Undue Resistance
By: Trevor Drummond
There is a silent conflict among us. Students, their representative organizations, and the administration of Lehigh University are engaged in a semantically charged debate concerning the role of the school in moderating, mediating, and sponsoring political awareness activities.
Outside Influence
When Students for Obama, a non-Senate recognized organization, opted to bring Gray’s Anatomy actress Kate Walsh to the Rathbone dining facility, the toes had proverbially tested the water. Rathbone management expressed that since Ms. Walsh was not paid, and would draw people into Dining Services’ facilities, that no regulations had been violated. Consequently, whether advertently or otherwise, Students for Obama insulated itself slightly, as the Wood Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sodexho, manages Rathbone. As Sodexho’s contract likely also involves liability issues concerning the facility in question, the school made a clean break.
Building upon their success, Students for Obama invited Kal Penn, a crude humorist and Indian-American actor to spread then-Senator Barack Obama’s pandemic maxim of change. Penn, speaking during the Diwali cultural show, challenged students to “vote for change.”
On October 28th of last year, the Global Union sponsored a program entitled “Who Would the World Vote for?” This grossly partisan event concluded that the pariah and peddler of change, now-President Obama, would be the optimal choice from a so-called global perspective.
Asking Questions
With concern mounting over the interpretation of endorsement, and following the lead of former Lehigh administrators, who noted that the College Republicans received “excessive and undue resistance” in the 2007 effort to bring former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, a letter was compiled and sent to Lehigh’s general counsel, Frank A. Roth, Esq.
No stranger to The Patriot, Roth replied to the assertion that Lehigh had provided a venue (hence, expended resources and violated the 501(c)(3) tax exemption prohibitions, which allow Lehigh to operate as a non-profit tax-free, provided that it does not act to endorse a candidate) for Mr. Penn’s comments by stating that:
“While we do not have a verbatim account of his remarks at the Diwali show or during his appearance at Rathbone, according to the accounts of colleagues on Lehigh’s staff, Mr. Penn encouraged community members to vote and did not endorse any particular candidate. It is our understanding that he expressed his personal opinions about a need for political change and about voting as a direct mechanism for initiating change.”
Semantics, indeed.
What differentiates Mr. Penn’s appearance at Lehigh and that of Sen. John McCain during his failed presidential bid is that the McCain for President committee and private donors independent of Lehigh financed and reserved Stabler Arena, as a client of Lehigh and not for Lehigh. Furthermore, the Global Union’s program is a shell of an event; it presented a disclaimer, not unlike that which must be signed by all visiting lecturers, yet its disclosure and the seemingly “random” choice of foreign journalists representing the “world’s” view clearly demonstrate an agenda, regardless of how subtle.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Roth’s response to our broader inquiries pertaining to institutional disenfranchisement were met with an equally lukewarm response. Says Roth:
“In light of the fact-dependent nature of any application of the various guidelines (IRS, ACE, University policies, etc.) regarding political activity, there seems to be little value in positing hypothetical situations and comparing them to one person’s or one group’s perceptions about events or activities that occurred on campus in the months or weeks leading to this month’s election.”
Translated, Roth is advantageously leveraging the portion of the IRS documentation concerning political endorsement that states:
“The information [in this fact sheet] is not comprehensive, however, and does not cover every situation… The resolution of any particular issue may depend on the specific facts and circumstances of a given taxpayer.” It also states: “Certain activities will require an evaluation of all the facts and circumstances to determine whether they result in political campaign intervention.” and “All the facts and circumstances need to be considered to determine if the advocacy is political campaign intervention.” and, to cite still another example: “ … the communication must still be considered in context before arriving at any conclusions.”
The underlined statement concerning context exemplifies exactly the concerns set forth – that the school will continue to judge its actions from a radically different perspective: one where the word “global” and “liberal” may be interchanged at will (i.e. “The New York Times presents a global perspective”), where multiculturalism is about the removal of the seemingly amorphous concept known as white normativity, and the advocacy that for some indeterminate period of time, “traditionally disenfranchised” demographics have carte-blanche free rein on what may be considered acceptable. Where multiculturalism may be used as a rationale for anti-Semitism (also known as the Cynthia McKinney Effect), and where gender is a social construction.
An Unfortunate End
What we have here is a failure to communicate, as the adage goes. Roth’s response, in addition to the more subtle behaviors displayed by all tiers of the administrative network, furthers Lehigh’s policy of exploiting loopholes to preserve an imbalanced system. For example, with regard to the charge that actor Penn indirectly endorsed President Barack Obama by imploring students to “vote for change,” the idea that we can ignore the rather clear context of the statement to subscribe to an alternative reality crafted and maintained by Roth & company is a rather frightening one.
Professional propagandist Michael Moore’s 2004 endorsement of Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) triggered a lawsuit that set forth the need to have Roth and his respective constituencies review all proposals for potentially controversial events. Speaker Ariel Levy, an event sponsored by The Women’s Center, toed the line quite close when, in her spring of 2008 talk, she stated that while she can’t tell individuals for whom to vote, that “…the candidate who’s running, she’s the right choice,” a clear allusion to the then-only mainstream female candidate in the race, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY).
Having encountered untold legalese and obstructive bureaucracy as an active member of College Republicans & The Patriot in attempts to bring partisans who play by the rules, we found a fast-track approval and subsequent cover-up of endorsement by a faction of individuals (College Democrats, the Progressive Student Alliance, Students for Obama, and The Global Union) who in the past have sponsored individuals who have flagrantly violated the tax-exempt status regulations set forth to insulate the school from legal challenges. Lehigh’s administration is both cognizant and ignorant of the nature of the argument as it stands.
