The Constitution Club

Art Downs over at Common Sense Political Thought launched a firestorm of debate with a post about the ACLU.  The comments on the post went from the purpose of the ACLU to the nature of editing and excluding opposing debate from left or right blogs.  Obviously Conclub holds great interest in those that stifle debate since our own Sage was banned from Pandagon for being conservative. 

So it was with interest when I came across this article on Taranto’s Best of the Web.  It details Troy Scheffler, a 31 year old student at Hamline University in Minnesota.  Following the shootings at Virginia Tech, Scheffler fired off a pair of letters detailing his frustration with the administration at Hamline:

Scheffler had a different opinion of how the university should react. Using the email handle “Tough Guy Scheffler,” Troy fired off his response: Counseling wouldn’t make students feel safer, he argued. They needed protection. And the best way to provide it would be for the university to lift its recently implemented prohibition against concealed weapons.

“Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn’t have happened if the school wouldn’t have banned their permits a few months ago,” Scheffler wrote. “I just don’t understand why leftists don’t understand that criminals don’t care about laws; that is why they’re criminals. Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law-abiding citizens’ rights.”

Two days later, Scheffler fired off another email expressing his frustration with campus affirmative action policies that give free tuition to three fellow students from Africa.  The Hamline response was to have Scheffler banned:

But after the Virginia Tech massacre, school administrators across the country were ramping up security. Flip to any cable news channel and you’d hear experts talking about warning signs that had been missed. Cho had a history of threatening behavior and stalking. And a psychological evaluation had deemed him a threat to himself.

So Hamline officials took swift action. On April 23, Scheffler received a letter informing him he’d been placed on interim suspension. To be considered for readmittance, he’d have to pay for a psychological evaluation and undergo any treatment deemed necessary, then meet with the dean of students, who would ultimately decide whether Scheffler was fit to return to the university.

The lesson:  conservative views on campus will not be tolerated.  And of course every conservative on a college campus knows that the left would rather ban them from campus than suffer the intolerable inconvenience of having to debate them in the arena of ideas.  What a disgrace Hamline is.  But here is the best part:

Scheffler obeyed the campus ban and didn’t go to class, but his classmate, Kenny Bucholz, told him a police officer was stationed outside the classroom. “He had a gun and everything,” Bucholz says. (emphasis mine)