You have to be radical...

The Conservative club at Bucknell University recently brought in Christina Hoff Sommers as a speaker. Sommers is the author of several books, including "The War Against Boys" and "Who Stole Feminism?".

The story here is about how the Conservatives asked the Women's Resource Center if they would co-sponsor the event. Well, here's what happened:

Yet when a conservative student asked WRC director Molly Dragiewicz whether the center would cosponsor Sommers's talk, she pled poverty, claiming that the center did not have enough funds in its budget. The BUCC in turn offered to list the WRC as a sponsor anyway — after all, the important thing is contributing to intelligent debate, not contributing money, right?

At this point the WRC revealed its true colors. Dragiewicz denounced Sommers as "opposed to gender equity" and lacking in "intellectual integrity," and dismissed a particular passage of her writing as "sensational." (Note that one of many previous WRC speakers is the always-calm Fox News Channel talking head Susan Estrich.)

In other words, Sommers is a conservative, so the WRC had no interest in the event. Dragiewicz further expressed shock that the BUCC thought a speech on how best to promote gender equity conformed to the WRC's mission statement — which is, in part, to "advocate for [gender] equity."

The WRC hosts a number of bizarre events every year. Past events include a speech entitled "Suicide by Proxy" and a symposium on "contemporary African-American detective literature." It has given up even the pretense of conforming to its mission statement. Instead, it uses student tuition dollars to actively promote any event that conforms to its director's radical liberal political views. Earlier this year, for example, the WRC sponsored a screening of Outfoxed, a film partially funded by Moveon.org. The film — like many of the WRC's events — had absolutely nothing to do with women's issues; instead, it preached about the evils of Fox News. Dragewicz still hasn't explained how Outfoxed promotes gender equity better than Sommers' speech on that very topic.