Here's a memo sent out to the entire Saginaw Valley State University community last week:

To the University Community:

We share our students' confusion, fear, horror, and sadness about the U.S. bombing of Iraq and feel called to address the issue with a Teach-in for Peace.

This event is scheduled on Thursday, March 20 from 9:00 to 12:00 in the Performing Arts Center (526 seats) and in Founders Hall from 9:00 to 2:00 and 6:00 to 8:30. At the teach-in, your faculty colleagues and students will read poetry and will discuss the ethical, historical, psychological, political, and sociological ramifications of the war. A flyer and a schedule should be in your mailbox with Wednesday's mail.

We are inviting faculty to modify your syllabus on Thursday and invite students to join them at the teach-in. We will have moderators standing at each door so students may sign in and out, and we'll send faculty their attendance list. You could also, of course, choose to give your students the choice either to attend or to remain in class, but we are really hoping that many of our colleagues, both faculty and staff, will join us. If you do not teach on Thursday, can you offer your students extra credit for attendance at this important university event?

We cordially invite everyone in the campus community to join us. Call or email one of us if you have questions or comments.

Mary Harmon, mharmon@svsu.edu Professor of English
Rosalie G. Riegle, riegle@svsu.edu Professor of English
Scott Youngstedt, smy@svsu.eduAssociate Professor of Sociology

As clearly displayed above, these three faculty members felt the need to ask other professors to cancel their classes and to assign extra credit if their students attended this propaganda meeting.Ý No effort or action was made to have a fair and balanced view on the world happenings.Ý Instead these faculty members abused their power and wanted to force their opinions on impressionable college students.Ý Furthermore, their actions have been endorsed by the administration of Saginaw Valley State University. We, the students of SVSU, are sick and tired of our tuition being wasted and our country being drug through the mud.

The website also profiles SVSU sociology professor Elson Boles, taking him to task for using his classroom to promote his extremist views, and providing links to his homepage and an extra credit assignment so that readers can see for themselves what they mean.

It's an interesting strategy for students who want to protest the way their professors are ramming views down their throats but cannot convince administrators to step in. If SVSU faculty are within their rights to do as they did (and that is debatable, considering that a) students pay for their courses and have a right to expect professors not to cancel meetings for political reasons; and b) giving academic rewards to students for showing support for a particular political view is not the proper business of teachers), SVSU students are very much within their rights to do as they are doing. Here's hoping the embarrassment of public exposure will motivate SVSU admins to do what private complaints would not: to ensure that on their campus, education will neither be confused with political advocacy nor sacrificed to it.

It's good to know these three faculty "share the horror" their students feel at the American war effort; the insinuation being, of course, that if you aren't horrified then you should be.

This is an obvious, hamhanded attempt to bludgeon students into intellectual submission. What a joke, that these people even presume to wear the mantle of "educators."

"... drug through the mud."

Is that a word?

It is a noun, although not a verb. Reason #38 for why their professors should be in the classroom teaching them something. Anything.