Bush beat-up

Along the lines of Ripley’s Believe it or Not Tim Dunlop has found a liberal arts educational institution with some staff and students who don’t like Bush!

George Bush, also known as the President, is giving a speech there soon, so you’d expect the usual sort of pro-God, pro-Republican tautological sucking up, right? Well, to the eternal (and I do mean eternal) credit of their faculty and students, not so much:

Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Missouri describes themselves as;

…distinctively Christian, academically excellent liberal arts college that shapes minds for intentional participation in the renewal of all things.

Running Scared posts that one third of the faculty members have signed a political add that will appear in the local rag on the day Bush visits at a cost of $2600 and more than 800 students, faculty and alumni have also placed a political add in the local rag on the same day to the tune of $9,600. Calvin College has 4,300 students so roughly a fifth have been convinced to back some of their teachers in this political exercise. The other 80% might like to ask where the $12,000 is coming from. In this startling, revelationary post Tim has so far established that a percentage of staff and students in a college in the US vote Democrat. As that would be the case on every campus in the country it’s hardly a scoop. I Googled Calvin College+Grand Rapids and studied the College’s website looking for Anti-Bush sentiment. Mmmm…a bit sparse. If Tim and Running Scared are to be believed you would think that if Students, faculty and alumni are forking out over $12,000 it would be all over the website. I did find some negative vibes but hardly a groundswell The front page of the students newsletter, the normal source of campus radical thought, offers little in the way of providing another source for the story. The College President says;

… that the response of alumni to news of the president’s coming has been overwhelmingly positive, although he has had a few alumni who object.

Provost Carpenter says;

In response to rumors of possible protests, [he]… responds that although the event will unavoidably have political dimensions to it, it is “important to be good hosts and to show the personal and institutional maturity of being able to extend hospitality and a civil audience to someone whom we may disagree with.â€?

No, I don’t know what the appointment ‘Provost’ is either but at least he hints at some political dimension to the visit. It all looks like a couple of bloggers have sat down and thought ‘ How can I put down on Bush today? They should have picked a better example, if there is one. 20% of the student body and one third of the staff disagreeing with Bush’s visit is hardly an election winner.