Liberty U blocks website: it reveals how much federal money the school gets

No, a "boycott" is where one party or parties refuses to do business with another. Randall1234's example in Post #35 above (a hospital chain pulling ads from a newspaper chain) is a boycott.

However, that does not apply in this situation. Liberty tried to prevent members of the Liberty community from reading the news -- in fact, the local newspaper became aware of the situation when LU students and staff called in to complain that they couldn't access the paper online. What Liberty did is called "censorship".

Many people, including Liberty alumnus StefanM in Post #2 above, would regard it as an "unconscionable and inexcusable" idea -- one that the Liberty community should be "ashamed of ".

Of course they don't know for sure -- the decision was made by Liberty, so the only way to get a definitive explanation would be from Liberty itself, and Liberty has explicitly announced that they won't provide one. So the rest of us have no choice but to draw our own conclusions. Do you have a better explanation to offer?

I apologize. As you may have guessed, I feel strongly that an insitution that accepts public money must be held publicly accountable. There is no right or expectation of privacy in this situation. If an institution wants to keep its books totally private, then they don't have to accept public money -- and this is exactly what schools like Hillsdale or Grove City do. Liberty, which (as we now know) collects hundreds of millions of dollars of government aid annually, has forfeited that right.

 

Interestingly, the banned news story included extensive quotes from Liberty University's Executive Director of Financial Aid, who seems to understand this quite well:

He gets it. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that everybody else in the Liberty community gets it.

 

Your point would be valid, if we think of Liberty as a "business".

But isn't it supposed to be a "university" ? And aren't universities are supposed to promote --rather than suppress -- the free exchange and discussion of truthful information ?

 

Public higher education in the U.S. is heavily subsidized by billions of dollars of taxpayer funds, which is why the tution rates for community colleges and many public universities are comparably low. The tax system (both local and federal) provides funding for both public and private institutions of higher education. In the case of public institutions, the majority of operating funds come from taxes. Even if we doubled the tax rates (and crippled our economy), with over 6,000 postsecondary institutions, the government would still not have the funds to be offering complete tution subsidies, as could other countries with far fewer colleges and universities.

 

In theory, this may be true, but in practice, universities (even "non-profit"ones) are also businesses with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Many academic departments (and sometimes entire institutions) will often have strong idealogies and little tolerance for those who disagree with these ideologies. Throughout my over two decades working in higher education, I have seen ideological pressure and outright censorship within certain departments and at colleges and universities. I have also seen openness and tolerance and welcome discussion and debate at others.

 

I would love to see University staff show up on my door step asking to "investigate" my place.. LOL, not likely..

 

if they show up it will be with police and a search warrant and yes, you will let them in
the purpose of those rules is to make sure students don't act like aholes just because they're attending class online
they expect students online to show the same respect and courtesy that students in the B&M class would
this is obviously not some BS about dancing and not observing the sabbath, its about threatening fellow classmates online

 

Liberty THE BEST SCHOOL IN THE WORLD WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT GO LU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yay! ^.^

 

sure, no university anywhere ever has suppressed the free exchange and discussion of truthful information. /sarcasm

Universities promoting open discussion is a lot of crap.
Back when Bush Jr was president I attended a conference at Columbia University. They were discussing different world viewpoints: christian, muslim, atheistic/humanistic and a some offshoot of tibetan buddhism.

The guy representing tibetan buddhism was a columbia university professor and he spent most of the evening bashing bush. The crowd of students LOVED it. They couldn't cheer loud enough or often enough.
Columbia University does not promote the free exchange of or discussion of ideas. They are very much anti republican, anti military and anti christian.

And they are not alone. NYU is not much better.

As I said earlier, military recruiters are not allowed on campus at columbia.
If you represent a wall street firm that was in bed with Bernie Madoff, then hey, no problem, come on down and recruit some future investment bankers, but if you represent the navy, then no, you're not allowed because you discriminate against gays.

Liberty is no different from any other university.

 

I'm not sure I would go that far, but I have really enjoyed my time at Liberty. This is the most friendly and helpful university staff I have ever encountered and I have attended many schools with which to compare them. At Liberty I have experienced well designed classes and professors who seem like they would be willing to do anything possible to help you succeed. Moreover, they are cheaper than most other great schools.

This is the reason they are growing by leaps and bounds. This is why they are receiving so much fed money. They have no reason to hide their receipt of student loan funds.

 

(The bold above is mine) It absolutely applies to this situation and a boycott is a perfect term to describe it. It is possible that they were not happy with the newspaper publishing an article that was perceived as an attack and chose, mistakenly, to block it. Please remember too, they only blocked the website for one day. Blocking the site for one day does not make for very effective censorship.

That is, if the blocked site and the article are even related. While it may seem likely, there is no concrete evidence linking the two incidents. It is possible that they are unrelated. The article the OP provided exposed its author's extreme bias when it compared Liberty to communist China for blocking a website for one day even though it was all supposition on the part of the author. That sounds more like a witch hunt than an unbiased article.

I would be ashamed too, if I were convinced that there was no other explanation for their actions. But the evidence supports a boycott better than it does censorship. You yourself reminded us that student loan information is easily available to anyone who cares to look; attempting to engage in censorship does not make sense. This is especially true when you consider the reactions of students such as myself and others I know. Everyone I know who has seen the information about the money from the fed has expressed nothing but support for Liberty. I have heard the expression, "So what?" It is only logical that they would receive a large portion of their funds from fed money considering the size of the school and students understand and even appreciate that fact. If you look at the evidence carefully, you will find that there is little motive for a cover-up.

Yes, I do. The idea of a boycott fits the evidence better than the idea of censorship. I also offer again the possibility that the incidents are unrelated.

Thank you sir. You are a scholar and a gentleman!

 

I really don't like to discuss politics but I have to relate to your experience, to some extent, James. My daughter graduated from Princeton in 2008 where the comedian, Stephen Colbert was a speaker. He bashed Bush throughout the entire thing and the crowd seemed to love it. While I'm kind of a middle of the road politically, I was just amazed how it seemed to "acceptable" and appropriate to bash the president at that time. Were there no Republicans at that graduation who were offended? I just wonder why it is okay to offend some groups in our society, but not others.

Don't get me wrong, I love Princeton and believe it or not, it is more conservative than some other colleges of the same caliber.