Well, what I find interesting is that the article and the folks protesting it are failing to take into account the larger picture... that the university has and continues to invite many people who are politicians or whose profession is related to politics that are on the liberal side of the political spectrum to speak at forums and the like as well. And you don't hear the conservatives complaining about it.

Sen. Reid, to name one... they conveniently forget to mention that they have a wide range of folks on the political spectrum speak at forums and other university wide gatherings. Helen Thomas? Seems she is rather liberal... Anyway, I can't find it now, but there was one article I read last week when this first became an "issue" that BYU has a well established history of inviting high ranking elected politicians from both parties to speak at the University, and a number of presidents and vice-presidents have accepted the invitation and spoken at the school. It also mentioned that JFK, who was a candidate at the time, was one of them, but that Bill Clinton and his administration declined the invitation when he was president.

Anyway, the whine is extremely tiresome. If you don't want to listen to a speaker, just don't go. There is no requirement for students or faculty to attend forums that I am aware of, and certainly students do not even have to attend their own commencement. I think in all the years I was at BYU, I ended up going to maybe one or two forums (after finding them to be an inefficient use of my time, and maybe to some extent waste thereof, didn't make the effort to go to any other). And, since I graduated in a December, I opted to not go to spring commencement (was sick of school and BYU at that point and spring represented a different class and December grads were "invited" and it felt like an afterthought). My grad school commencement a number of years later got rained out too, so despite having gone to it, I didn't get the benefit of anything other than standing in the rain for an hour before the university president decided to cancel the proceedings due to the weather...

Anyway, I think the nature of this sets a questionable precedent for the university to have allowed this sort of nonsensical "protest". It looks like it was backed (and perhaps at even organized in part) by a number of professors... so the question needs to be asked, what sort of message are they sending to students by being behind the protest instigation?

http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=6b5cb10fd5f91110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=ae11627d59eec010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660209039,00.html

http://byunews.byu.edu/archive07-MAR-forums.aspx

http://ge.byu.edu/forum_schedule.cfm