{"id":1679,"date":"2014-04-23T14:38:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T20:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=1679"},"modified":"2014-04-24T11:19:25","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T17:19:25","slug":"montana-tech-petitions-oppose-gianfortes-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/04\/montana-tech-petitions-oppose-gianfortes-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Tech petitions oppose Gianfortes’ speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note<\/strong>: This story has been updated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Petitions circulated by Montana Tech professors and students, asking the Butte school to rescind invitations to this spring\u2019s commencement speakers, were sent to Montana University System officials on Monday.<\/p>\n

\"Greg<\/a>

Greg Gianforte<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

Tech professor Pat Munday, one of the leaders of the drive, said Wednesday that he had not heard back from the three recipients of the petitions \u2014 Tech Chancellor Don Blackketter, University of Montana President Royce Engstrom and Paul Tuss, interim chair of the Montana Board of Regents. Tech is affiliated with UM.<\/p>\n

Munday said about 400 people signed the petitions, which oppose having the commencement speech delivered by Greg and Susan Gianforte of Bozeman.<\/p>\n

The husband-and-wife team is scheduled to speak at the Montana Tech commencement on May 17, while only Greg Gianforte is to speak at the Rocky Mountain College commencement in Billings on May 3.<\/p>\n

The online petitions circulated by Montana Tech faculty and students call the Gianfortes a poor choice because of their support for creationism and the use of public funding for private schools and their opposition to civil rights protections for lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people.<\/p>\n

Munday, a professor of science and technology studies who has been at Montana Tech for 24 years, said to see students there \u201cvoicing any opinion at all\u201d has been pretty surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cMontana Tech is the most ride-for-the-brand place that you can find,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Munday also said that while it is impossible to say how many of the petition signers were actually affiliated with Montana Tech, a majority of them live in Montana and many of those who also chose to include comments identified themselves as Tech alumni.<\/p>\n

A two-page statement attached to the petition says the undersigned are \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d that the Gianfortes were asked to speak at Montana Tech.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir creationist beliefs, homophobic activism, and support for draining money from public schools to fund private Christian schools all make Gianfortes a poor choice as commencement speakers,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n

The statement goes on to detail the objections, many of which have been spelled out in previous news stories, on this site<\/a> and others<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It also says that inviting the Gianfortes damages the school\u2019s credibility. The Gianfortes\u2019 words and actions have demonstrated \u201ccontempt for public education, an anti-scientific attitude, and a lack of respect for gay persons, all which are in opposition to the professed mission and vision of Montana Tech and the Montana University System,\u201d it says.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

There was little reaction on the Rocky Mountain College campus to news that Greg Gianforte would be the commencement speaker, but some members of the Billings community did register their displeasure with college President Bob Wilmouth.<\/p>\n

After meeting with Rocky\u2019s Faculty Executive Committee in early April, Wilmouth announced<\/a> that Gianforte would speak as scheduled on May 3.<\/p>\n

Wilmouth has said previously that he was not aware of Gianforte\u2019s political or social views before extending an invitation to him. He also said that Gianforte, who made his fortune in computer science, had agreed to speak only on the importance of education and achieving post-college success.<\/p>\n

Munday said Blackketter, the chancellor at Tech, was similarly unaware of Gianforte\u2019s non-business activities. Munday said he was \u201castounded\u201d by the \u201cignorance of Montana social and political issues\u201d on the part of Blackketter and his advisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis kind of thing is totally avoidable if he would just involve faculty and staff,\u201d Munday said. \u201cAnyone with even a superficial knowledge of Montana politics\u201d would have been aware of the Gianfortes\u2019 extremism. \u201cIt\u2019s just downright embarrassing,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Peggy Kuhr, UM’s chief communications officer, said Engstrom had received the petition and “he has no plans to act on it.”\u00a0Blackketter and Tuss were also asked to comment but had not responded \u00a0as of Wednesday afternoon. If they do respond, their comments will be added to this story.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong>: Tuss emailed this response late in the day:<\/p>\n

“I think it\u2019s likely that all of us on the Board of Regents have read the press stories about this subject, and I certainly understand the controversy. Commencement speakers have probably caused controversy in America for over 300 years, for various reasons.\u00a0 Chancellor Blackketter has already fully and publicly explained his reason for asking the Gianfortes to talk about technology and entrepreneurship.\u00a0 Obviously, people have every right to agree or disagree with that rationale. That\u2019s how it goes with commencement speakers \u2013 and there is always another one next year.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: This story has been updated. Petitions circulated by Montana Tech professors and students, asking the Butte school to rescind invitations to this spring\u2019s commencement speakers, were sent to Montana University System officials on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[519,518,335,520,517,333,516,388],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-bob-wilmouth","tag-bon-blackketter","tag-greg-gianforte","tag-pat-munday","tag-paul-tuss","tag-rocky-mountain-college","tag-royce-engstrom","tag-susan-gianforte","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}