WASHINGTON, D.C.—Once upon a time, there were two young women who asked a few questions about the prevailing wisdom, only to find out that even at a university, inquiry should be limited to prescribed subjects.

One year ago, about a dozen women decided to create the Georgetown Guild for Conservative Women which, according to its mission, "seeks …to consider such issues on the basis of facts, good judgement, and what is best for society as a whole, not just 'women.'" Over the summer, the co-chairmen of the Women's Guild, Dawn Scheirer and Bryanna Hocking, created a 20-page pamphlet full of survival tips for (gasp) conservative women on campus. Called "The Guide, A Little Beige Book for Today's Miss G," these slim little sticks of dynamite were slipped under the doors of freshman women just after school began last fall.

Outrage followed. Most of the controversy centers on "A Lie a Day Keeps the Truth Away," by Dawn Sheirer, which wants to "forewarn and forearm" new women students against campus feminists who "fight with half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies." In the piece, Sheirer unveils some of the most widely used factistics as phoney or inflated, daring to tread on the sacred ground of rape, anorexia and bulimia. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics to contradict a widely repeated statistic from Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth," Sheirer reports that 67 women died of anorexia in 1988, as opposed to Wolf's 150,000. On crimes against women, Sheirer takes on the campus mantra "one in four college women is the victim of rape or attempted rape" by pointing to research from the U.S. Bureau of Justice and the FBI which showed a much different and less dire picture (the FBI said that among female students, 0.16 in 1000 were victims of rape.)

Critics called it the "moronification of the women's movement;" "dangerous;" and "irrational." The roommates of each woman publicly renounced any affiliation with the product or its authors. The Georgetown University Student Association sent letters and flyers to all the resident assistants (RAs) of first year women, advising them to speak to women on campus about the issues explored in "The Guide" and to refer women to alternative organizations.

When asked about the numbers in "The Guide," Director of Georgetown's Women's Center Nancy Cantalupo told one of the school papers that it is important not to focus excessively on quantitative statistics when it comes to issues such as rape and eating disorders, saying "Any statistics that indicate that even one person is suffering from an eating disorder or sexual assault should be our concern." Her remarks illustrate an important tactic: if your "facts" betray you, take the moral high ground.

Dismissing "The Guide" seems more attractive than actually discussing its content - and this is the ugliest truth about "The Guide's" fledgling semester. This little 20-page pamphlet exploded the security of agreement among the campus elite, and the response to such dissent shows how shallow their case was all this time. In one heated exchange, a professor scoffed at the suggestion that a dialogue between the two sides could be productive, saying in essence: we (the elite protectors of the downtrodden) can't afford to lose any ground we might have gained by engaging in such a dangerous sport.

This is the tension of today's liberal university—how to keep up the pretense of open exchange while continuing its chokehold on the public debate. At the university's official website, the Dean of Students, James Donahue, PhD, posts a Message to Families. In it, he lists some of the university's most dearly held values; among them: "A commitment to the free exchange of ideas," and "A love of truth." Memo to Dean Donahue: have you been on campus lately?

—Katherine Post

Director of the Center for Enterprise and Opportunity