Watch list for liberal slanted professors?

By CHRISTOPHER J. ORTIZ
The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University

Apparently professors at the University of Colorado are forcing their left-winged ideology down student's throat enough for a student Republican leader to start a Web site in which conservative students can start a watch list of liberally slanted professors.
According to a Denver Post story, Brad Jones, chairman of the College Republicans, started the Web site to report professors who promote their liberal doctrine to their students. Jones and the CU College Republicans are affiliated with Students for Academic Freedom.
This blacklist, err, I mean "watch list," should send shivers down the back of college students.
Students should remember last year when a bill was being discussed that would require state college and university officials to educate students and faculty better about their rights against political and ideological bias by other professors and administrators, reports Fox News. Colorado Sen. John Andrews told the news channel that he plans on introducing the bill in the upcoming weeks.
We live in times where politics intersect with almost every aspect of everyday life. These days, everything is political: from the economy to the Mad Cow scare to the blackout of 2003. With the Iraq issue and the upcoming November elections, in addition to everything else, stances on both sides of the political spectrum are being fiercely supported, defended, argued and discussed. It seems everyone has an opinion, a strong one, about everything and I think that is a good thing, but I do agree that professors and faculty members need to try to keep their arguments out of their classrooms and teachings.
In my experience, I have had a teacher who was very open with her opinions, especially about how she felt about the war in Iraq and capital punishment. Retrospectively, I probably should have discussed my concerns with a department chair or dean.
But what Jones and other conservatives are claiming is that students can't think for themselves. That students are mindlessly hopeless to professors' political allocution and that these conservatives are encouraging students not to talk to the professor or university officials about this problem but rather post the professor's name on a watch list. And they are claiming that only liberal professors pose this treat, apparently conservative professors have no problem keeping their political stance at home.
I think professors who put their liberal perspective on the classroom table are more easily noticeable than a professor who does the same with his/her conservative perspective because of the fact that conservative views are very much considered the norm in some disciplines. Take business for example: if a business professor talks about utilizing free trade agreements to move American jobs overseas to maximize profits, no one is going to rush to a Web site to report this professor as a conservative radical. But yet if the same professor discusses the benefits of labor unions or the idea of co-op businesses, that professor is going to be flagged by students who feel this kind of crazy liberal thinking has no place in a higher education department.
This kind of blacklisting is not going to improve higher education, only set it back to the McCarthyism of the1950s, and who wants to go back to those times?
I encourage students to send letters to the editors about any experiences they may have had with teachers who they feel have pushed their own political agenda on students or students who feel the opposite. Please do not disclose the name of the professor or class.

Chris is a senior majoring in history and journalism. He is the opinion editor for The Collegian.