Rep. Shawn Mitchell, R-Colo., has agreed to drop a bill he sponsored in January that protected conservative students on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus who felt some professors discriminated against them because of their views.

Colorado Republican State Senate President John Andrews originally pushed for the bill.

After receiving agreements from college officials to discuss better ways to protect students’ rights, Mitchell dropped the proposed legislation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In January, Republican students at UC-Boulder complained a number of professors were indoctrinating liberal beliefs and discriminating against students with conservative views. The proposed bill sought to prevent lowering students’ grades because of their political views as well as to ban class discussions of controversial topics unrelated to course materials.

Ryan Grady of the College Democrats of Madison thinks the issue of political discrimination is “ridiculous.”

“I can’t believe that professors in Colorado or in Madison would lower students’ grades because of their political beliefs,” Grady said. “Obviously you shouldn’t be downgraded because of your beliefs, but education is about an exchange of different beliefs and ideas. I think you should always be able to have discussions.”

Grady added that as a business major, he might not be exposed to the type of controversial political discussions students in political science or English classes might face.

“Maybe I miss out on some of these discussions,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of any of this going on in Madison.”

Mitchell did not return phone calls.

The proposed bill defined a hostile academic environment as one limiting or denying a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program.

The bill states, “To engage in a level of harassment that is sufficient to create a hostile environment, a person must take actions other than the expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that another person finds offensive.”

Irwin Goldman, a professor from the UW Evolution, Ecology and Genetics section of the biology department, thinks his department has the correct balance between respect for others’ beliefs and the need for students to understand modern biological concepts.

“I have a small but significant number of students who are creationists,” Goldman said. He said at the beginning of his course, he always acknowledges there are many different explanations for the origin of the world.

“Many different cultures have their own unique creation stories. While these stories are important, modern biology relies heavily on the idea of evolution via natural selection,” Goldman said, noting religion is important in a cultural context, but it doesn’t speak to the scientific process because it cannot be tested. “Science and religion are two different realms; they are both important and fundamental to human culture, but they are not overlapping.”

He explained in bio-core classes, all students are asked to be fluent in the biological approach.

“We don’t ask that they believe in it. There have been students who don’t believe in it. All we ask is that students take the approach of, ‘according to modern biology.'”

According to Goldman, students in Madison understand that, as scientists, to read and understand modern biological discussions they must be able to converse in scientific terms.

“I’ve found that in Madison many people bend over backwards to be respectful of other people’s beliefs,” Goldman said. “There is a big diversity in the faculty here, which makes for excellent debate.”