Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 3/8/06 Section: Editorial

Geography teacher/resident lunatic Jay Bennish.

For a conservative student at a liberal college, it can often be difficult to sit through lectures which one could view as "biased." It's a relatively hopeless situation; speaking up could get you ostracized from the class, but staying quiet eats you up inside.

To my own detriment, I try to keep my opinions to myself in the face of teacher bias, as I have felt the harsh repercussions of doing otherwise. I have known students, however, who fight back only to be called "rabid conservatives" by their own professors. During a time where 80 percent of the population disagrees with you, being a conservative student is quite a chore.

Earlier this week, however, a story surfaced of a 16 year-old high school student from Aurora, Colorado who recorded his geography teacher's liberal screed taught as fact to his class of high school sophomores.

Sean Allen frequently recorded lectures in his classes to better understand the subject matter. Unfortunately for teacher Jay Bennish, his 20-minute rant about the President's State of the Union address was caught, in its near entirety, on a tape which has now been released for anyone to hear.

"Now, I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. Obviously, they are not. Ok. But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use. Very, very ethnocentric," Bennish muttered to his class after summizing America's plans to take over the world.

One must read Bennish's lecture to truly feel the weight of it all. You hear all the time that this country desperately needs teachers; this tape really helps you understand why. He teaches a geography class, not a political science class (wherein his absurd lecture would probably still be deemed inappropriate).

Bennish goes on to say (and this is really my favorite part), "...you have to understand something, that when al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, in their view, they're not attacking innocent people. Ok. The CIA has an office at the World Trade Center. The Pentagon is a military target. The White House was a military target. Congress is a military target. The World Trade Center is the economic center of our entire economy."

And what of the passengers on those four commercial airlines? Were they CIA agents or military personnel? What about the people who were employed in what was simply an exceptionally large office building? Clearly Bennish did not know anyone who died on 9/11, otherwise one should sincerely hope he wouldn't be justifying the attacks which killed thousands of innocent Americans.

Continued...

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