Clarifications and corrections
Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: News/Features
In the March issue of Orbis, an article about the student organization Youth for Western Civilization misidentified Marcus Epstein as one of the founders of the national YWC. Marcus Epstein is a vice president of the national YWC, not a founder.
The article also misattributed a quote from the Southern Poverty Law Center, stating that, according to the SPLC, other founders of YWC participated in several events organized by the Michigan State University- Young Americans for Freedom. Actually, the SPLC claimed DeAnna posted on the MSU-YAF website, and that the MSU-YAF chapter was classified as a hate group after it organized these events, but the SPLC article did not specifically identify YWC founders as participants of these events. Over the phone on March 24, Kevin DeAnna stated that he did not write for the MSU-YAF’s blog, the Spartan Spectator.
According to the YWC’s 2008 Annual Report filed with the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, Kevin DeAnna incorporated the YWC with Craig Burgers and Luke Pelican. Both Craig Burgers and Luke Pelican were identified as former chairmen of the MSU-YAF by Kyle Bristow, then-outgoing-chairman of MSU-YAF, in a post on the Spartan Spectator. While the original Spartan Spectator blog is now defunct, a number of other websites have archival copies of the post, including the New Century Foundation’s American Renaissance website. Orbis did not find definitive evidence to suggest that Burgers or Pelican directly participated in the activities attributed to the MSU-YAF by the SPLC or definitive evidence that they were still members of the group when the SPLC classified MSU-YAF as a hate group in 2007. According to DeAnna, neither Burger nor Pelican are heavily involved with YWC currently.
We apologize for our error.
The article also misattributed a quote from the Southern Poverty Law Center, stating that, according to the SPLC, other founders of YWC participated in several events organized by the Michigan State University- Young Americans for Freedom. Actually, the SPLC claimed DeAnna posted on the MSU-YAF website, and that the MSU-YAF chapter was classified as a hate group after it organized these events, but the SPLC article did not specifically identify YWC founders as participants of these events. Over the phone on March 24, Kevin DeAnna stated that he did not write for the MSU-YAF’s blog, the Spartan Spectator.
According to the YWC’s 2008 Annual Report filed with the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, Kevin DeAnna incorporated the YWC with Craig Burgers and Luke Pelican. Both Craig Burgers and Luke Pelican were identified as former chairmen of the MSU-YAF by Kyle Bristow, then-outgoing-chairman of MSU-YAF, in a post on the Spartan Spectator. While the original Spartan Spectator blog is now defunct, a number of other websites have archival copies of the post, including the New Century Foundation’s American Renaissance website. Orbis did not find definitive evidence to suggest that Burgers or Pelican directly participated in the activities attributed to the MSU-YAF by the SPLC or definitive evidence that they were still members of the group when the SPLC classified MSU-YAF as a hate group in 2007. According to DeAnna, neither Burger nor Pelican are heavily involved with YWC currently.
We apologize for our error.
Be the first to comment on this story