By The Iowa Statesman
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and to celebrate, students at Iowa State University enthusiastically support a women’s rights petition. But, as is the case these days, it’s pretty clear they didn’t know what they were supporting.
Jake Dagel, Iowa Field Coordinator for the non-partisan Turning Point USA organization, has just released video (scroll down) in which he secretly filmed the ISU students signing the petition. The petition read:
“As concerned students of Iowa State University we are concerned with women’s suffrage in today’s society. We hereby call on Iowa State University and the State of Iowa to to enforce policies that end women’s suffrage.”
That Dagel was able to get one signature — at ISU — on a petition demanding an end to women’s voting rights in Iowa is dripping with irony. Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the foremost leaders of the suffragist movement nearly 100 years ago that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, was a graduate of the university. The Old Botany building was renamed in her honor, and ISU is also home to the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics.
Dagel collected more than two pages of signatures in just a couple of hours on campus. In his video, one of the students is shown saying, “I feel like I should do this … I’ve got to tell my professor about this!”
“Students who often demand equal rights for women don’t understand the history of the movement,” Dagel said. “These students failed to recognize that they were signing a petition to end a woman’s right to vote … Most students at Iowa State don’t know the history of their own university, let alone the entire women’s rights movement.”
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