University and Media Hosted Debates Continue to Exclude Alternative Candidates Despite Responsibility to Maintain a Free Marketplace of Ideas.
Southwestern Community College Goes One Step Further, Censors Student Journalists.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Universities and media outlets across California are excluding alternative candidates from participating in the debates they sponsor. The September 28 debate held at the University of California at Davis and co-sponsored by The Sacramento Bee included Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, but excluded all the other candidates. Other universities and media outlets have followed suit.
While colleges already suppress dissenting voices in the student population, they are also suppressing them in vital public debates. Once bastions of intellectual freedom, many of our nation’s universities have created a repressive environment, hindering tomorrow’s leaders from absorbing ideas from anyone but the leading Republican and Democratic candidates. And the media has continued the censorship through their coverage of only the top funded candidates.
Phi Beta Iota: The time has come to end the two-party tyranny and make it illegal–it is already unconstitutional–to deny ballot access and public voice to any earnest candidate for public office. The universities, in failing to honor their responsibility for nurturing clarity, diversity, and integrity in the public dialog, should be penalized by loss of funds from any public treasury, inclusive of all research grants….IOHO.
