ARLINGTON, VA - Colleen Weldon, a recent graduate of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, won a $100 award on Monday, October 26, from CampusReform.org, the new social mobilization website for conservatives and libertarians on campus.  Students like Colleen who expose stories of leftist abuses and bias on their campuses enter to win a $100 prize from CampusReform.org each day between Tuesday, Sept. 29 and Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009. 

Colleen Weldon ran into trouble with a professor when she organized a rally for Cindy McCain, wife of Senator John McCain, last fall during the 2008 Election. As one of four directors for the Women's Center, she later offered the same opportunity to College Democrats. The announcement of her event was met with outrage.

"A large amount of students on campus didn't this the Women's Center should lend its support to pro-life women, no matter how influential and successful of a humanitarian that woman may be," explained Weldon.

After the event, a "self-identified liberal" student penned five opinion pieces in the newspaper, claiming that she had been denied a ticket because "she was a known Obama supporter." However, the student had failed to follow the rules in obtaining a ticket. The day after the event, one of Colleen's professors told her that another professor was privately disparaging Colleen to colleagues.  The latter professor, a member of the Women's Studies department, was telling others that Colleen had threatened protestors with violence and was, generally, not a "good" person.

In an e-mail to CampusReform.org, Weldon wrote:

These professors who indoctrinate American students are NOT HARMLESS. They are in positions of authority which they use to their advantage to further an agenda. And until institutions such as this one and others, where I'm sure similar things go on, stop charging $50,000 per year to be discriminated against, I wonder how much a college degree is really worth. Mine cost me a little bit of my reputation for doing nothing but remaining true to my belief that conservative students MUST be treated fairly in college classrooms and on college campuses.

 "CampusReform.org is designed to help students identify, expose, and combat leftist abuses and bias on campus," said Bryan Bernys, CampusReform.org National director.  "We decided to award $100 each day until October 31 to encourage students to come forward with their stories of liberal abuse. 

"Colleen's story is a good example of the types of abuse we know are out there.  As these situations are brought into the public eye, conservative and libertarian students will hold the liberals at their schools accountable."

Winners are chosen based on the nature of the abuse, the number of students affected, the medium of the evidence provided, and any other factors deemed relevant.  Entries are submitted at www.CampusReform.org.

Previous winners include:

David Williams was serving as the student body president at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He had moral conflicts in signing a bill that would fund Spectrum, the LGBT group on campus. By remaining inactive, the bill passed after five days without his signature. While Williams was following policies of the school, Spectrum still filed discrimination charges. After a year-long struggle, including an appeal to the Board of Regents, his charges were overturned. However, Williams was still impeached by the student body house for failing to be politically correct.

David Aula, a conservative minority student, was an officer in the Long Beach Conservative Student Union at California State University at Long Beach when a group of liberal students created a slanderous web site calling Aula a variety of racial slurs and profanity due to his conservative views on immigration.

Alexander Dean, a student at SUNY-Cortland, was participating in a mock interview at career services workshop for a social sciences education class. When the career services professional asked him about his extra-curricular activities, Dean replied that he was president of the College Republicans. In response, the Career Services staffer, "laughed, put his fingers in the shape of an 'L' on his forehead and said, "I'm sorry, but we've had eight years of your bull****," referring to President Bush.

Jordan Rothman, a student at Brandeis University, placed John McCain for President stickers on his door last fall. One night before the election, he saw a student and a friend vandalize his door and write offensive slurs. Rothman confronted them, upset that this property had been destroyed. He took up the issue with the head of the Department of Residence Life, who issued a verbal warning to the student. This differed from university precedent when they held a campus-wide townhall meeting and emails after a "Jesus Fish" sticker was defaced in 2006.

Matt Rubin at the University of Toledo reported that a sign from the National Organization of Women declaring "Keep Abortion Legal" was displayed in one of the largest academic buildings on campus, and no alternative signs from pro-life organizations are present.

Jordan Yort protested the "free speech zone" policy at Eastern Kentucky University. After he and the College Republicans planned to protest an elected official outside of the approved zone, school administrators threatened to have them arrested. Yort and the College Republicans protested anyway. The group then met with school officials who then backed off the policy and said it only applied to non-students who were protesting on campus. The next day, the College Republicans held a second protest against the continued policy of free speech zones at EKU as a violation of their First Amendment Rights.

Max Rosset a student at Yale University was taking "A Guided tour of the Constitution with Akhil Amar.  He wrote, "Amar is a fantastic lecturer, as I learned in his constitutional law class last year, but has a tendency to take unprofessional, petty cracks at conservative politicians and judges. He also used the last five minutes of his class last fall to enthusiastically proclaim his class, the 'Obama generation.' I'm interested in learning more about our Constitution and more about the core beliefs at the heart of this great country. I'm not interested in listening to a teacher deliver the same stale jokes that he included in his jokes last fall. At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that [there] might be better uses of my time."

Edward Koubek of St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas shared his story of a required capstone course which was introduced from day one by the professor as a course with "liberal bias."  The clearest problem, however, was the textbook for the class.  Although Edward acknowledges that professors may well have their own political beliefs, and that those beliefs may find their way into class discussion, he found the textbook leaned extremely left - particularly surprising at a Catholic college.  The book declared abortion not a social problem, quoted Marx without qualification, claimed the world is overpopulated, and promoted progressive beliefs about gender inequality and sexual orientation.

Paul Fahey at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, reported that the school is hosting an event celebrating homosexual students called "Love Is Everywhere...AQ Celebrates Human Rights." As a Catholic school, Paul complained that this event featured movies that disagreed with Catholic tradition, such as Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians.

Alex Oines, a student of Indiana State University of Pennsylvania enrolled in Environmental Psychology 331 and realized that intellectual inquiry was not on the syllabus. On the first day of class, Dr. Susan T. Zimby told students that they would be "better off killing [themselves] than live with the effect of global warming," and used statistics and resources from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and the controversial book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis. When confronted that credible scientist have recently questioned the research behind global warming, she told Alex to "get your head out of your [explicit]..." She also called conservatives who question the validity of global warming "morons" and "completely stupid."

Caribbean Wawrzyniak, a student at Austin Community College in Texas reported that ACC gives preferred parking spots at each campus to students driving "fuel-efficient, low-emission cars. ACC provides a list of approved, "green cars." The list starts with the 2009 Audi TT Coupe, which has a base price of $36,035 and the list does not include any approved cars that are older than 2000 models.

"I find it highly unfair that the students who have expensive, new cars who could easily afford to pay the meter instead get more benefits for no reason other than the type of car that they have," wrote Caribbean. "Plenty of studies have shown that used cars are a better option if you are trying to limit your CO2 emissions because new cars use so much energy in production and shipping."

Kimberly Legendre at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Meyers, Florida, discovered that her school requires all students to take "Foundations in Civic Engagement. The goal of the class is "teach" students to "elevate" their campus to a smoke-free status by 2010.  Despite personal views on tobacco issues, students are required to present information to Lee County civic groups on the smoke-free drive. The syllabus also states that students are required to encourage smoking peers to participate in the "Great American Smokeout," conduct person-to-person surveys on going smoke-free by 2010 and monitor compliance with marketing and tobacco sales at retail outlets.

"In all of my classes I feel as though I can't really speak out, because I will be 'tarred and feathered' by either the professors, or other students," Legendre told CampusReform.org.  "It scares me that I sit in these classes, and when I ask my peers what they know about a topic, they don't know more than what they have been told by their professors. My fears have been forwarded to... the dean and several advisors, and...there is still no response or word that anything may change."

Evan* at Bentley University was required to attend a mandatory freshman seminar about "diversity."  The speaker hired by the university, Tim Wise took advantage of his captive audience to present a political agenda marked mostly by its utter lack of tolerance for opposing view points of any sort. Video of Wise's remarks can be seen via CampusReform.org.

Kyle* of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California is enrolled in English 1A, a required composition course.  In it, students are required to read Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, respond to quotes selected from it weekly, and write an "argumentation research paper" based on the book for 30 percent of their class grade. 

Savannah* of Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee was told her political opinions were "not accurate" by her English professor.  Savannah completed an assignment in she gave a connotative definition of the topic of her choice; she chose freedom.  In the margins, the professor wrote that her opinions were incorrect. 

Lance Kennedy was frustrated with his student government at the University of Texas-Austin.  After he witnessed school administrators using student government officials to lobby for tuition increases, he and a few conservative students started Texas Revolution as an alternative organization representing students. Within the first year, they successfully lobbied for a concealed weapon law in the state senate and produced candidates to run against the "handpicked" student government candidates. Shortly after losing the election, it was revealed that a secret society existed on campus that campaigned against the Texas Revolution candidates. Through the work of Kennedy and his friends, corruption was exposed and more students are engaged and closely monitoring the activities of student government.

*Last name withheld at the request of the winner.

CampusReform.org, a project of the Leadership Institute, is a social networking website for conservative and libertarian student activists. The website includes a unique subsite for each of the 2,376 four-year colleges and universities in the country and offers customizable pages for both student groups and individual users. For more information about CampusReform.org, visit www.campusreform.org.  For more information on the Leadership Institute, visit www.leadershipinstitute.org.

###