If accreditation determines whether students can use their student loans to attend Liberty, then that’s just a different avenue for federal funding.
Good for you. But why do you think the same thing should not happen to Liberty?
maybe just a nitpick, but in addition to the regional accrediting bodies you allude to, there are other accrediting bodies whose students also receive federal money. These tend to be career-orented schools that mostly give associate’s degrees, but many of them are also religious in nature. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if others had similar policies.
It’s an asinine decison from asinine people, and I gotta think that the ACLU will be happy to take the case on. But IMO a precedent-setting injunction should be enough. I don’t know if we really want to start opening the accreditation can of worms every time some administrator somewhere decides to forbid the Campus Skinheads Club (or the “Homosexuality is a sin” club, or the “Christianity is a myth” club, etc).
As a matter of politics, I think Algher has a point. Higher ed is a bastion of progressism, and it’s not hard to find examples of school administrations going a bit too far: see this, this and this. Loss of accreditation would be a HUGE blow to LU, and you can bet your ass fundamentalists everywhere would be looking to take down state schools every time some associate dean so much as farts on a conservative student group. This is not a war any of us need.
Accreditation is a peer-reviewed process. The entire university is reviewed by a panel of persons from other universities. In addition, if SACS is like the bodies that I’m familiar with, they have individual colleges and departments reviewed by people within their respective fields, also from other universities. So it’s largely up to other universities to decide whether Liberty remains accredited.
Now, speaking purely from anecdotes, I believe that accreditation is largely a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” process. My father was once involved in reviewing the history department at other university. He wrote up a report with an honest evaluation of what he saw and heard from the faculty, but when he turned it in, the higher-ups basically told him to remove anything negative.
The one instance I’ve heard of where the accreditation board demanded something meaningful was when I was an undergrad at Harvey Mudd College in California. When I arrived, the board had just finished a year-long study and concluded that women and minorities felt uncomfortable on our campus. Consequently, they handed down a ruling saying that we’d better start admitting more women and minorities, hiring more women and minorities, and changing our curriculum to focus more on women and minorities, or else.
If you read the document algher linked to, you’ll see that accreditation does not depend on course material. It focuses on universities mechanics: have a board of directors with a least 5 people, having a library, offering tutoring services, etc…
For what it’s worth, while I wouldn’t recommend Liberty to anyone, I am close friends with a family who sent their daughter there, and her reports from the place are fully positive.
True, but College Democrats is a far cry from any of those. It’s about as mainstream a group as you can get.
Every single one of those schools (two banning College Republicans and one banning the peaceful protest of Ward Churchill for those who didn’t click) was completely in the wrong and should have gotten in trouble for it just as Liberty U is in the wrong on this. An accredited university should not be allowed to discriminate against any nationally chartered and recognized organizations that do not advocate violence.
True, but
- Where exactly does “mainstream” stop and “extremist” start?
- Why are only mainstream views worth protecting?
So if I charter an organization that argues, say, racial supremacy, and get it “nationally recognized” (whatever that means), so long as we don’t advocate violence, we’re ok? Or do we have to be “mainstream?”
And two of the cases spurred lawsuits. I hope Liberty’s will as well.
But losing, or even the threat of losing, accrediation and/or federal loan eligibility, is a HUGE thing. The latter is probably the biggest possible threat to make to many college. If my college lost federal loan eligibility on Monday, every single employee would be unemployed on Tuesday, I guarantee you.
You’re inviting a situation where college administrators have to decide which views can be aired and which cannot, with the biggest possible disaster looming if they make the wrong choice.
And certainly accreditation hurts more than just the school itself. Consider the thousands of students who are 2, 3 or 4 years into a degree at Liberty: pulling accreditation now means they get a lesser degree, or have to transfer somewhere else to finish, probably losing a semester or two of progress in the process. They’re out thousands of dollars and a year or more of their life because the Dean of Students or whoever banned the wrong activity group. This is the best solution?
You’re shooting a rat with a howitzer.
Isn’t Liberty where those Bushivik lawbots graduated?
Frankly, the best solution is for Liberty to allow a student chapter of the Democratic Party. What would you suggest as a solution for a left-leaning private university that banned a student chapter of the Republican Party?
So, you’ve seen a New York rat, then?
But shouldn’t they be drawing a distinction between funding the students and funding the university?
Well, okay. But as much as I might agree with this in principle, I wonder where the real problems are here. Did the Liberty incident make news because it was man bites dog, so to speak?
Let’s face it, Liberty is small fry here compared to DePaul and Brown. And while I will happily condemn Liberty for this boneheaded move, it doesn’t hold a candle to what goes on on other campuses. The College Republicans at San Francisco State University have been involved in litigation against the administration for about three years now.
So, yeah, I’d be glad to see these rules tightened up - but by an overwhelming margin it won’t be conservative schools that get stung.
Why?
I think you’re thinking of Regent University, founded by a different fundamentalist preacher (Pat Robertson, not Jerry Falwell). Liberty University, AFAICT, doesn’t have a law school.
Why?
Why with all the “remove accreditation” stuff?
Remove their 501©(3) status.
The IRS has been clear about this forever. Liberty seems to be in violation. If they allow the Republican Club but deny the Democrat Club sure looks like a political endorsement. Hell, the Democrat Club had in its charter that they opposed abortion and same-sex marriage which is in line with Liberty dogma and the main reasons Liberty opposes the Democratic party (and while they were happy to see their Democrat Club eschew those planks they still saw them as supporting a political party they disagree with hence revoking their support).
I guarantee you the University will care a great deal if they lose their tax exempt status. If they want to live with that then fine, their call.
How ya figger? I was at Brown for several years, and the College Republican group there was extremely active at that time (although they’ve faded in and out of active existence over the years due to low membership). I never heard even a whisper of any attempt or intention to revoke their status as a Brown student organization.
IMO, going so far as to refuse official student group status to a campus chapter of a national student organization because of overt political partisanship on the part of the administration doesn’t rank as “small fry” in any size pond.
By the way, I think you might be a little out of date concerning the College Republicans’ lawsuit against SFSU’s speech codes, which AFAICT was settled in 2008. Note, btw, that SFSU never attempted to ban the College Republicans: they just disciplined some CR members under provisions of the speech code that were later agreed to be unconstitutional.
Probably need to substitute FIRE for ACLU, but the answer is the same.
Well, I talked about some of it awhile back. It started when the school started investigating the club for violations of the speech code after they burned flags of Hezbollah and Hamas at a rally. The school decided not to punish the club, but didn’t clear them either.
The club then sued the school with the assistance of conservative foundations, alleging that the speech codes were unconstitutional. After a preliminary injunction was issued to stop enforcement of the codes, the university settled - modifying the code heavily and paying the club’s legal bills.
The latest dustup seems to stem from this - the school has blocked reservations of outdoor spaces for rallies until policies are revised. The CRs are saying this is an additional First Amendment violation, and are threatening to sue.
Do they have it? If they do, this would be a much more appropriate threat.
Liberty does have a law school, but I don’t think it’s fully accredited yet, as it’s only a few years old.
But I have wondered about what sort of reputation those law schools have in the legal profession. How seriously would someone from Regent or Liberty be taken if they tried applying at a major law firm?
You make it seem like the school administration came to this happy agreement all on their own. Had they not been sued in federal court, do you think they would have changed their policy?