Showing posts with label UW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UW. Show all posts

Friday, October 5, 2012

Obama campaign shuts down campus, requires students’ personal info


President Barack Obama paid a campaign-related visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Thursday, drawing complaints from several professors who criticized the mass disruption to classes.

Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at UW, sent a letter to university administrators chiding them for renting central campus to the Obama campaign.

“It hardly seems appropriate to shut the central campus down for an entire day, closing offices and seriously disrupting our mission,” he wrote. “I have several colleagues who had scheduled exams for Thursday. Surely there were other venues that would pose less disturbance.”

Others were more concerned with the registration process for the event. To attend, students followed a link from the university website to the official Obama campaign website, and gave their names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Then they had to click a box that reads, “I’M IN!”

Donald Downs, a political science professor at UW, found this troubling.

“I’m all in favor of Obama coming to campus … but in order to go, you have to go through the campaign website and provide information, and you have to click a box that says ‘I’M IN!’” he said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Am I in for the event or in for Obama? If you really want to go to this important event, at least for a short while you are associating yourself with the campaign.”

Brown said many of his colleagues — including those who plan to vote for the president — agreed with these criticisms.

Via: Free Republic

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