As the school year draws to an end, many first and second year students consider the futures of their academic lives. Choosing a concentration, arguably the most important academic aspect of one’s undergraduate education, becomes of paramount importance, and while students weigh the costs and benefits of undertaking certain concentrations, it’s important to keep in the mind the faculty with whom they will be dealing. 

At a “liberal” arts college, students should not be surprised that the faculty within the college of the Literature Science and the Arts (LSA) and other non-professional schools, undeniably misrepresents the population as a whole. While the diversity and gender of the University of Michigan’s faculty strongly represent the various races and ethnicities prevalent in today’s society, the political bias of our esteemed faculty should not be taken for granted. Indulging in left-wing, socialistic lectures and forcing students to read only those books that deal with race and gender inequalities, the majority of these professors cram into the minds of unsuspecting students their political ideologies. 

It’s no wonder, therefore, that over seventy faculty members endorsed the actions of the Student’s Coalition for Color (SCC) in their quest to eliminate the constitutional rights upheld by the first amendment. In a March 6 letter to the Michigan Daily, these faculty, ranging in departments from American Cultures to Women’s Studies, endorsed not only the actions taken by the SCC, but also their demand that U-M dissociate with Michigamua.

Moreover, nearly ten times that number of U-M professors, assistant and associate professors signed a statement supporting the use of race based admissions. Of the 692 faculty who signed the Faculty for Affirmative Action statement, the overwhelming majority teach in the crank, leftist, liberal arts departments.

Instead of teaching the classics, and as opposed to lecturing on broad based, non-partisan histories, we have classes that deal with “social constructions,” a nonsensical term about which professors are as equally ignorant as their students. Furthermore, a look into the several departments at U-M reveals courses such as “Sociology 595: Racial and Ethnic Identity” and “African American Studies / Sociology 303: Race and Ethnic Relations.”

All these overlapping departments do are allow more room for the academic left to further perpetuate their political agendas. With the overabundance of Marxist course listings, U-M destroys the basic fabric of higher education—a diversity of ideas. What need is there for two classes whose functions and course descriptions are essentially, for all pragmatic reasons, identical?

Here at U-M, students suffer at the expense of a biased faculty. However, this problem spreads far beyond the region of Ann Arbor, the liberal bastion of a town it is. At the University of Colorado, the number of faculty registered as Democrats vastly outnumbers those registered as Republicans by an astounding thirty-one to one ratio. And this is in a state where the total number of Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts by more than one hundred thousand people. 

Apparently, a severe injustice manifests itself in the teaching agents of today’s youth and tomorrow’s leaders. And at the U-M, the same unfortunate situation applies. Brainwashed by the tenured left, susceptible students fail to recognize the inequalities presented right before them. 

So, before choosing a concentration, students should consider the costs associated with a liberal arts degree. Tuition at the University of Michigan tops all as far as public universities are concerned and even rivals the tuition at the elitist of private institutions. The job market will no doubt recognize your superior skills and abilities as a graduate from U-M, but only at the cost of potentially becoming single minded.

It is a shame that at the greatest university in the country, students should be oppressed as they are. It is a shame that we have faculty who endorse the leftist actions of the SCC and advocates of affirmative action policies, and suppress the voice of the conservative minority. So much for an “open minded” university... maybe next year they’ll support changing the legendary “M” to a hammer and sickle?