So.. What happened with Travis Cleek?
Bob Lee

I get this question pretty often, so I thought it might be appropriate to write about what happened so everyone can read for him or herself:

When I was in college at the University of Central Oklahoma, a few friends of mine and I ran a very small monthly newsletter which is now defunct. Detractors in the UCO Republican Club (including Travis Cleek) often called the publication a “liberal,” “Democrat,” and even “socialist” operation. We did have some writers who fit those descriptions, but we had others who did not. We also had Republicans, Libertarians and independents of many stripes working on the project. For the record, I’m a “conservative” Libertarian-leaner who is currently a registered Republican. We covered corruption on the part of both Democrats and Republicans. Granted, we probably focused on Republicans more, but this is because Republicans controlled the federal government and Oklahoma state government. I’m not sure why the Republican Club felt so threatened by our publication, but they obviously were scared about something.

As soon as our publication hit the school and city, I noticed that it was being attacked left and right at UCO. Our fliers were torn down. Our stands were vandalized. Copies of our newsletter disappeared. Copies of our newsletter were vandalized. Then one day, I went to fill our stand in the UCO business building (where Cleek worked and still works) and noticed that the stand was missing.

Later that day, I had an eye-witness who worked in Travis’ office who saw him throwing away our newsletters en masse. I also had another witness to whom Travis had bragged about throwing away the stand in the business building.

I didn’t mind too much. The stands were relatively easy and inexpensive to build, and I didn’t have a lot of time to worry about it. But, I didn’t want it to happen again; so I filed a complaint with the UCO Department of Public Safety (the campus police who are real police officers, but not very good ones, as we shall see). I was told that they would refer the case to one of their detectives.

A few weeks later, I still hadn’t heard anything. I called the detective to no avail. I continued to call for a couple of weeks, but could not get the guy to call me back. One of my professors offered to call the detective. I accepted the offer, and he didn’t have much luck contacting the detective either.

Two weeks later, the detective finally called me back. He said he talked to Travis. I asked him what happened.

“Well,” the detective said, “I told him what he was accused of, and he said that’s not exactly what happened.”

After the detective didn’t say anything for a few seconds, I responded, “Ok, what did he say happened, exactly?”

“I didn’t ask him that.”

“Aren’t you the detective?” I said.

“I don’t think he’ll do it again," the detective responded. "I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I thanked the detective and went on with my life. I had succeeded in deterring future crimes from the Republican Club.

Later that school year, the Republican Club decided to try to curtail our free speech rights in a legal way. They sponsored legislation in the student senate that would have forced our publication off campus and “reprimand” those responsible for it. They were handily defeated, luckily. Apparently, they were upset because they weren’t allowed to publish a newsletter of their own on campus. This is because student organizations aren’t allowed to do that. Our publication wasn’t part of a student organization, but a completely private entity like The New York Times, which is allowed to put its newspapers on campus. The Republicans Club could have done the same thing—I’m not sure why they didn’t.

Of course I wasn’t surprised by the students’ behavior—I had attended classes with many of them and they aren’t pleasant people. They’re neoconservative Bush-loving types who don’t mind playing dirty.

But it was still especially annoying that this particular group of people would take actions to curb someone’s free speech. I say this because this is the same group that organized and promoted a “Straight Pride Week” on campus shortly after a state referendum on gay marriage in which the state voted 3 to 1 that gay marriage will be illegal. Many people thought this was in poor taste, and the students’ response was that they were simply exercising their rights to free speech (strangely, the same defense Sally Kern has used).

I think that’s a pretty weak response, since no one was complaining that they weren’t within their rights. You can say some pretty horrible things and remain within your first amendment rights.

Then the students held an “Animal Rights Barbicue” on campus. This name is admittedly a little bit funny, but not so funny when you remember some of the incredibly cruel treatment some animals receive. They gave the free speech response there, too.

 I said all that to say this: it’s very amusing for a group that claims to hold free speech in such high regard to turn around and so blatantly infringe on someone else’s free speech rights. Republicans are also supposed to respect property rights, so I don’t what to make  of that when they discard others’ belongings.