Face The State Staff Report
A University of Colorado building funded largely through oil and gas revenues played host Tuesday night to an event devoted to ending conventional energy production.
The event, titled,“Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal," was hosted on the Boulder campus's Benson Earth Sciences building, named such because of an $8 million gift from CU President Bruce Benson, who made his fortune off oil and gas. The money went towards construction of the building, an endowed chair and scholarships.
Benson, a self-made energy executive and former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, made the contribution a decade before coming the university's president earlier this year. According to CU’s Web site, the 87,000 square foot building and features a three story stone atrium with a glass roof, contains an 11,000 square foot library and a 175-seat lecture hall with stadium seating.
Benson’s portrait hangs in the building and was vandalized earlier this year after he became the sole finalist for president.
Bronson Hilliard, CU spokesman, maintains there is no significance to the event’s location. “Events are held in buildings all over campus that have nothing to do with symbology,” he said.
The event was organized by the radical San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network. It included a panel discussion with RAN executive director Micahel Brune, local clean energy leader Alison Burchell and Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor.
“We certainly recognize the irony on holding a panel about clean and sustainable energy in a building named for a man who made his money in the oil and gas industry,” said Sam Haswell, RAN’s communication director, but he added group’s intent is to focus on larger objectives of moving America toward a non-oil based energy policy.
Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNow, the liberal activist group that launched a campaign opposing Benson's candidacy for CU's top post, alleged that Benson would be too partisan to embrace energy and climate research at CU.
Hilliard, however, says Benson has “never expressed any hostility to the concept of alternative energy or global warming.”
Conservatives' contributions to left wing schools were idiotic
On December 4th, 2008 Another skeptic says:
If you're wondering why Obama won the youth vote, think about the academic revolution that has been going on since the 60s.
Why are so many university towns known as the Socialist Republic of ....?
It's because the conservative Bensons of the country have funded the hard left colleges and universities for decades.
Hard left professors have "Ayered" America's kids, and now they're reaping their rewards.
Read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal-Fascism," and you'll understand.