“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” So said Mark Twain, who could have been discussing the troubling attempt to silence and punish the Oregon Commentator for speech a vocal minority finds offensive.
With respect to this latest sad chapter for intellectual freedom on college campuses, the actions of the administration (the smart people putting us on) and the student government (the other group mentioned by Twain) offer evidence that neither is accountable enough to be entrusted with an annual student government budget worth tens of millions of dollars.
The simple context: One former student senator of unknown gender, Toby Hill-Meyer, claims to have felt threatened by farcical words published in the Commentator and attributed to Robocop. I suppose we can all understand lying awake at night fearing the fictional enforcer, though it remains unclear to dispassionate observers how this Robo-phobia spiraled into an all-out war on the single most provocative political voice on campus.
This latest attack on the Commentator follows a natural pattern. In 1990 an earlier incarnation of the Programs Finance Committee attempted to defund the magazine for its unpopular content. In 2002 the PFC tried to force the Commentator to change its mission statement (accompanied by a bizarre editorial by the Emerald that supported the move), and this year a particularly driven and notably small-minded minority has again taken aim at the Commentator because it doesn’t toe the liberal line. It happens like clockwork, because the never-changing beast of student government is populated by an ever-changing group of individuals who can’t learn from past mistakes.
That PFC members were unable to understand their duties is not surprising. The personnel turnover in student government, driven by a continually changing student body, prevents crucial legal and administrative institutional memory. That’s why they have educational retreats every year, such as the one held in October — the one in which student “leaders” wasted student money and have continued to remain unaccountable to the students.
Despite that, President Frohnmayer’s administration is even worse. According to Hill-Meyer, he was encouraged by members of the administration this year to seek redress over his concerns by way of the PFC, a body charged with allocating student fees in a fashion that doesn’t punish political points of view. That advice is inconsistent with both the unwritten policy of this administration not to overtly interfere in student politics, as well as being inconsistent with the very clearly stated First Amendment. Yet the president — never shy of lauding his own experience arguing before the Supreme Court — has remained supremely silent in an instance when leadership is needed.
It was notable that School of Journalism and Communication Dean Tim Gleason broke his traditional silence to warn of a government body trying to silence the press. But while the proximate funding problem for the Commentator likely will be corrected in the near future, the ongoing problems of a politically biased and often corrupt student government remain.
Even as student government routinely attempts to silence a publication that receives a relatively meager amount of money for printing (none goes to the all-volunteer staff), millions of dollars have been laundered away from campus to OSPIRG. That organization ships boatloads of cash to Portland for volunteer stream-walks and a tidal wave of liberal lobbying interests. It is because the student fee funds this kind of unworthy goal that student leaders fight so hard to protect the institution, which now must be addressed at the state level.
At its core, the question at hand is simple: Should millions of student dollars be entrusted to a small cadre who are too immature to respect the rights of those with whom they disagree philosophically? Should that miniature fortune be entrusted to an administration that counsels violating the law and whose president is unwilling to stand up for what is right?
Millions of extorted student dollars should not be in the hands of smart people willing to play dumb while violations of the First Amendment run rampant, nor should it be in the hands of Twain’s (and Oregon’s) imbeciles. Experience tells us neither group will change, so the student fee process has to.

Bret Jacobson, an alumnus of the University, the Commentator, and the Emerald, lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area