I am not naive. I know that this campus and most campuses in the state have more of a liberal aura than a conservative one. And I know that I probably will not be able to change your views about us, but at least give me a chance and hear me out. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the College Republicans don’t discriminate against anyone. We have never asked anyone to leave a meeting or an event or deliberately excluded or antagonized any person that was “not like us” or did not agree with our political beliefs.

Apparently, we discriminate on political persuasion. However, we have had liberals sit in on our meetings, and we never asked them to leave. I know personally that the chairman of College Republicans and myself have offered an invitation to our friends and counterparts in the MSU Democrats to attend one of our meetings. If you want to talk about discrimination because of political persuasion, go and listen to some professors’ lectures and tell me that there are no liberal biases. I applaud those professors who support the Democratic Party but do not make their political identity so obvious or brainwash students that liberal principles are right and conservative principles are wrong.

I will move on to the claim that we discriminate based on gender orientation. Believe it or not, we have a couple of active members who have been open about their homosexuality. However, we have never asked them to leave the group or not participate with us in any of our activities.

The claim that we discriminate against race makes me laugh. First of all, we do not need to meet a quota, but we do have minorities in the group. I am a Filipino, and yet I still serve as vice chairman for a conservative student organization. In fact, we also have another minority serving in a leadership position, so claiming that we discriminate is quite humorous. We are kind of like a little United Nations — except more useful.

Let us move on to the allegations that we discriminate against religion. That is just as funny as the claim that we discriminate against race. We have people who practice a plethora of religions. We have Christians, Hindus and Jews. I am pretty sure we have other members who practice different religions, but as you can see, a person’s religion is irrelevant for them to agree with us or disagree with us. I do not know about you, but that seems pretty diverse to me.

Finally, I’ll move on to the absurd claim that we discriminate against weight. If you would like, I can provide a picture next time of one of our meetings, and you can see for yourself that we have people of all different weights, heights and even hair color. I’ll even venture on to say that we have people with different eye colors, shoe sizes and finger lengths! Notice the sarcasm that this claim cannot be taken seriously.

We do not discriminate at our biweekly meetings and we did not do it when we held the Sept. 11, 2001 event on campus. I know we did not discriminate at this year’s homecoming parade. It seems to me that the only discrimination going on is against us. These slanderous claims are discriminating against the College Republicans and are disturbing to our organization. I ask fellow Republicans on campus, when they hear such bogus allegations made, to please tell the truth, refute the incorrectness and to support and speak up against this bias.

To those who have filed this false complaint that the College Republicans have discriminated against the student body, show me where and when we did. Please tell me where we have done wrong. And when or even if you do show yourself and your claim, I’ll just continue to prove you wrong.

Leo Madarang is a State News columnist, vice chairman of the MSU College Republicans and a political theory senior. Reach him at madaran5@msu.edu.