By CONNOR RYAN & KELLY KULTYS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & NEWS EDITOR

Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor on the FOX network, devoted airtime on Monday to challenge Fordham’s decision to “ban” conservative pundit Ann Coulter from speaking on campus last month.

O’Reilly’s comments, which at times were later found to be factually inaccurate, has sparked a wide on-campus response from students who feel that the segment was produced unfairly.

“I didn’t know this, but Fordham University has banned Ann Coulter,” O’Reilly said as he introduced the topic to his viewers. “Late last month, students in the Fordham Republican club invited Ms. Coulter to speak on campus. Predictably, those who oppose her conservative ideology objected.”

O’Reilly went on to say that Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of University, “took the side of the anti-Coulter forces, even personally insulting Ann.”

In truth, neither McShane nor Fordham administrators ever “banned” Coulter from speak on campus. The decision to cancel her appearance came from the College Republicans.

“To prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement,” McShane said in an email to the University community last month. “Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another.”

After O’Reilly’s introduction, he turned it over to Jesse Watters, a producer of the television show and host of a pre-recorded segment called “Watters’ World,” during which Watters interviews people about a particular issue.

Because he was not allowed on campus, Watters was stationed just outside Fordham’s gates on Bathgate Avenue, as well as at the gates near the Metro North train station.

When asked why she thought the Ann Coulter event was canceled, one female student said bluntly: “Because of her strong opinions.”

“I feel like she should have been allowed to speak,” said another student.

“I think she’s kind of an awful person,” one male student said. “But …”

“An ‘awful person’?” Waters interrupted.

“I don’t think it would have been right to prevent her from coming,” the student continued.

While O’Reilly said that Fordham’s administration had refused to comment, Watters did catch Joseph Desciak, assistant dean for juniors and transfer students at Lincoln Center, in transit and asked him about how Fordham handled the situation.

“I think the University has a couple of responsibilities, and one is to make sure that both sides are always represented,” Desciak said.

When Watters asked why the recent on-campus appearance of Peter Singer, a controversial academic who spoke during the “Christians and Other Animals: Moving the Conversation Forward” panel discussion a few weeks ago, was not met with the same amount of “condemnation,” Desciak said that he was not a part of those discussions and could not comment.

O’Reilly said that he had invited McShane to be on the show, but “of course he won’t come on — he can’t defend this.”

Watters, who was in the studio with O’Reilly, said that Fordham had recently hosted Bill Maher to speak on campus.

However, Fordham has not hosted Maher. The University invited comedian Stephen Colbert and Timothy Cardinal Dolan to speak to students in September.

At the end of the segment, O’Reilly said of the whole situation: “Fordham’s a fine school — the law school’s good — but this is embarrassing … I mean it really is embarrassing.”

After having watched the show, many Fordham students were unhappy.

“Watters’ piece felt like propaganda to me,” Joe Gallagher, FCRH ’13, said. “It seemed like he clearly spliced together clips to make our students seem clueless about the issue. I have a disdain for pieces like that in general because who knows how many students gave very eloquent responses that were left out of the piece.”

Nicholas Milanes, FCLC ’13 and blog editor for Lincoln Center’s newspaper, The Observer, wrote a public letter to O’Reilly in which he expressed his discontent with the way the story was presented.

“As you can likely tell from my tone, I take issue with your program’s overly-simplistic portrayal of my soon-to-be alma mater and of the controversy surrounding Ann Coulter’s invitation to speak at our campus,” Milanes said. “Since it’s clear that you lack a proper research team, or simply prefer to gloss over such inconsequential details as our school’s population, administrative activity and recent history, allow me to elucidate the key factors that influenced the university’s backlash against Coulter’s invitation.”

Milanes spoke about Coulter’s “store of racist, sexist and otherwise marginalizing terminology,” Fordham’s history of “graffiti spelling out racist and homophobic slurs” and the misleading title of O’Reilly’s segment, “Fordham Bans Ann Coulter.”

“Your lackey, Mr. Watters, scoped out the most dubious-looking students could find and held them up as representatives of a student body comprised of over eight thousand undergraduates,” Milanes said. “You then proceeded to call us all idiots.”

Milanes called for O’Reilly to apologize for “the deeply ignorant assault you leveled against me, my place of learning and my classmates.”