Terrorists at Fla. Atlantic U Are O.K., Young Americans for Freedom VERBOTEN

by: warner todd huston | published: 03 08, 2010

We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers on its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator *David Blank burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Schackleford asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank the shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

It didn't end there. According to YAF, the campus police arrived and began to harass the students and Mr. Diaz outside as they were in the process of leaving the campus. The police demanded to see student IDs and then menacingly followed YAF rep. Diaz to his car.

Police told Diaz that they were investigating a "possible trespassing charge," and then loudly joked that Diaz "probably had tea bags hanging out the back of his car" as Diaz prepared to leave.

Diaz says that the whole incident is proof positive of why a conservative group is needed at Florida Atlantic University.

“If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives. This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

One question immediately comes to mind over this incident: did student organizer Schackleford and YAF representative Diaz officially reserve a room at FAU for their informal meeting? I asked Diaz this very question.

Diaz told me that since it was an informal meeting that should have been over rather quickly, Mr. Schackleford did not think that he needed to officially reserve a room through the university staff. In fact, according to Diaz, himself a former FAU student, such unscheduled meetings occur all the time.

No we did not reserve a room. When I was a student at the university when a room wasn't being occupied one could go in and meet or study, and as long they left before the next scheduled group arrived they would be ok. After asking around that is how it still is.

In retrospect it was an obvious lapse in judgment not to officially reserve a room. Or perhaps they should have met off campus.

However, that small lapse in judgment does not absolve this oppressive, over-the-top reaction that university administrator David Blank exhibited. After all, not long ago Florida Atlantic University hosted a whole slew of Islamic terror supporters on campus. In 2006, for instance, the Muslim students group at FAU hosted an event at which appeared Hamas and Hezbollah supporter, Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan; alleged Neo-Nazi, William Baker; and potential co-conspirator of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj.

Apparently it’s perfectly O.K., as far as the FAU administration is concerned, to have Islamofascist terror given full-throated support on its campus but it is a serious no-no to talk about organizing a patriotic American conservative student's organization there.

Perhaps Mr. Diaz is right in his contention that a YAF chapter is sorely needed at Florida Atlantic University?

*David Blank appears to be the Event Planning Specialist for the Student Union at FAU. He can be reached at dblank@fau.edu.

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