This week, the rightwing noise machine is pushing a story about the persecution of "Testaclease" a character created by the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. In their ongoing effort to tear down academia as we know it, Christina Hoff Sommers, David Horwitz, Accuracy in Academia and their co-conspirators would now have us believe that liberal college administrators who claim to be fighting sexual violence are in reality forcing students to endure gratuitous displays of vaginas and hounding all who protest.  Don't buy it.

For the right's bill of complaint see Christina Hoff Sommers, "Why Can't They 'Just Get Along'?" in the National Journal online May 2, 2005 (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/sommers200505020808.asp)

Here's her lead: "Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate "V-Day" (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students . . . have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day "mascot" -- a friendly looking "penis" named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs . . .    
The P-Day satirists are the first to admit that their initiative is tasteless and crude. But they rightly point out that V-Day is far more extreme. They are shocked that the administration has come down hard on their good-natured spoof, when all along it has been completely accommodating to the in-your-face vulgarity of the vagina activists.
 . . . 'Testaclese' tipped the scales when he approached the university Provost [and] . . . presented him with an honorary award as a campus 'Penis Warrior'."

This latest tale of conservative victimization is far-fetched to say the least. Hoff Sommers, who has piled up over $150k from the right's think-tank funder, the Olin Foundation, and now lives off of the American Enterprise Institute, churns out the predictable anti-pc schtick in this op/ed. A quick search on google showed she's singing in tune with David Horwitz and Accuracy in Academia (righties specializing on the academic front of the culture wars), the WSJ opinion page and City Journal, which features an endorsement form Peggy Noonan on  its masthead.  Thus far, less partisan news outlets, ones not in the rightwing network, have failed to pick up the story of Testaclease's trauma. Lets hope thay don't take the bait on this one and make it a story.

What goes unsaid in Hoff Sommers' piece is the history of the Roger Williams College Republicans.  They are the same ones who drew press attention in Feb 2004 by offering a "whites only" scholarship.  In Oct. 2004 they got their newsletter defunded by the university: "The flap began when the College Republicans published a series of articles and images in their newspaper, The Hawk's Right Eye, that accused "militant homosexuals" of trying to squelch free speech by pushing for hate-crime legislation. Another article, entitled "The Thought Police," asserted that a well-known gay-rights group indoctrinates students into homosexual sex".   (http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20031024_repub24.112a2.html.)  

The sense of victimhood of these folks truly astounds.  Minorities are beating them out of tuition relief, they are being outraged by people outraged at sexual violence, and they are being propagandized into having gay sex. Heaven knows what happens to RWCRs at bars and fraternity parties.

Hoff Sommers is disproportional when she accuses the VDay activists being "far more extreme" than the penis activists. Her list of complaint includes print matter (flyers, questionnaires, chalked and printed signs), a show that at which attendance is voluntary, and one example of something like walking around in an inflatable penis hat, i.e. a 40-foot high vagina display at Arizona State University.  

As for the oppression of the students (two on probation), what would Hoff Sommers have university administrators do when a student dressed as a giant penis congratulates the provost on being a penis warrior? The same would apply for those dressed as inflatable vaginas accosting students and staff, only the VDay students haven't done this despite what Hoff Sommers implies.  

Moreover, Hoff Sommers is disingenuous when she implies that colleges are letting the vagina run free while stifling the penis.  Omitted from her story and others on the subject is the news that nearby Providence College banned the Vagina Monologues (http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20050217_pc17.258d13d.html).

Conservatives might also ask when is a shock good and when is it bad?  I taught for years at a schol in the mountain west where pro-life demonstrators put on an annual display in front of the student union that included wall-sized posters of aborted fetuses. That dislay, part of a college tour, along with the ubiquitous campus harangues by evangelical preachers bug non-evangelicals, but go on with the permission of college administrators.  I doubt Hoff Sommers will write sarcastically about how these displays offend the sensibilities of some students and yet are allowed to be staged because of some infernal liberal commitment to free speech.  

The idea of Testaclease willlfully misunderstands the point of VDay and its campaign against sexual violence awareness (see http://www.vday.org/main.html).  VDay's premise is that women's shame about their own sexuality contributes to the larger problem of violence aainst women.  Breaking down taboos about women's sexuality helps create a culture that discourages sexual violence.  The penis warriors, on the other hand, are not trying to make a point about prostate cancer, male sexual identity, or some other issue dramatized by the organ in question.  Instead, they protest what they perceive as a breach of ettiquette--vaginas are getting too much attention, and in too graphic a style, hence the need for equal time.  Would that the College Republicans took their case to the local adult book store.  Then they might actually convince some folks outside their closed circle.

Testaclease is this week's Ward Churchill for the rightwing noise machine.  The theme being that liberal excess runs amok on college campuses while conservative students who dare voice their opinions are persectued.  Just like the Churchill story, where one loose cannon in an ethnic studies program was used to smear higher ed in its entirety, this story tries to make one case stand in for the entire universe.  Churchill's remarks about the World Trade Center put him in the crosshairs, but in this case there isn't a shred of legitimacy to the complaint.  Bottom line,  be on the lookout for the latest bogus charge that academia celebrates left-wing vulgarity and persecutes conservatives.