October 24, 2007
Claflin U. Students Get a Crash Course in American Politics
When several students at Claflin University were let out of a class this month to attend a state senator’s news conference, they were told the experience would offer them an opportunity to learn about American politics.
Did it ever. Both the students and the administrators of the historically black, private college, in Orangeburg, S.C., have found themselves caught up in a political tempest that has offered plenty of lessons on how roughly the game of presidential politics is played.
Some of the specifics of what happened that day are disputed, but this much is clear: The person who was then serving as the university’s director of public relations, Helene Carter, asked about 20 students to stand behind the state senator, John Matthews, while he gave his spiel. Mr. Matthews, a Democrat who is the co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, spoke about Senator Clinton’s newly announced campaign planks dealing with access to higher education.
After the event, several students told university administrators that they felt uncomfortable being photographed behind Mr. Matthews because they thought it wrongly conveyed the impression they were supporters of Senator Clinton when, in fact, they back Barack Obama.
The incident was cast in a rather devious light on a South Carolina political blog, FITSNews.com. Calling what happened that day “Clinton’s Claflin Crackdown,” the blog quoted several unnamed students as saying they were “coerced” by administrators into standing behind Senator Matthews and felt they had no choice in the matter. The FITSNews item also said that, three weeks before the incident, Claflin administrators had denied students there permission to establish a Students for Barack Obama chapter as an official campus group.
The report was picked up by a long list of other political blogs, with some people involved in the Obama campaign noting that Claflin’s president, Henry N. Tisdale, has donated money to Senator Clinton’s campaign organization.
A local newpaper, the Times and Democrat, looked into the incident and got different accounts from three students who said they were Obama supporters and spoke only on the condition of anonymity. Only one of the three said their professor had required them to be there, although a second said she felt her participation was strongly encouraged. The faculty member they were referring to — Daniel Hembree, an assistant professor of philosophy and religion — declined this week to comment, referring reporters to the university’s public-relations office.
The local Obama supporters spreading word of the allegations of coercion were unable to produce anyone who would discuss them with The Chronicle, on or off the record.
Ms. Carter, who had accepted another position within the university administration prior to the incident and has since left her position as Claflin’s public-relations director, could not be reached for comment. Vivian Glover, the university’s assistant vice president for marketing and communication, says, in hindsight, that asking students to stand behind the state senator during his news conference “was not a good idea.” But, she says, the students “were not coerced.”
“Afterwards,” Ms. Glover says, “they said we did this but we don’t feel happy about it. They expressed their grievances and were listened to.”
As for the university’s decision not to allow the creation of an official campus chapter of Students for Barack Obama, Ms. Glover says only one student came forward asking to form such a group, and he was instructed to instead work through a campus group called the Young Democrats. “He was not told he could not set it up,” Ms. Glover says. “He was told the method by which he could participate.”
Peter Schmidt | Posted on Wednesday October 24, 2007 | PermalinkComments
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Reportedly, Sen. Clinton and VP Gore were the ones who convinced our first black president, Bill Clinton, to go against long-time supporters and alleged “principles” and sign the welfare-reform legislation of 1996, thereby removing a potentially damaging issue from the presidential campaign that year. Many black leaders bitterly opposed this bill. Do the “Claflin Administrators for Hillary’s Earmarks” know about her role? Will “Claflin Students for Obama” — sorry, I mean the Claflin Young Democrats — confront the college administration on this and similar issues?
— S. Britchky Oct 25, 08:17 AM #