things and both are pretty pathetic. But, I guess those tricks do work.

duder said

I would think all universities are liberal havens, but to me this stinks of a publicity stunt.  Things like this are embarrassing to me, but at the same time, both liberal and conservative personalities and groups do the same things and both are pretty pathetic. But, I guess those tricks do work.

Crazy what an education will do.