Case 1:

Shouldn't college students seeking knowledge--especially knowledge that might challenge their own biases--be encouraged? Not so, it seems, according to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign and the College Republicans of Kalamazoo College.

When seven sophomores at the school showed up at Wings Stadium in downtown Kalamazoo to see George W. Bush at a campaign rally on May 3 and presented the tickets they had obtained for the event, security officers would not allow them in. The problem, according to these students, was that College Republicans volunteering at the event fingered them as liberals who did not support Bush. And such citizens were not welcome at the rally.

"They told us," [one of the sophomores] says, "that we failed a background check, that we had been identified by volunteers as a potential threat, and that if we didn't leave we would be arrested."

Hufstader and the others insisted they simply wanted to hear Bush and demanded to see what list--if any--indicated that they had failed a background check. They argued their point until local police showed up and said they would be arrested unless they departed. [Banned in Kalamazoo]

Case 2:

College students are increasingly saying they're going to vote against Bush. College students are increasingly being told they're not allowed to vote. There may be no connection between the two.

Like any good American citizen, young Han wanted to cast his ballot in the presidential primaries. So in October, the sophomore at Hamilton College walked into the office of the county election board in Utica, New York, to register to vote. Han couldn't make it back to his home state of Washington to participate in its caucuses — they were being held in February, the same week Hamilton requires sophomores to declare a major — so he decided to vote in the state where he actually lives.

But at the election office, a county official told Han that only "permanent residents" may register to vote. College students, she informed the clean-cut twenty-year-old, must vote where their parents live. "This is just how we've always done it," county election commissioner Patricia DiSpirito told Rolling Stone. "A dorm is not a permanent residence — it just isn't."

In fact, DiSpirito is flat-out wrong.

Federal and state courts have clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live in a dorm. But interviews with college students, civil-rights attorneys, political strategists and legal experts reveal that election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters. Much as local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and literacy tests to deny the vote to black citizens, some county election officials now employ an intimidating mix of legal bullying and added paperwork to prevent civic-minded young people from casting ballots.

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