UMass Chaplain Giving College Credit to Volunteer For Obama?

Is anyone surprised that there was an effort by a University of Massachusetts Amherst chaplain to offer college credits to students willing to help out Barack Obama? I’m not.

University of Massachusetts officials on Monday quashed efforts by an Amherst campus chaplain to offer two college credits to any student willing to campaign in New Hampshire this fall for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Chaplain Kent Higgins told students in a Sept. 18 e-mail, “If you’re scared about the prospects for this election, you’re not alone. The most important way to make a difference in the outcome is to activate yourself. It would be just fine with (Republican candidate John) McCain if Obama supporters just think about helping, then sleep in and stay home between now and Election Day.”

Higgins added that an unnamed “sponsor” in the university’s history department would offer a two-credit independent study for students willing to canvass — identify supporters — or volunteer on behalf of the Democratic nominee.

University officials disavowed the effort after inquiries Monday by The Associated Press. They said it could run afoul of state ethics laws banning on-the-job political activity, as well as university policy.

“We do not engage in or sponsor partisan political activity,” said Audrey Alstadt, chairwoman of the history department. “We certainly do not give academic credit for participation in partisan politics.”

UMass-Amherst spokesman Ed Blaguszewski said Higgins had previously arranged history department credit for students working on disaster relief efforts or other humanitarian ventures, and had raised the idea of similarly rewarding students who got involved in the political process during the 2008 election.

Blaguszewski said university officials had envisioned that the efforts would involve nonpartisan work such as get-out-the vote campaigns, but changed their minds about the proposal when they saw a portion of Higgins’ e-mail.

Of course, after the fact, Higgins said he didn’t intend for it to be just volunteers for Obama.

Higgins said he never intended for the program to be limited to supporters of Obama. Regardless of the opinions expressed in his e-mail, he said he would also have been open to those students who wanted to canvass for McCain.

“The idea was there just to see if we could help with folks who want to be active with any of the campaigns in New Hampshire,” he said during an interview with the AP. “We have to be bipartisan, multilateral.”

That’s some serious backpedaling isn’t it? The text of his email is pretty clear; what he means to say now is that he regrets he got caught. Higgins won’t release the name of the unnamed history department sponsor, which, if this was meant to be a bipartisan/multilateral effort, there should be no shame in revealing the sponsor.

The Massachusetts Republican Party is disappointed “but frankly not surprised, that the liberal academic elite have once again decided to promote one candidate over another. Our tax dollars pay their salaries so they can teach our children how to make up their own minds, not to advance a partisan political agenda,” said GOP spokesman Barney Keller.

Chaplain Higgins should reveal the name of the sponsor, or lose his job. I certainly don’t believe for one second that his intentions included volunteers for McCain, and that kind of blatant disregard for school policy and not-so-subtle interjecting of politics into the academic arena should not go unpunished. It should be important for the University to know who was going to sponsor this charade, but it could have been almost anyone in the history department–this is UMass, after all.

Plain and simple: reveal the sponsor, or lose his job. Students have a right to be educated, not indoctrinated–especially when taxpayer dollars help pay for their education.

Aaron Margolis is a life long resident of the Bay State, and works at an architectural firm north of Boston. Aaron has a Master of Architecture Degree from Boston Architectural College and is currently in the process of becoming of a Registered Architect.