Diversity at Columbia Doesn't Apply to the Military

Matt Sanchez is a corporal in the U.S. Marines (Reserve) and a student at Columbia University. He's got a great piece up today at the New York Post on the hatred of the military among campus radicals, which is abetted by the university's administration. Sanchez was told by a campus leftist that he was stupid for joining the miltary -- that he'd be Hispanic meat for the U.S. war-grinding machine:

On the surface, Columbia is all for diversity (good, very good) and completely opposed to intolerance (bad, really bad). On any given day, eager undergrads can speak out for Starbucks employees forced to make coffee with non-ergonomic espresso machines, or call for the school to install non-gender-specific bathrooms.

The administration? Well, I've heard Mary McGee, the dean of students, speak with great consternation about the need to be sure that no student populations were marginalized or excluded. To illustrate the point, she pondered changing all the doorknobs on campus to accommodate those with physical limitations who might literally be "shut out." She said that, to date, no student had complained about the smooth metallic doorknobs, "but they should not have to."

I figured that a dean so concerned about student inclusion would certainly look into a simple case of student harassment. You see, I had a problem: fellow student Monique Dols.

Back on Activities Day, Dols didn't just lecture me on my stupidity in serving our nation; she also yelled that I was a baby killer. For a Marine, being called a killer is almost flattering - but for months Dols and her friends had been disrupting pretty much every event I attended.

Most famously, her crowd rushed the stage at another group's event, preventing the guest (from the border-enforcement advocates, the Minutemen) from delivering his remarks, and nearly causing a riot.

That day, Dols claimed to be protesting for the recognition of the humanity of illegal Hispanic immigrants. Yet somehow her concern doesn't apply to a citizen Hispanics proud to serve this country and eager to go to college.

And the Columbia administration seems to agree. Despite bringing national embarrassment to the university with her actions, she's gone completely unpunished.

The university has chalked it up to free speech. All points of view are welcome at Columbia, from Venezuelan presidents to voices from vaginas.

Unless you're in the military.

I posted earlier about the Columbia pro-illegal-immigration mob that attacked Jim Gilchrist, the Minuteman Founder who lives in my congressional district.

Columbia's anti-military intolerance is not an isolated case. Bay Area writer Cinnamon Stillwell wrote an interesting piece last week on politically correct mob rule on America's college campuses. Stillwell cites the Gilchrist case as just one example of the pervasive atmosphere of leftist hatred for divergent perspectives and reasoned discourse:

It would be nice if we could look to our colleges and universities as the bearers of progress, but at this rate it seems an unlikely prospect. If we are to truly promote an atmosphere of intellectual openness, respectful political debate and the free flow of ideas on campus, then we must stem the tide of thuggery, bullying and intolerance that threatens to subsume future generations.

Otherwise, we cede the day to mob rule.