Campus Reform: Indiana University - Bloomington

Indiana University - Bloomington (IU) was founded in 1820 in Bloomington, Indiana. Today, it is the flagship school of the Indiana University system and enrolls more than 38,000 students. IU is known for its research, its arts program, and also its Division I sports team, the Hoosiers.

Campus Life

At IU, there are 25 liberal student organizations and seven conservative student organizations.

Last week the Union Board Lectures Committee denied a proposal for a contract covering Tom Woods' $3000 Honorarium to be presented and voted on at last week's Union Board's programming meeting, a group of 16 student programming directors and 4 faculty. However, tonight they were gracious enough to let me have a seven minute open discussion with them in order to help me understand the following statement regarding the feeling of the Lectures Committee toward the Tom Woods event:

They were concerned about the role Union Board would have in the programming aspects of the lecture. Your organization seems to have this planned out very well already and there would little room for Union Board’s help besides the monetary contribution.

In other words, we were too well prepared. The Board members said that the purpose of the Union Board programmers is to help student groups who are unable to plan events have them planned for them. Furthermore, they claimed that YAL had this event "planned to a tee," and that this deemed the Board irrelevant.

Indiana University alum and founder of the American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell, shares his story of fighting leftist double standards in a column for the Patriot Post. 

Tyrrell explains that when members of a protest movement, such as environmentalists, are disorderly in a Senator’s office, liberals remain “tranquil,” as exemplified when protestors disrupted Senator Joe Lieberman’s office in 2009, Representative Frank Riggs’ office in 1997, or any of the many instances when Michael Moore bombards a congressional office with cameras and microphones.

But when conservative activist James O’Keefe disrupted Senator Mary Landrieu’s office, in what one could argue was similar fashion to Michael Moore’s quests to expose the truth, all hell broke loose and he was charged with federal crimes.  This is not to say whether what O’Keefe did was wrong or right -- we still don’t know all the facts -- but this is just one example of the liberal double standard.

Mr. Tyrrell recognized this liberal double standard as a college student and wanted to expose it for what it was.

Hey Everyone,

This is Sam Spaiser, President of Young Americans For Liberty at IU Bloomington. I'd just like to give you all an update from "ground zero." First off, we've raised $1829.86 so far!!! That's nearly half of the $4000 we need to bring Tom Woods to campus. The group has been thrilled with the support that fellow liberty-minded individuals have given us over the past week.

However, we need your support NOW more than ever! We've been in correspondence with Tom Woods, and are working together, but at this time I can't release any more information about that.

This is something that MUST be seen through to the end. A powerful act of liberty on one campus is something that can domino to college campuses all across the country; a polar-opposite of the communism domino effect, so to speak. This MUST end in a great triumph for the cause of liberty. The day that Tom Woods speaks his first words over the PA system in an overfilled auditorium, the IU campus will shake from the quakes of freedom which will bring the establishment crashing to the ground!