By Emily Rand
Staff Writer

It started with a misdirected email sent from Doug Hubley, who works in the Bates Media Relations Office, to Bates Republican Vice-President Oli Wolf. Hubley intended to forward the email to Bryan McNulty, the Office’s Director, but accidentally replied to Wolf.

“Oli Wolf has drafted a press release for a GOP training institute his bunch of thugs is hosting at Bates next week,” the Feb. 23 email read. “This really seems pretty far afield for an event that we would publicize, but that may just be my socialist tendencies talking. What do you think?”

“At worst,” Wolf wrote after the incident, “[the email] proves our worst assumptions that the College and its staff are actively working against the interests of College Republicans because of their political agenda.” The story was quickly picked up by the Associated Press and sparked national debate over institutional political bias.

In the wake of this controversy, the Brooks-Quimby Debate Council held a public debate in the Muskie Archives on Thursday entitled, “Do Liberal Arts Colleges Marginalize the Right?” Ryan Shepard ’04, Fabio Periera ’07, and Christopher Laconi ’05 represented side government, which argued that liberal arts colleges marginalize the right and there is an “unequal treatment of conservatives” on college campuses across the country. Dylan Morris ’07, Ryan Creighton ’07 and Casey Pfitzner ’07 represented the all-novice opposition bench, whose argument centered on the idea that most liberal arts professors are apolitical and that college gives you a chance to explore your political beliefs.
“Individual bias decreases the value of a Bates education,” argued Shepard in side government’s opening speech. “We should develop a system of affirmative action to hire professors who represent conservatism as well as the left.”

“Professors cannot teach neutrally so we need professors that represent all political views,” continued Fabio Periera in his remarks on behalf of side government. “It is the job of the college to expose you to all political views, not just one.” Periera also argued that marginalizing the right creates a political environment where discourse cannot exist and the discourse that does exist is highly divided.

In his opening remarks for side opposition, Dylan Morris argued that “professors at Bates hide their political ideas very well and a liberal professor can easily teach both his or her views and the views held by others.” Morris also rejected side government’s affirmative action program.

“If we use an affirmative action program to bring more conservative professors to Bates, the quality of the professor will decrease. We need to hire the most qualified teachers and not those with the most diverse political beliefs.”

In his speech, Ryan Creighton questioned where side government planned to draw the line with their affirmative action program.

“Will we start admitting students based on their political views?” Creighton asked the audience. Moreover, Creighton argued, an affirmative action program cannot apply to politics in the same way it can apply to race because race is stable while the nature of political views is ephemeral. Side opposition claimed colleges do not marginalize the right because institutional biases at Bates and other liberal arts colleges are cyclical. That is, Bates vacillated between being a highly liberal and highly conservative institution through the twentieth century, and though the College is more liberal right now, its political biases will ultimately swing back to the right.

Christopher Laconi, for side government, and Casey Pfitzner, for side opposition were persuasive in their closing remarks.

“Partisan politics will interfere with education,” stated Pfitzner, while Laconi purported that “the right is treated as an ‘other’ at Bates and other liberal arts colleges.”

Perhaps an indicator of the amount of controversy surrounding the issue of political biases, the debate, whose outcome was settled by a floor vote, resulted in a tie.





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