Socialists Decrying Diversity at University

This piece of journalistic tripe was brought to my attention on a listserv yesterday: some self-proclaimed "student activist" has penned an article for the New Socialist decrying the proliferation of conservatives contesting (and winning) student government elections in Ontario over the last five years.

The story is rich with contradictions: the author abhors conservative coalition-building on campuses in order to win elections, but then calls "for activists and progressives to bring these [student] unions back to their roots in integrated, progressive activism..."

He is aghast at the "resources devoted specifically to providing finances and political consultation to conservative candidates running in elections on a number of key university campuses..., despite ignoring that the uber-socialist Canadian Federation of Students has actively allowed its massive organisational and financial infrastructure to fund the campaigns of student government candidates sympathetic to its calls for free tuition, student protests, and opposition to the "neo-conservative" agenda for years.

It's often that student socialists lecture the university community on the lack of diversity on university campuses. However, when diverse, non-traditional voices want to challenge the student union status quo, the left defenestrates its rhetoric of diversity, choosing instead to support the uniformity of perspective it haughtily decries everywhere else but in its own backyard.

Richly ironic, but so typical.