DCU reacts to criticism

The Duke Conservative Union has admittedly been fairly quiet about campus issues this year.  That's why we're surprised to be taking so much heat.

Kevin Ogorzalek yesterday used a few passages of rhetoric that DCU members voiced in years past to conclude that we "seek controversy rather than debate." Nothing could be further from the truth, as our participation in the Center for Race Relations' Sept. 16 dinner and dialogue with the Alliance of Queer Undergraduates at Duke grandly illustrates.

Ogorzalek also discovers an instant hypocrisy in that DCU "brought David Horowitz to campus using University funds, then attacked the use of funds to bring Laura Whitehorn. "Both speakers," says Ogorzalek, "inflamed each side of the political spectrum."

But as DCU explained in all of our releases last year, Whitehorn's political ideology had nothing to do with our objections to her. We protested her selection because we found it perverse to invite, during the War on Terror, a convicted terrorist to speak on campus.  

Whitehorn's selection actually "inflamed" members of both sides of the political spectrum, including current Duke Democrats Vice President Anthony Resnick, who in a Jan .27, 2003 letter to The Chronicle wrote that "protesting the University paying a woman who actually did commit such an act of terrorism...but rather an exercise in common sense."

Speaking of Resnick, he last week used a copy of New Sense and a letter to the Chronicle from Justin DeSimone headlined "Conservative Views Oppressed at Duke" to conclude that conservatives are hypocrites.  He used the word "oppression" repeatedly, usually putting it in quotations.  What's important to note, however, is that DeSimone not only has graduated from Duke, but was never a member of DCU.  He wasn't even on our e-mail list.  While we appreciate his support, we do not as an organization believe conservatives to be "oppressed," and aim not to whine, but to reform.

Consider the facts: DCU's most controversial action thus far has been notifying the library that students were offended by a website with a map of Israel labeled "Palestine" and links to nothing but biased and offensive sites.

So who's really guilty of refusing dialogue and creating controversy for the sake of attention?
Matt Bettis Pratt '04, and 18 others