UMiami and UF Criticized For Having More Liberal Student Groups Than Conservative Groups

CampusReform.org's mission includes giving college "conservatives powerful new weapons in their fight for the hearts and minds of the next generation of citizens, politicians, and members of the media" and helping "a new generation of student activism to identify, expose, and combat the radical left now."

In other words, the conservative group sees campus politics as a cut-and-dry war. It's on a mission to expose the top 100 colleges in the nation as liberal playgrounds, and it claimed to have "exposed" the University of Miami and University of Florida. Except its methodology seems a little off.

CampusReform.org claims to use "in-depth research" to analyze the political bias of each campus, which basically amount to counting up the number of student organizations considered liberal and comparing it to the number of student organizations considered conservative.

Here's the count from University of Florida:

Liberal campus groups are the Animal Activists of America Alachua County; Action Party; Amnesty International; College Democrats; Gator Chapter of the NAACP; Human Rights Awareness on Campus; Law School Democrats; NORML; Pride Student Union; and VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood.

Conservative campus groups are Americans for Prosperity; Network of enlighted Women; Pro-Life Alliance; American Constitution Society; College Republicans; Gators for Israel; Law School Republicans; and The Florida Frontier, a conservative newspaper.

And its tally on Miami:

The liberal groups are Amnesty International; Earth Alert; Eco Forum; Emerging Green Builders; Greenpeace; Multicultural Student Affairs; Students for Equality; Students Toward a New Democracy; Sustainable U; UM Young Democrats; and VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood.

The conservative groups are the College Republicans, Respect Life, and Students for a Free Cuba.

What seems striking is the group's classification of human rights, animal rights and environmental groups as liberal. Yes, these tend to be issues closer to liberal bleeding hearts, but are we supposed to assume conservatives are pro-destruction of the environment, pro-animal abuse and pro-torture?

It also seems to be inconsistent with its classifications. UF's gay group Pride Student Union is listed as liberal, but UM's equivalent group SpectrUM isn't mentioned.

It also oddly lists UM's non-political Office of Multicultural Student Affairs as a liberal student group.

The group's goal seems defensive and backwards when a new research shows that conservative students thrive on even the most liberal campuses, especially when they do not concentrate on the fact that they feel like some sort of hated minority.