Campus Paper's Publications Targeted by Anti-Conservative Vandals
by Jim Brown
October 25, 2005
(AgapePress) - The publisher of a conservative student newspaper at the University of Georgia says he finds it ironic that liberal students who champion tolerance on campus have apparently demonstrated extreme intolerance by vandalizing his fliers and newspapers.
David Kirby, publisher of the campus paper the Georgia Guard Dawg, says he recently put up 30 flyers advertising "Conservative Coming Out Day," a national holiday that recognizes how conservative views are often kept out of classrooms. But within a day of posting his flyers, he reports, all but three had been torn down.
In addition, Kirby says he discovered about 25 copies of the Guard Dawg had been removed from a distribution bin and tossed in a trash can. So far, no individual or group has yet been implicated in the vandalism against the fliers or the newspaper.
"There are no cameras around," Kirby notes, "so there's nothing that the university can really do to be able to crack down on this and try to find out who the culprit was." Still, he believes it is fairly obvious who was behind the small-minded gesture.
"The homosexual rights group -- this was Gay Pride Week here at the university -- were really preaching tolerance," the campus paper publisher says. "They were saying, 'We all need to be tolerant to other viewpoints.' And yet, it was during this week that those who disagree with us -- namely the homosexual group -- were the ones who tore down our flyers. They were the intolerant ones, and that was the point of my column in the Red and Black."
The Red and Black to which Kirby refers is another student newspaper on campus, which recently published a column of his entitled "Conservative Views Kept Out of Class." In it he delineated a problem that he feels goes well beyond the university's classrooms to pervade many other aspects of campus life.
The Guard Dawg's publisher says many students have accused his paper of being intolerant toward homosexuals because of its promotion of "Conservative Coming Out Day." However, he feels it is clear from the anonymous attacks against his event flyers and his newspaper that those responsible have little tolerance for conservative views.
According to "a lot of the leaders of conservative newspapers on other campuses that I know, this seems to be a pretty common problem," Kirby says. "It's just vandalism of papers and vandalism of any type of paraphernalia that they put up."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
