Some conservatives on campus accuse The Forum selection board of ignoring student input and heavily favoring liberal views as the lecture series opens its 61st season Tuesday night.

Junior College Republicans chairman Benjamin Hack, who will start his second term as one of six students on The Forum committee this year, said none of the speakers for this season were requested by students.

“It doesn’t seem that the students are being listened to – whether it’s liberal or conservative,” Hack said.

For the students’ suggestions, The Forum committee organizers said they either could not contact the selection or the speaker would be too expensive, Hack said.

Some of the conservative speakers Hack and others suggested included columnists David Horowitz and Ann Coulter.

Forum coordinators, who research each speaking candidate for their availability and cost, could not verify Hack’s claims that no student selections made the final stages of the selection process. Committee members’ names are not attached to their speaker choice, Forum coordinator Beverly Soll said.

Last year, the committee went through a large and “unreasonable” number of possible speakers, she said.

If student selections did not make the final list, it’s because of the 12-member board not approving them, said Jennifer Hinners, assistant special events and arts coordinator.

The committee consists of six students, three faculty and three community members. Students can apply to be on The Forum board through Student Senate, which allocated $45,000 in February for the series’ budget.

Three to four student members did not vote on the final e-mail ballot for this year’s speakers, Hinners said.

“The students have a vote,” Soll said, “and the fact that they chose not to vote in the end, shows that they were not part of the committee.”

Sophomore Liam Robinson, a leftist who joined the board late last fall semester, said he thinks students have enough of a voice on the board if they choose to use it.

“I don’t see the point of not voting,” Robinson said. “I think if you want to have your voice be heard that’s not a good way to protest.”

Soll said she doesn’t think the student choices failed to make the final rounds because they were from students.

“I’d hate to think it ever got that personal,” she said.

Still, Hack said he now has little confidence in getting accurate information from Forum organizers on the ability to hire a speaker. He said he thinks board tries to present mostly liberal views through the lecture events.

That is a major reason he and a few other conservative students joined the board last year. After anti-nuclear weapons advocate Helen Caldicott’s presented what Hack referred to as an “extremist left view” of the world at the Sept. 11, 2001 Forum lecture, he and a few friends joined to change the series’ lineup.

“We just feel that if (Caldicott’s) going to be there,” Hack said, “we should at least have someone to counter her point during the time we’re in school.”

A female audience member said during a rant directed at Caldicott at the event that UW-Eau Claire students never are exposed to conservative views.

William Ogden, professor of accounting and finance and advisor for College Republicans, said he has not seen many conservative Forum guests during his 15 years on campus.

Even if the campus is mostly liberal, which is not a fact, Ogden said, it should provide a balance of ideas. The university is meant to provide students with facts, he said, and inviting mostly liberal presenters doesn’t help.

“How do you call that serving the truth?” Ogden asked.

Junior Joe Eaton, a College Republican who wrote a column in the Sept. 9 issue of The Spectator accusing The Forum of favoring the “left,” said even if the campus is more liberal it “doesn’t mean it’s a right to present only liberal views.”

Eaton said he joined The Forum board this year to see whether it is anti-student input or anti-conservative.

The Forum is not, specifically, a political event and that it features speakers discussing a variety of issues, Soll said.

“The committee, frankly, hasn’t made an issue of whether (speakers are) liberal or conservative,” Soll said. “There certainly is no bias against conservatives.”

The idea that The Forum appears to slant to the left is coincidental, she said.

Forum coordinators suggested any possible liberal “slant” is an indication of the board’s makeup.

“It’s going to reflect what those people feel,” Soll said. “People are never chosen by what they feel.”

Lisa Huftel, vice president of College Democrats and Senate’s Student Life and Diversity director, said the board could improve by setting a policy to host speakers or include board members of varying political beliefs.

Yet, the sophomore student added that people’s views change a lot, which might make such a policy not work well.

Huftel said she understands the conservatives’ concerns and that it “would be a little insufferable” if the liberal view was lacking on campus.

Soll said she anticipates no problems with this year’s committee despite the trouble of the previous board.

“It was just unusual,” she said. “A strange year.”