This college just ignited a firestorm after landing Mike Pence as its commencement speaker

In this April 17, 2017, file photo, Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington. The Indiana Supreme Court is denying a request from Democratic attorney William Groth, who wanted his public records case against Pence to be given a fresh look. The court's ruling effectively ends a two-year effort by Groth for documents and emails from Pence's tenure as governor. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Vice President Mike Pence is the only prominent politician in America with a positive favorability rating, according to a recent poll. That hasn’t stopped a firestorm from starting after he was chosen as the graduation speaker at my alma mater.

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Since Grove City College, a four-year liberal arts school in Western Pennsylvania with about 2,500 students and a reputation for conservatism, proudly announced that it had landed the sitting vice president to speak at its commencement exercises on May 20, opposition has coalesced in a Facebook group (“GCC Advocates for Inclusion and Acceptance” or GAIA) with over 850 members, and controversy has exploded in a flurry of op-eds, articles, and letters to the editor in the The Collegian student newspaper and even in the Pittsburgh papers.

Full Disclosure: During my time at GCC, I served as managing editor of The Collegian, and am very proud of how my successors have been handling the Pence controversy. I am also a member of GAIA, but only because a friend added me without asking.

Stories of leftist agitators blocking conservative speakers at campuses like UC Berkeley have dominated the news recently. It’s fascinating to watch a similar struggle play out when conservative students are a clear majority.

And they certainly are a majority. I’ll be the first to admit that Grove City can be a bit of an echo chamber.

The school made national headlines and cemented its reputation as a bastion of conservatism in the early ’80s when it sued the federal government to escape Title IX regulation, and our last three commencement speakers have been Republican politicians. During my freshman year, the College Republicans reserved a large lecture hall to watch the Obama/Romney debates, while the College Democrats watched in their president’s dorm with room to spare.

RELATED: If the Berkeley College Republicans want to host Ann Coulter, they should do it themselves

This is obviously not a case of a conservative minority being violently suppressed by a liberal majority, but nevertheless there are those at the College who see GAIA as a budding agent of leftist censorship and intolerance.

Josh Delk, a staff writer for The Collegian, recently penned an op-ed in which he accused “campus leftists” of being “firmly committed” to “trampling any opinions to the contrary,” pointing to the speech codes GAIA enforces on its Facebook page and to the actions of unidentified students who recently tore down posters for an upcoming class on “The Biblical and Natural Family,” which was decried by many GAIA members as homophobic.

Noah Allen, a current student and member of GAIA, shot back, arguing that “the GCC community does an unsatisfactory job of supporting those who are not straight, white, evangelical Christians” and that GAIA provides a space for marginalized students to vent their frustrations.

For those students, the administration’s decision to invite Pence to speak at graduation proves definitively that the College has chosen Republican prestige over Christian virtue and the well-being of its own students.

I have friends on both sides of the debate, and can see the validity of both arguments.

Ultimately, though, I wish GAIA the best, and so should my fellow Grovers.

Those students who openly mock or criticize GAIA’s resistance should be aware that, at almost every other college and university in the nation, the tables are entirely turned.

RELATED: Censorship on college campuses is wrong, even if it’s conservatives doing the censoring

From a purely practical perspective, the College’s decision makes sense. Refusing such a prestigious speaker would be madness for a tiny college in Pennsyltucky, especially one struggling with a decline in applicants. Doubling down on the “Fox News University” brand might be its best bet for keeping the doors open.

But the College will be also be defined by how it handles dissent from its conservative Christian project.

While Pence’s appearance at graduation may draw in the children of parents who want to avoid liberal university brainwashing, it also has the potential to alienate liberal and moderate donors and prospective students.

I hope that GAIA won’t resort to vandalism and that students who accuse GAIA of intolerance will realize that the group has requested, not demanded, that the College replace Pence and that it’s natural for any besieged minority to seek out a like-minded community, just like conservatives at Berkeley and Middlebury do with their College Republican clubs.

And I hope that, on graduation day, GAIA members sit bravely and quietly in their seats with rainbow flags painted on their mortarboards and that students excited about Pence respect their right to do so.

Anything less would be unworthy of “Freedom’s College,” or any college for that matter.

What do you think?

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