-By Warner Todd Huston
Now, to you and me the word “non-partisan” would mean that no political position should be advocated. Sadly, to the left-wingers that run Iowa State University, “non-partisan” seems to mean just another opportunity for pushing a hyper partisan, left-wing, union-supporting message on students because the union thugs at ISU are now using the Student Ambassadors program to push the union’s political positions quite despite that the charter governing the program specifically says that it is to be a non-partisan affair.
Iowa recently elected a Republican governor to office and he is facing the same budget crisis that every other governor is facing due to the profligacy of past Democrat administrations and their cozy, parasitic relationship with the government employee unions. As a result of the budget crunch Governor Terry Branstad has been pushing some very modest budget reforms for Iowa. This, of course, has the elites in the government employee unions up in arms. They don’t want to see their gravy train grind to a halt. This includes the mis-educational establishment in Iowa — as it does in every other state.
Now, ISU has a student government program called the ISU Ambassadors. These “ambassadors” are supposed to connect students with university and state government, or as the website says, to serve as a “connection between Iowa State University, the state legislature, and Iowa communities.”
But here is the key point: the website also says that these student ambassadors are supposed to do their job in a “professional, non-partisan manner.” This is not buried in the description of the program but is right there in the very first paragraph of the description. No mistaking the manner in which the ambassadors are supposed to behave. It is to be non-partisan. Pretty simple.
Yet… and yet, the director of the ISU Ambassadors, one Jessica Bruning, has turned her position from a non-partisan one into a hyper partisan one. Worse, in their greedy desire to continue milking the taxpayer for all he’s worth, the administration is supporting Bruning’s turning a “non-partisan” program toward left-wing, union hackery.
What has Bruning done, you ask? She has used her position as head of the ISU Ambassadors to send out emails to ISU’s 30,000 some students urging them to skip school and turn out to left-wing union protest rallies to be held next week at the state capitol in Des Moines. The administration has joined her in her activism and is using school money to pay for bus trips for students to go to the state capitol to join the union thugs protesting there. In one of her emails Bruning told students to, “do your job, stop the cuts.”
Bet you didn’t know it was a student’s “job” to stop or advance a government budget, did you? Some may be under the mistaken idea that a student’s “job” is, well, to learn something.
Word from the ISU College Republicans is that University President Gregory Geoffroy has personally approved the emails that Bruning sent out, too. Government relations officer Ann McCarthy has joined her president and Bruning in this leftist activism, as well, and will help run what they are calling “lobbying training” this coming week.
After all this university money, time, and resources have been earmarked for union support like this, College Republican Chairman Logan Pals thought that he should alert the university administration as to how untoward all this left-wing hackery is as paid for by state funds and, therefore, taxpayer’s money. Naturally he’s gotten a chilly reception.
After many unsuccessful attempts to get a satisfactory meeting with those in power and after asking the administration to correct the misuse of the ISU Ambassador program by sending another email out reminding students that they don’t have to support the unions he was told that the University “couldn’t afford” to send out another email. They could afford to spend thousands of dollars renting busses to come to the aid of profligate unions, but they “couldn’t afford” to send out an email.
Apparently these “educators” think everyone is stupid.
ISU Ambassador chief Jessica Bruning has a solution for all this, though. She is running for student body president and she says that once she gains that position she’ll simply eliminate the “non-partisan” part of the ISU Ambassador program. Just like a left-winger isn’t it? She’ll simply change the rules in midstream to support her extremist ideology, no matter what the program was intended to be. It’s tradition, letter of the law, and original intent be damned. She hasn’t learned much in her little college, has she?
Some one needs to teach a few lessons to Iowa State University, indeed. Even simple English is beyond these sold-out lefty’s ability to grasp.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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