A recent Lantern editorial regarding Monday’s visit to campus by Dinesh D’Souza contained numerous factual inaccuracies and unfounded accusations that I would like to address.The flawed editorial started by claiming D’Souza believes racism doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, what he believes is not that racism no longer exists, but only that one can no longer claim it as a reason preventing anyone from succeeding in life. It went on to criticize ODUA, the board in charge of bringing speakers to campus, “As shown by Dan Quayle’s paid stump speech in the fall, the board has become a tool for conservatives to use Ohio State’s money to help fund right-wing speakers.” Two conservative speakers is proof of a takeover? In my five years here, I can only count four conservative speakers brought here by this board or the old SEC (G. Gordon Liddy, P.J. O`Rourke, Dan Quayle and Dinesh D’Souza), hardly a pattern of favoritism. If the College Republicans did indeed control these groups, as the Lantern alleged, we certainly would not have spent $3,000 at last year’s Cultural Diversity Week to bring in a Latino speaker whose presentation would be attended by less than 15 people. Nor would we have forced students to pay $5 to hear the head of the ACLU. For that matter, we wouldn’t have charged students to hear our former vice president, either. And we surely would have had a lot more than four conservative speakers in five years. I also object to the Lantern’s criticism of bringing D’Souza to speak during Black History Month. Is there not a more appropriate time to talk about affirmative action or race relations? Should there be special rules dictating when certain points of view may be aired? Are there any other special days/weeks/months/years that we shouldn’t be allowed to hear conservative thoughts? This sounds all-too-similar to the current rantings from that Feminist Majority group. This group of whiners succeeded in getting the Lantern to ban a comic series because they deemed it offensive to women’s studies majors. At this rate, the next time we pick up the Lantern we’ll be unable to distinguish it from a blank piece of paper.
Jeff Capell, College Republicans president, senior, business economics
