Republican students at the University of Colorado have launched a Web site to gather complaints about left-leaning faculty, saying they want to document incidents of discrimination and indoctrination.
"We want concrete examples of bias in our arsenal when we go to the administration, the regents and the Legislature," said Brad Jones, chairman of the College Republicans, who launched the Web site last week.
Jones and the CU College Republicans are affiliated with Students for Academic Freedom, a national organization started by California conservative activist David Horowitz, who is pushing a Colorado effort to protect students from harassment or discrimination based on political beliefs.
Lawmakers are also involved. State Senate President John Andrews, R-Centennial, called for all state universities to submit their anti-discrimination policies in November. Conservative lawmakers introduced a resolution last week calling for the defense of students' First Amendment rights, including expression "based solely on viewpoint."
Most faculty and many Democrats deny liberal indoctrination exists on campuses.
"I'm shocked the students would resort to this," said Barbara Bintliff, a CU law school professor and chairwoman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly.
"I'm concerned they may wind up with a blacklist or engage in an attempt to censure certain professors."
Travis Leiker, 22, president of the College Democrats at CU, said classrooms are full of different perspectives.
"I think the conservative students who feel there is a bias are more afraid of hearing points of view different from their own," he said.
"You don't see College Democrats doing this with the business or engineering school, which clearly have a conservative bias," Leiker said. "We could play this game as well."
Jones, 20, said the Web site is not a witch hunt but an effort to collect evidence.
Students must identify themselves to log a complaint on the Web site, but the complaints will not be posted online unless Jones verifies them. He said students will be named publicly only with their permission.
The CU Web site is among the first of its kind, said Sara Dogan, national coordinator of Students for Academic Freedom.
Additional Resources:
The complaint form, entitled "Report Bias," is linked to the CU College Republicans Web site at www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/CURepublicans.
