Kevin McCullough remains on the story from the University of Oregon, where school administrators forced an employee to remove a "Support the Troops" sticker from his campus truck, claiming it violated their ban on political speech. That assertion fell apart yesterday and the question of Oregon's motivation remained open. Now, Kevin sees that Oregon has embarked on an ambitious fun-raising drive, and thinks that the university known as the Berkely of the North wants to establish its leftist credentials in order to boost donations:

On Sunday - the University of Oregon went public on its goal of seeking donations in record form - 600 million. The univeristy's own press release calls it "the most ambitious in state history":

"The University of Oregon has a long and proud tradition of competing with the best, but competing is not enough -- we must excel," said Frohnmayer, who made the announcement at news conferences in Eugene and Portland. "Our future is our choice, and we choose distinction. That is the mission of Campaign Oregon. We have a very ambitious goal for the dollars we seek in this campaign and an even more ambitious goal in the legacy we hope to leave: a great university for Oregon for generations to come." ...

"Campaign Vice Chair Tim Boyle of Portland added that the success of the campaign so far shows that "the University of Oregon has a group of visionary supporters who can see that the university is poised for great leaps forward in teaching, research and service and who are willing to contribute their own resources to make that happen."

"Visionary Supporters" were the words that jumped out at me from that quote.

Was it in fact a "visionary supporter" who was say "anti-war/anti-American" who then decided to complain to the administration about the harmless magnetic ribbon that had been attached to the vehicle?

In fact, the press release I linked above lists some of the sponsors already on board. I looked up a couple of them for the 2004 cycle:

Keith Thomson: $3,000 in contributions to Oregon Democrats

Julie and Rocky Dixon: $2500 to Democrats. Also, John Dixon, who works at the same company as Rocky Dixon, contributed $5500 to Democrats.

The other names are either foundations or too vague to check. It certainly appears that they intend to market their campaign to a narrow political market -- which makes their decision to ban the stickers more understandable, and more of an indictment of Oregon and its supporters.

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» PC Run Amok In Oregon from Secure Liberty
The Deomcratic Party wonders why it has been losing elections? Liberal overreaction to damn near everything is part of it. By way of example, we have the University of Oregon telling employees that they can't display yellow ribbon stickers that say "... [Read More]

Tracked on January 25, 2005 2:54 PM

» Oregon U's Sticker Fiasco a PR Ploy? from Myopic Zeal
I'm skeptical. But Captain Ed posted this morning that Kevin McCullough is asserting: Now, Kevin sees that Oregon has embarked on an ambitious fun-raising drive, and thinks that the university known as the Berkely of the North wants to establish it... [Read More]

Tracked on January 25, 2005 3:14 PM