Emily Mitchell and Matthew Jezierski. But mostly Emily Mitchell.
The story:
Last fall, a sophomore at Arizona State University named Matthew Jezierski started a club in honor of a group he considers to be oppressed and undervalued: the white male. The Caucasian American Men of ASU grabbed attention thanks to the club’s name, but Jezierski insisted it wasn’t a white pride organization. Jezierski, who is fluent in Polish (he was born in the United States), said he only wanted to promote cultural awareness. He didn’t understand why being of European descent is anything to be ashamed of.
CAMASU copied its mission statement almost verbatim from the African American Men of ASU, with a few obvious changes. Its supporters (at one time, the club had 40 members) told reporters that white males are quickly becoming a minority on college campuses and in America, and that their numbers are declining by outstanding percentages.
Um, not quite. Not in Arizona, and definitely not at Arizona State. In 2006, 283 black ASU students graduated with about 7,000 of their white peers.
Once again, Arizona became the national butt of a joke. Even Conan O’Brien made fun.
“A group of students at Arizona State University have caused a controversy because they’ve been going by the name The Campus Caucasian Club,” O’Brien said in a November broadcast of Late Night. “Administrators have asked the group to go back to its original name, The Golf Team.”
Ah, the undervalued white male, always being told that his European descent is a shameful, shameful thing — which is why Western history dominates in the classroom, Western literature fills anthologies, and our political and legal institutions are chock full of white people.
But that’s not the best part. Turns out that Jezierski is so oppressed that he didn’t even start the club himself — a woman did. A woman who is not an ASU student.
The truth is that a woman started the Caucasian American Men of ASU: a blond-haired, blue-eyed former beauty pageant queen named Emily Mitchell, who never even went to Arizona State University.
Without Mitchell, an energetic 24-year-old hired gun dropped onto the ASU campus from South Carolina, Jezierski’s idea would likely have remained just that. Emily Mitchell looks like just another undergrad, but she’s actually a political organizer working for a Virginia-based nonprofit called the Leadership Institute.
The Leadership Institute was founded in the late ’70s to put young conservatives into prominent positions. Four years ago, LI started a campus leadership program. It’s Mitchell’s job to push students like Jezierski to become active in what she calls the conservative movement. She takes the kids from idea to action. And she relishes the controversy some of her organizations, like CAMASU, create.
Mitchell started 57 clubs on Arizona college campuses during the 2006-2007 school year, including CAMASU; the New Sexual Revolution, an abstinence club; and the Network of Enlightened Women, a conservative women’s group opposed to radical feminism and concepts such as women’s studies or The Vagina Monologues, one she says she’d like to be a part of if she were a student. She also started Choice Magazine, a libertarian publication. And she supported established clubs like ASU’s anti-abortion group Students for Life, founding chapters on other college campuses.
Mitchell gets paid $500 for each group she starts, and her organization pays all of her living expenses. Oh, and the Leadership Institute is a “non-partisan” 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Mitchell is certainly representative of the victimization contingent of campus conservatives — the ones who cry about how persecuted they are and complain about “liberal bias” if they can’t cut it academically. To wit:
It was a political science class that brought her to the Leadership Institute. Mitchell recalls a world politics class with a professor who told her there was no way she could get a passing grade on a paper she was writing defending capitalism over communism.
“She told me there was no suitable argument,” says Mitchell.
The professor, Katherine Kaup, recalls the exchange differently.
“I remember the paper wasn’t strongly researched and I told her to rewrite it. She wasn’t happy,” she says. “I encourage them to take any view as long as they defend their argument. I’m not a socialist, either. I’m a card-carrying Republican.”
When entitled brats like Mitchell don’t get what they want, or when they’re told that they actually have to work for something as opposed to having it handed to them, they blame the liberal boogeyman du jour — socialist professors, liberal academia, immigrants, Arabs, Muslims, Democrats, feminists, whoever. And now they’re heavily funded to whine about how people of color, women and immigrants are oppressing the downtrodden rich white people. Excuse my while I go get a tissue.
(Thanks to the person who sent this to me. Being totally disorganized, I cannot for the life of me remember who it was. If you read this, remind me in the comments so I can give you a proper hat tip!)