Education · Tri-Cities, WA Metro · September 23, 2026
FIRE Reports Whitman College Silencing Christian, Conservative Student Clubs
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
One group was picked out and frozen: FIRE reports the Associated Students of Whitman College senate voted on March 8, 2026 to deny the Whitman Republican Club affiliation — reported as 25-0 — while openly ideological groups such as Planned Parenthood Generation Action and the Climate Justice Coalition keep recognition and funding. The club's chair, David Dunbabin, has been named publicly and says he was questioned for about an hour and then targeted personally. Isolating one named club, and then one named student, is the whole mechanism here.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse the isolation in person and in writing this month. If you are on that campus or one nearby, get two or three other recognized clubs — including the Christian ones — to co-sign a short, factual letter to the student government saying recognition should turn on the written criteria and nothing else, and then sit in the room at the next recognition vote so the denied group is not the only one at the table. If you are a parent or alumnus, write the president's office over your own name; a singled-out group with visible company is no longer singled out.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The fight was moved onto ground the students had not prepared. Per FIRE, senators pressed club representatives to repudiate specific sections of the national Republican platform and to criticize the national party and President Trump, and told them to 'scrub' the club's name — none of which is an affiliation criterion. FIRE notes the senators identified no defect in the application itself. A 19-year-old defending a national party platform extemporaneously cannot win; a 19-year-old reading from the bylaws can.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Before the next application cycle, get the student government's bylaws and the written recognition criteria in hand, print them, and mark the clause your application satisfies. Agree in advance on one sentence for off-topic questions: 'Our application meets criterion X; I'll find out and respond in writing on anything beyond it.' Record or take verbatim notes of the hearing, and ask afterward which written criterion the denial rested on — a question that has to be answered with a citation or not at all.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
This rule is being used on the college, and it works because the gap is real: FIRE's August 31, 2026 letter to President Sarah Bolton leans on Whitman's own free-expression promises and on the student senate's own stated mission of creating equal and inclusive opportunities, and gave the college until September 14 to respond. FIRE separately rates Whitman's speech-code policies 'yellow' for ambiguity that invites arbitrary application. The leverage is the distance between what the institution says and what it did.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close your own gap first. Whatever group you are in, make sure the constitution on file is current, dues and membership are open as your own documents say they are, officer elections are minuted, and every deadline was met — so that if a denial comes, nothing in the file can carry it except viewpoint. Read your college's own free-expression statement and student-organization policy this month and keep a dated copy; a promise you can quote back is worth more than an argument you improvise.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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