The Campus Conservative

"Euless Trinity's Mack Beggs, top, wrestles Lewisville's Elyse Nelson during the 6A Region II wrestling meet at Allen High School in Allen, Texas, Beggs, a senior from Euless Trinity High School near Dallas is transgender and in the process of transitioning from female to male. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News via AP)" - The Washington Times It doesn't take long in one's research about Feminism to discover the gender neutrality movement. Its adherents hold that it is arbitrary and oppressive to gender someone or to make gender an issue in decision-making. These believe that gender is a social construct and carries with it gender-specific roles that oppress the individual, particularly women. In response to this, they push for gender neutrality in government policies, families and businesses for example, and the movement's proponents claim when gender neutrality advances, then women win. Yet, in many ways, the gender neutrality movement is a tre...

Last week, I submitted interview questions to each of the three candidates for student body president at UT-Tyler. I asked them some basic questions about why they are running and then their positions on some general issues in higher education I thought others might find interesting, such as their their position on Campus Carry legislation, banning controversial speakers from campus and abortion. My effort was to give the reader a feel for each candidate's values and priorities. I posted my interview with Blake Hendricks last week  here . This week, I am thankful to receive Joshua Menhennett's responses. Here is my interview with student body president candidate Josh Menhennett.  His responses have been edited for readability and flow. INTERVIEW WITH STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT CANDIDATE JOSHUA MENHENNETT 1. Why are you running for student body president? I believe there are improvements that can be made to significant aspects of the student experience at t...

Blake Hendricks, Candidate for Student Body President at UT-Tyler (Source: Twitter) There are three candidates running in this Spring's student body president election: Blake Hendricks, Jacob McLeod and Joshua Menhennett. To get to know these candidates and their campaigns better, I submitted 11 questions to each individual on Wednesday, February 6 with the request that they respond by noon on Friday, February 8. I asked them some basic questions about why they are running and then their positions on some general issues in higher education I thought others might find interesting, such as their their position on Campus Carry legislation, banning controversial speakers from campus and abortion. My effort was to give the reader a feel for each candidate's values and priorities. At the time of this publication, only Blake Hendricks responded, although each candidate said they are happy to participate in the interview. Treasurer Jacob McLeod is in Austin Friday and Sa...

(Source: The Christian Science Monitor) When I started writing about campus politics, I thought my blog would be a good opportunity for me to share my beliefs and to improve my writing. Yet since my first publication, I have encountered abuse on social media on nearly a daily basis. People who do not like what I have to say will swear at me, mock me, degrade me, accuse me of ill motives, and more. However, no matter what other people choose to do, I, like anyone else, still have a decision to make. How am I going to let this affect me? Am I going to let it hurt my feelings and feel powerless before other people’s hurtful actions or am I going to choose do something else? This kind of stuff used to really bother me, but then I learned how to live free from other people's toxic influence. That is, I learned how to take back my own power that I gave to others. Now that I know how to do this, I don't feel the emotional fallout—the feelings of powerless and intimidation—...

(Source: Period. Inc. Facebook) Many people at UT-Tyler have hailed the recent push to supply feminine hygiene products in bathrooms throughout the university. They herald it as generous, bold and compassionate. Many people cannot see what could possibly be wrong with giving away an endless amount of free tampons to students. But here’s the thing: Just because what you are doing  feels good, does not mean what you are doing is good  in the long run. In the long run, all your service and all your giving, while it feels great to service and to give, might actually be doing the poor harm. As Michael Fairbanks of Harvard University put it, "Having a heart for the poor isn't hard, we all have that. But having a mind for the poor , that's the challenge.” (emphasis mine) If we care about the poor, then we have a responsibility to make sure our serving and our giving do not go beyond helping individuals overcome into making their situation harder . That is, each of u...

(Source: Flickr) In the so-called menstrual movement--which, in part, lobbies government and higher education to provide tampons to women at no cost--there is a lot of talk of how free tampons provide women dignity. On PERIOD, Inc.'s website , an organization that encourages universities to provide free tampons in bathrooms, a red button in the center of the page reads, "Click here to give dignity this holiday season." PERIOD's co-founder Nadya Okamoto spoke of her organization's mission for free tampons this way: “We help people with periods feel cared for and dignified simply by addressing this most basic need.” While in the menstrual movement there is a lot of talk about how free tampons give people dignity, in reality, distribution of free stuff like tampons can actually do more to harm a person's dignity than to help it. Here’s why. This is because human dignity does not come from a handout , but from having a sustainable way of living that l...

(Source: Flickr) Period, Inc. is a national non-profit motivated by the belief that menstrual hygiene is a basic right and has successfully lobbied numerous university administrations throughout the country through its local campus chapters to pay for and supply menstrual products in university bathrooms. UT-Tyler even has a chapter. However, despite all of its fanfare, its claim to menstrual hygiene provides the philosophical framework for legalized theft. Here is why. Menstrual hygiene is not a basic right because it takes other people’s products and services to realize menstrual hygiene. If you think about it, if the output of menstrual hygiene is your basic right, then by extension you have the right to acquire the inputs to realize this right. And you can’t have menstrual hygiene without medical products and services, without tampons and doctor’s examinations. Therefore, what you are really doing in claiming menstrual hygiene as your basic right is making a claim on ot...