Santorum's Penn State Professors: He just wasn't a very serious student

[JPZenger]

http://www.philly.com/philly/insights/142218425.html

Excerpts:

Santorum brandished Happy Valley as "one of the liberal icons. Unfortunately it's gotten a lot worse," he said recently, a description of Penn State that's rarely made. "I can tell you professor after professor who docked my grades because of the viewpoints I expressed and the papers that I wrote. There's no question that happened," Santorum said. He added: "I used to go to war with some of my professors, who thought I was out of the pale, these are just not proper ideas," noting, "There is clearly a bias at the university."

"I never received a complaint from any students that a professor had downgraded them because they were conservative and the professor was too liberal, or a student was too liberal with a conservative professor," Robert Friedman told me. He served as chair of the political science department in the late 1970s when Santorum was a student. "Any problem he had with his grades had nothing to do with the fact that he was politically conservative."

Penn State wasn't liberal. "I find it amazing that anyone would see this as some kind of a leftist bastion, the Berkeley of Pennsylvania," said Robert O'Connor, who taught or supervised Santorum in four courses. Santorum campaigned for John Heinz, the late senator whom Friedman deems "a centrist of the old kind that was very common back then in Pennsylvania." Heinz was the sort of candidate who couldn't win a Republican primary in this state today, as Arlen Specter can attest, and whom the adult Santorum would never support.

"Any problem Santorum had with his grades had nothing to do with the fact that he was politically conservative," Friedman said. "He wasn't a very serious student." "He was an OK student," noted O'Connor, "not great." Eisenstein taught Santorum in Intro to American Politics. When Santorum attended Penn State, Eisenstein recalled, the campus was "evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. The student body struck me as sort of apolitical." "

[niyad]

1. penn state? the home of paterno and sandusky? the school that is so pro-football these crimes

went unpunished for years? THAT "liberal" school?

umm, froth boy? sometimes your grades are a reflection of the work you do, not your political orientation.

[southernyankeebelle]

2. Amazing how holy Ricky is rewriting history.

[Skittles]

4. he is a republican

no one would vote for him if he told the truth

[southernyankeebelle]

7. That is sure true.

[appleannie1]

3. Nothing has ever been his fault. Someone else peed in his training pants.

[MarianJack]

6. Not only was it someone else,...

...but I bet he'd say they were gay, too.

PEACE!

[Ikonoklast]

5. I see Santorum as the type of guy that will argue with a professor, and even though proven to be

totally wrong after being shown the facts of the matter, blame the instructor for failing him.


Faith-based learning has a problem with reality.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. Not a "very serious student"...what a shocker!

I went to Penn State. I often had differing ideas to that of my professors. I never got a lousy grade due to the content of my papers. If I wrote a crappy, unthought-out paper, I was called on it. And if I made a good argument, even if it was counter to the ideas of my prof, I got a good grade. It was all about the argument I presented, not the idea.

[freethought]

9. This is similar to what his fraternity brothers observed.

They said he wasn't particularly political. Didn't talk about religion much, if at all. He enjoyed the weekly house poker games. He was at all the parties, serving drinks and the like. Although not a hopeless flirt with the girls, he didn't shy away from them either. What kind of set him apart was the fact he had a beard and mustache and smoked a pipe. He liked to talk about sports.

Seeing him now, some his old frat brothers don't recognize him.

They do remember one thing, that he was indeed very ambitious.

Here's a link to anyone who may want to read the article:

What Santorum's college frat brother's say

[blue neen]

10. Lil' Ricky is a Big Liar.

"Early this week,The New Republic interviewed Bob O'Connor, one of Santorum's old political science professors who taught Santorum in four different classes. O'Connor objected to Santorum's persecution charge. "He really has a rich fantasy life," O'Connor told TNR in an email. "PSU in the 1970s was not exactly Berkeley. I resent this sort of accusation [that] I and my colleagues graded students on the basis of their political attitudes. Ridiculous.”

"Santorum's fraternity brothers were fairly shocked by their friend's assertions."

"Was there any kind of oppression at the frat house? "Not the group that I hung with," Elliehausen says."

"I wasn't aware of any oppression of any sort," Vondercrone says. "He seemed like a happy guy."

"Santorum's campaign did not respond to a request for comment."