Student Wants Cal State to Curb Pro-Homosexual Prof's Classroom Bias

by Jim Brown
November 2, 2004

(AgapePress) - A student at California State University - Long Beach is expressing outrage over the showing of Michael Moore's controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 film in the last three meetings of her English composition class.

Junior Marissa Freimanis expected just another semester of writing essays when she began an English 100 course taught by Cal State's Professor Cliff Snider. However, she says she came to realize that the instructor's class more closely resembles a political science course.

Freimanis says Snider recently gave his students an assignment to write a paragraph on a moral issue Michael Moore raises in his film. The junior student claims she received a biased grade because she criticized the filmmaker's anti-Bush documentary.

"I actually had a chance, while we were waiting in line to get our paragraphs, to see the rest of the class's as they picked them up," Freimanis says, "and I noticed that a lot of them got perfect ten-out-of-tens -- but they were marked up in red ink on the spelling and everything. And so I took a look at my paper, having gotten the lowest grade of the class, and I had no errors marked -- grammar, mechanics, or spelling. The only correction on my paper was that I has 'missed the point' of the video."

The university student says she had anticipated that, because it was an English class, she would be graded on her grammar, spelling, and mechanics -- not on her interpretation of the film. She believes Cal State - Long Beach administrators should look into the matter. "I really think that the university should be forced to take a look at his syllabus," she says. "I really doubt that they've ever looked at it. And after doing that, I don't think that there's any way that they can say they can't do something."

In Snider's course syllabus, the Cal State undergrad points out, the pro-homosexual and ultra-liberal English professor tells his students that religion, same-sex marriage, abortion, and prayer in public schools cannot be used as topics in an argument paper. He asserts this is because there is only one side to such issues -- his side.

Freimanis believes the university should hold Snider accountable for his blatant bias, which she feels is apparent both in his teaching and in the syllabus. "I think after reading it, they should force him to edit his syllabus so that it is an actual English class syllabus," she says, "and maybe have someone sit in on his class so they can see what his teaching style is and how inappropriate it is for what they're paying him for."

The junior contends that Snider, instead of teaching language, literature, and composition as most English professors are expected to do, instead has required his students to watch Moore's heavily slanted film multiple times and has turned his English class into a political indoctrination course. Freimanis feels Cal State - Long Beach should take measures to prevent an obviously biased instructor from continuing to use the classroom to promote his own leftist agenda.