ITT: we complain about political correctness
 

On American campuses, freedom from speech
By George F. Will Opinion writer November 13

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/im...Yale-09244.jpg
Yale University students and supporters participate in a march across campus to demonstrate against racial insensitivity on Nov. 9. (Ryan Flynn/New Haven Register via Associated Press)

Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, dealt with the Crisis of the Distressing E-mail about Hypothetical Halloween Costumes about as you would expect from someone who has risen to eminence in today’s academia. He seems to be the kind of adult who has helped produce the kind of students who are such delicate snowflakes that they melt at the mere mention of even a potential abrasion of their sensibilities.

Salovey gave indignant students a virtuoso demonstration of adult groveling. With a fusillade of academia’s cliches du jour, he said the students’ “great distress” would be ameliorated by “greater inclusion, healing, mutual respect, and understanding” in the service of — wait for it — “diversity.” But of course only diversity that is consistent with the students’ capacious sense of the intolerable.

Salovey said he heard their “cries for help.” The cries came from students who either come from families capable of paying Yale University’s estimated $65,725 costs for the 2015-16 academic year or who are among the 64 percent of Yale undergraduates receiving financial aid made possible by the university’s $25.6 billion endowment. The cries were for protection (in the current academic patois, for “a safe space”) from the specter of the possibility that someone might wear an insensitive Halloween costume. A sombrero would constitute “cultural appropriation.” A pirate’s eye patch would distress the visually challenged. And so on, and on.

Normal Americans might wonder: Doesn’t the wearing of Halloween costumes end at about the time puberty begins? Not on campuses, where young adults old enough to vote live in a bubble of perpetual childhood. Which is why Yale was convulsed by a mob tantrum when, as Halloween approached, a faculty member recklessly said something sensible.

She said in an e-mail it should be permissible for someone to be a bit “obnoxious,” “inappropriate,” “provocative,” even “offensive.” She worried that campuses are becoming places of “censure and prohibition.” And she quoted her husband, master of Yale’s Silliman College, as saying “if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.” Aghast, one student detected “coded language” that is “disrespectful,” and others demanded that the couple be evicted from Silliman.

The students who were scandalized about nonexistent costumes live enveloped in thick swathes of university administrators competing in a sensitivity sweepstakes. They strive to make students feel ever more (another dollop of Salovey rhetoric) “valued” rather than “disrespected” and in “pain.”

What kind of parenting produces children who, living in the lap of Ivy League luxury, revel in their emotional fragility? One answer is: Parents who themselves are arrested-development adolescents, with all the anxieties and insecurities of that developmental stage. They see themselves in their darlings.

Emma Brown, who writes about education, recently told Post readers about Julie Lythcott-Haims’s new book, Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford dean, suggests parents pay attention to their language: “If you say ‘we’ when you mean your son or your daughter — as in, ‘We’re on the travel soccer team’ — it’s a hint to yourself that you are intertwined in a way that is unhealthy.”

But whatever responsibility attaches to the parenting that produced those brittle Yalies, a larger portion of blame goes to the monolithic culture of academia. Where progressivism reigns, vigilant thought police will enforce a peace of wary conformity. Here is why:

If you believe, as progressives do, that human nature is not fixed, and hence is not a basis for understanding natural rights. And if you believe, as progressives do, that human beings are soft wax who receive their shape from the society that government shapes. And if you believe, as progressives do, that people receive their rights from the shaping government. And if you believe, as progressives do, that people are the sum of the social promptings they experience. Then it will seem sensible for government, including a university’s administration, to guarantee not freedom of speech but freedom from speech. From, that is, speech that might prompt its hearers to develop ideas inimical to progress, and that might violate the universal entitlement to perpetual serenity.

On campuses so saturated with progressivism that they celebrate diversity in everything but thought, every day is a snow day: There are perishable snowflakes everywhere. The institutions have brought this on themselves. So, regarding the campuses’ current agonies, schadenfreude is not a guilty pleasure, it is obligatory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...0ec_story.html

QQ

Here at work, it is about that bad. A guy from Central America was gone for a few weeks. Upon his return, his workmates set up a fun competition in which the winner got a soccer ball, and it had to do with classic Spanish accents and word pronunciations. A good time was had by all, and the guy (a jokester himself), appreciated the welcome back.

However, Personnel found out about it and came down hard on the group.

Not just colleges and government agencies, but the workplace as well.

ITT: we complain about political correctness
 

I saw a suggestion on my intranet that we no longer refer to civil servants as civil servants because it's disrespectful to them. Despite them literally being civil servants

civil broz

What was the alternative to 'civil servants' on the intranet? lol

A guy I work with is probably on the cusp of losing his job over a tasteless(but not humorless) photo of a co-worker, which he posted on facebook with a witless caption. I doubt the co-worker has even seen it. That did not prevent the professionally-aggrieved types from making a stink about it.
The longer I live the less I like people.

As for the college-student "victims," they should leave for a less hostile environment and
they might even save a few $$. If they think Yale is a hostile place, they should just walk about 1/2 mile west of campus. Preferably around midnight.

To replies were refreshing. Maybe I'll post some.

After 250 years of institutionalized racism, this is the overcorrection you get.

Jerry Seinfeld says comedians avoid college gigs, students are ?so PC? | USA TODAY College

I have a better solution than censorship

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448024674

What if I'd rather be an asshole cause I dont give a shit about other people?

Not being a dick isn't a purely altruistic move. It improves the quality of society as a whole, and that pays back dividends.

It's a lack of awareness of that fundamental interconnectedness which I find most startling when I contemplate American society as compared to that of certain western European nations which I've had the pleasure of working in.

Delicate snowflake topic was covered in another forum and someone produced this article as reference:

« Generation Wuss » by Bret Easton Ellis | Vanity Fair

"Generation Wuss" so perfectly describes it it hurts. This is going to be my go to phrase from now on.

Don't call me a wuss, I am going to go tell your mommy that you were mean to me.

Quote from my friend.

"We never should have started the anti-bullying programs, made everyone such a fucking sissy. Bullying is good for kids, builds character"

What ever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Shit makes me really pissed off, I'm out :)

That's a fantastically perceptive and well-written article.

The fact that the author touches on Gen Wu naturally being the product of the Gen-Xers (my generation), and us being the products of our parents the boomers, makes me wonder, in an abstract sort of sense, what Gen Z is going to be like.

Will their parents coddle them in love and attention and essentially extend the Gen Wu phenomenon? Will Gen Z revolt against the narcissism and superficiality of their parents the way we did against the materialism of ours?

I sure as hell won't. (Or plan not to)

My gf and I have been talking about this lately. We grew up in kind of different families in this regard. My mom was very helicoptery and it got bad in college to a point where we stopped talking because all she would do was nag. She finally turned around and backed off, and our relationship has only improved.

On the other hand my gf's parents were very hands off, and she did everything like applying to college by herself, etc. I think she got lucky though and is very self motivated and organized, something I wasn't.

I have really bad ADHD (diagnosed when I was 8, in multiple environments, not just bad at school) and without being pushed and prodded I wouldn't be where I am today.

Somehow I turned out not to be a huge sissy though, and I'm not quite sure how they did it. I've always thought it was my dad. Grew up on a farm, never really went full hippy. He kept me working and doing manual labor, outdoors things, mechanicing, etc. Without him I'm pretty sure I would be a definite part of GenWu

I was raised in this sense... knives, bb guns etc when I was a kid. I plan on letting my kid do whatever, hopefully they'll listen to warning if something really will hurt them :dunno:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448041222

That was like my dad and mom.

Dad buys me a bb gun, mom returns it. Dad buys me a knife, "don't tell mom"

Not sure if they planned it like that but I think it kinda worked for me.

LOLed IRL @ "It's a sword. They're not meant to be safe."

I even give coworkers a warning as to what to expect when they approach my cube:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448042098

^That's great.

I think we should work on popularizing Generation Wu as a term for them.

Next thing you know, they're going to change the name of Rapeseed oil to something stupid like Canola oil, because using the word "Rape" in the name of a kitchen ingredient might be a "trigger" for some special snowflake (despite the fact that "rape" in this context, comes from the Latin word meaning "turnip.")


Oh, wait... Nevermind.


Canola oil used to be called RAPESEED oil but the name was changed for marketing reasons

I knew that. It was a marketing plan started in Canada. Canola the marketing combination of the words Canadian oil.

And in the US, "Dead End" streets have been renamed "no exit" because the old phrase has been used to describe lives going nowhere, but now the idiom could be offensive to people living on the actual street.

I just read a news article which talked about how a bunch of fat women are all up in arms about the fact that US retailer Abercrombie & Fitch does not sell clothes larger than womens' size 10. They accuse the retailer of being exclusionist, body-shaming, etc.


Now, I run into a similar problem all the time. It's really hard to find a store that stocks a decent variety of shoes in mens' size 14. But that's apparently OK, since being fat is a choice, whereas there's absolutely nothing I can do about the size of my feet.


Wait, what?

In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas

MARCH 21, 2015



KATHERINE BYRON, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims, free from anything that might prompt memories of trauma.

So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”

Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Not long after, Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Meanwhile, student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being “bombarded” by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints. Think of the safe space as the live-action version of the better-known trigger warning, a notice put on top of a syllabus or an assigned reading to alert students to the presence of potentially disturbing material.

Some people trace safe spaces back to the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s and 1970s, others to the gay and lesbian movement of the early 1990s. In most cases, safe spaces are innocuous gatherings of like-minded people who agree to refrain from ridicule, criticism or what they term microaggressions — subtle displays of racial or sexual bias — so that everyone can relax enough to explore the nuances of, say, a fluid gender identity. As long as all parties consent to such restrictions, these little islands of self-restraint seem like a perfectly fine idea.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448816339

But the notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer.

This logic clearly informed a campaign undertaken this fall by a Columbia University student group called Everyone Allied Against Homophobia that consisted of slipping a flier under the door of every dorm room on campus. The headline of the flier stated, “I want this space to be a safer space.” The text below instructed students to tape the fliers to their windows. The group’s vice president then had the flier published in the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, along with an editorial asserting that “making spaces safer is about learning how to be kind to each other.”

A junior named Adam Shapiro decided he didn’t want his room to be a safer space. He printed up his own flier calling it a dangerous space and had that, too, published in the Columbia Daily Spectator. “Kindness alone won’t allow us to gain more insight into truth,” he wrote. In an interview, Mr. Shapiro said, “If the point of a safe space is therapy for people who feel victimized by traumatization, that sounds like a great mission.” But a safe-space mentality has begun infiltrating classrooms, he said, making both professors and students loath to say anything that might hurt someone’s feelings. “I don’t see how you can have a therapeutic space that’s also an intellectual space,” he said.

I’m old enough to remember a time when college students objected to providing a platform to certain speakers because they were deemed politically unacceptable. Now students worry whether acts of speech or pieces of writing may put them in emotional peril. Two weeks ago, students at Northwestern University marched to protest an article by Laura Kipnis, a professor in the university’s School of Communication. Professor Kipnis had criticized — O.K., ridiculed — what she called the sexual paranoia pervading campus life.

The protesters carried mattresses and demanded that the administration condemn the essay. One student complained that Professor Kipnis was “erasing the very traumatic experience” of victims who spoke out. An organizer of the demonstration said, “we need to be setting aside spaces to talk” about “victim-blaming.” Last Wednesday, Northwestern’s president, Morton O. Schapiro, wrote an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal affirming his commitment to academic freedom. But plenty of others at universities are willing to dignify students’ fears, citing threats to their stability as reasons to cancel debates, disinvite commencement speakers and apologize for so-called mistakes.

At Oxford University’s Christ Church college in November, the college censors (a “censor” being more or less the Oxford equivalent of an undergraduate dean) canceled a debate on abortion after campus feminists threatened to disrupt it because both would-be debaters were men. “I’m relieved the censors have made this decision,” said the treasurer of Christ Church’s student union, who had pressed for the cancellation. “It clearly makes the most sense for the safety — both physical and mental — of the students who live and work in Christ Church.”

A year and a half ago, a Hampshire College student group disinvited an Afrofunk band that had been attacked on social media for having too many white musicians; the vitriolic discussion had made students feel “unsafe.”

Last fall, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, apologized for causing students and faculty to be “hurt” when she failed to object to a racial epithet uttered by a fellow panel member at an alumnae event in New York. The offender was the free-speech advocate Wendy Kaminer, who had been arguing against the use of the euphemism “the n-word” when teaching American history or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In the uproar that followed, the Student Government Association wrote a letter declaring that “if Smith is unsafe for one student, it is unsafe for all students.”

“It’s amazing to me that they can’t distinguish between racist speech and speech about racist speech, between racism and discussions of racism,” Ms. Kaminer said in an email.

The confusion is telling, though. It shows that while keeping college-level discussions “safe” may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else. People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them?

Only a few of the students want stronger anti-hate-speech codes. Mostly they ask for things like mandatory training sessions and stricter enforcement of existing rules. Still, it’s disconcerting to see students clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls. Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals — mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. This new bureaucracy may be exacerbating students’ “self-infantilization,” as Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College, suggested in an essay for Inside Higher Ed.

But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”

Another reason students resort to the quasi-medicalized terminology of trauma is that it forces administrators to respond. Universities are in a double bind. They’re required by two civil-rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to ensure that their campuses don’t create a “hostile environment” for women and other groups subject to harassment. However, universities are not supposed to go too far in suppressing free speech, either. If a university cancels a talk or punishes a professor and a lawsuit ensues, history suggests that the university will lose. But if officials don’t censure or don’t prevent speech that may inflict psychological damage on a member of a protected class, they risk fostering a hostile environment and prompting an investigation. As a result, students who say they feel unsafe are more likely to be heard than students who demand censorship on other grounds.

The theory that vulnerable students should be guaranteed psychological security has roots in a body of legal thought elaborated in the 1980s and 1990s and still read today. Feminist and anti-racist legal scholars argued that the First Amendment should not safeguard language that inflicted emotional injury through racist or sexist stigmatization. One scholar, Mari J. Matsuda, was particularly insistent that college students not be subjected to “the violence of the word” because many of them “are away from home for the first time and at a vulnerable stage of psychological development.” If they’re targeted and the university does nothing to help them, they will be “left to their own resources in coping with the damage wrought.” That might have, she wrote, “lifelong repercussions.”

Perhaps. But Ms. Matsuda doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that insulating students could also make them, well, insular. A few weeks ago, Zineb El Rhazoui, a journalist at Charlie Hebdo, spoke at the University of Chicago, protected by the security guards she has traveled with since supporters of the Islamic State issued death threats against her. During the question-and-answer period, a Muslim student stood up to object to the newspaper’s apparent disrespect for Muslims and to express her dislike of the phrase “I am Charlie.”

Ms. El Rhazoui replied, somewhat irritably, “Being Charlie Hebdo means to die because of a drawing,” and not everyone has the guts to do that (although she didn’t use the word guts). She lives under constant threat, Ms. El Rhazoui said. The student answered that she felt threatened, too.

A few days later, a guest editorialist in the student newspaper took Ms. El Rhazoui to task. She had failed to ensure “that others felt safe enough to express dissenting opinions.” Ms. El Rhazoui’s “relative position of power,” the writer continued, had granted her a “free pass to make condescending attacks on a member of the university.” In a letter to the editor, the president and the vice president of the University of Chicago French Club, which had sponsored the talk, shot back, saying, “El Rhazoui is an immigrant, a woman, Arab, a human-rights activist who has known exile, and a journalist living in very real fear of death. She was invited to speak precisely because her right to do so is, quite literally, under threat.”

You’d be hard-pressed to avoid the conclusion that the student and her defender had burrowed so deep inside their cocoons, were so overcome by their own fragility, that they couldn’t see that it was Ms. El Rhazoui who was in need of a safer space.

Judith Shulevitz is a contributing opinion writer and the author of “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/op...deas.html?_r=0

This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!

Dr. Everett Piper, President

Oklahoma Wesleyan University

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university!

http://www.okwu.edu/blog/2015/11/thi...-a-university/

College is the last place that should be a ‘safe space': A voice of protest against student protests

By Hannah Oh, Steven Glick and Taylor Schmitt November 16

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448934499
Steven Glick, publisher; Hannah Oh, editor-in-chief; and Taylor Schmitt, managing editor of the Claremont Independent, the right-leaning publication of the Claremont colleges.


Students are protesting at campuses across the country, more fervently than ever in the wake of demonstrations at the University of Missouri that forced the resignations of the university system president and the chancellor last week.

At Claremont McKenna College, students who have been raising awareness about race issues on campus presented a list of demands to the president Wednesday, including asking the dean of students to step down. One particular objection centered around an e-mail the dean, Mary Spellman, sent to a Latina student pledging to work with those who don’t fit the “CMC mold,” a phrase her opponents echoed in angry protests. On Thursday, Spellman resigned.

The president of the junior class, Kris Brackmann, resigned after another student posted a photo of her with a group wearing Halloween costumes many found offensive, including two blond women wearing stereotypical Mexican sombreros and giant black mustaches; the student wrote in her post that this exemplified what people of color are faced with on the campus. (Brackmann was not in a sombrero; she was wearing a costume drawn from a Justin Bieber video.)

As protests continued, three students sent an alternative message. Hannah Oh is the editor-in-chief, Steven Glick is the publisher, and Taylor Schmitt is the managing editor of the Claremont Independent, the right-leaning publication of the Claremont colleges.

Oh is a senior at Claremont McKenna College, and Glick and Schmitt are juniors at Pomona College, one of the other member institutions of the Claremont University Consortium. “We try to fill in the gaps in campus dialogue that are left by the overwhelmingly progressive political atmosphere on campus,” they wrote.

Here is their take on the protests at Claremont McKenna, excerpts from an opinion piece titled, “We dissent” which ran in the Claremont Independent:



By Hannah Oh, Steven Glick and Taylor Schmitt

The student protests that have swept through Claremont McKenna College (CMC) over the past few days—and the ensuing fallout—have made us disappointed in many of those involved.

First, former Dean Mary Spellman. We are sorry that your career had to end this way, as the email in contention was a clear case of good intentions being overlooked because of poor phrasing. However, we are disappointed in you as well.

We are disappointed that you allowed a group of angry students to bully you into resignation.

We are disappointed that you taught Claremont students that reacting with emotion and anger will force the administration to act.

… We are disappointed that you and President [Hiram] Chodosh put up with students yelling and swearing at you for an hour. You could have made this a productive dialogue, but instead you humored the students and allowed them to get caught up in the furor.

Above all, we are disappointed that you and President Chodosh weren’t brave enough to come to the defense of a student who was told she was “derailing” because her opinions regarding racism didn’t align with those of the mob around her.

… These protesters were asking you to protect your students, but you didn’t even defend the one who needed to be protected right in front of you.

Second, President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” …

[That] only further reinforced the fear among the student body to speak out against this movement. We needed your leadership more than ever this week, and you failed us miserably.

Third, [the president of student government] …. we are disappointed in you for the manner in which you called for the resignation of junior class president Kris Brackmann and for so quickly caving in to the demands of a few students without consulting the student body as a whole. …

We are disappointed that you did not allow for any time for reflection before making your quick executive decisions to announce a student-wide endorsement of this movement and to grant these students a temporary “safe space” in the [student government] offices.

To our fellow Claremont students, we are disappointed in you as well.

We are ashamed of you for trying to end someone’s career over a poorly worded email. This is not a political statement––this is a person’s livelihood that you so carelessly sought to destroy.

We are disappointed that you chose to scream and swear at your administrators.

That is not how adults solve problems, and your behavior reflects poorly on all of us here in Claremont. This is not who we are and this is not how we conduct ourselves, but this is the image of us that has now reached the national stage.

We are disappointed in your demands. If you want to take a class in “ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory,” feel free to take one, but don’t force such an ideologically driven course on all CMC students. …

And though it wouldn’t hurt to have a more diverse faculty, the demand that CMC increase the number of minority faculty members either rests on the assumption that CMC has a history of discriminating against qualified professors of color, or, more realistically, it advocates for the hiring of less qualified faculty based simply on the fact that they belong to marginalized groups. A hiring practice of this sort would not benefit any CMC students, yourselves included.

We are disappointed in the fact that your movement has successfully managed to convince its members that anyone who dissents does so not for intelligent reasons, but due to moral failure or maliciousness.

We are disappointed that you’ve used phrases like “silence is violence” to not only demonize those who oppose you, but all who are not actively supporting you.

We are most disappointed, however, in the rhetoric surrounding “safe spaces.”

College is the last place that should be a safe space. We come here to learn about views that differ from our own, and if we aren’t made to feel uncomfortable by these ideas, then perhaps we aren’t venturing far enough outside of our comfort zone.

We would be doing ourselves a disservice to ignore viewpoints solely on the grounds that they may make us uncomfortable, and we would not be preparing ourselves to cope well with adversity in the future.

Dealing with ideas that make us uncomfortable is an important part of growing as students and as people, and your ideas will inhibit opportunities for that growth. …

Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence.

We are not racist for having different opinions.

We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement.

We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked.

We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...dent-protests/

:likecat::likecat::likecat:

Open rambling letter to weak Millennials:

Stop whining. Harden the fuck up. You being a pussy doesn't mean the rest of the world is full of "haters". It just means you are a coddled pussy woefully unprepared to deal with the world on its terms. And the world will be dictating its terms to you, not the other way around. Your parents have failed you if you need a "safe space." The world will devour you and shit you out on the pavement because you are weak-minded and unable to find resilience within. You are destined to be the 40 year old residing within your mother's basement, cowering behind your fortress of participation trophies. Rabbits and sheep have their place in the food chain right along side you. Rest assured you will be devoured by those better equipped for survival.

For thin-skinned students, we have nobody to blame but ourselves
By Kathleen Parker Opinion writer November 24


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1448994973
Students stage a sit-in at Georgetown University on Nov. 13 in solidarity with other student protests around the country.



It would be easy to call protesting college students crybabies and brats for pitching hissy fits over hurt feelings, but this likely would lead to such torrents of tearful tribulation that the nation’s university system would have to shut down for a prolonged period of grief counseling.

Besides, it would be insensitive.

Instead, let me be the first to say: it’s not the students’ fault. These serial tantrums are direct results of our Everybody Gets a Trophy culture and an educational system that, for the most part, no longer teaches a core curriculum, including history, government and the Bill of Rights.

The students simply don’t know any better.

This isn’t necessarily to excuse them. Everyone has a choice whether to ignore a perceived slight — or to form a posse. But as with any problem, it helps to understand its source. The disease, I fear, was auto-induced with the zealous pampering of the American child that began a few decades ago.

The first sign of the epidemic of sensitivity we’re witnessing was when parents and teachers were instructed never to tell Johnny that he’s a “bad boy,” but that he’s “acting” like a bad boy.

Next, Johnny was handed a blue ribbon along with everyone else on the team even though he didn’t deserve one. This had the opposite effect of what was intended. Rather than protecting Johnny’s fragile self-esteem, the prize undermined Johnny’s faith in his own perceptions and judgment. It robbed him of his ability to pick himself up when he fell and to be brave, honest and hardy in the face of adversity.

Self-esteem is earned, not bestowed.

Today’s campuses are overrun with little Johnnys, their female counterparts and their adult enablers. How will we ever find enough fainting couches?

Lest anyone feel slighted so soon, this is also not to diminish the pain of racism (or sexism, ageism, blondism or whatever -ism gets one’s tear ducts moistened). But nothing reported on campuses the past several weeks rises to the level of the coerced resignations of a university chancellor and president.

The affronts that prompted students to demand the resignations include: a possibly off-campus, drive-by racial epithet apparently aimed at the student body president; another racial epithet , hurled by a drunk white student; a swastika drawn with feces in a dorm restroom.

Someone certainly deserves a spanking — or psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud had plenty to say about people who play with the products of their alimentary canal.

But do such events mean that students have been neglected, as protesters have charged? Or that the school tolerates racism?

Concurrent with these episodes of outrage is the recent surge on campuses of “trigger warnings” in syllabuses to alert students to content that might be upsetting, and “safe spaces ” where students can seek refuge when ideas make them uncomfortable. It seems absurd to have to mention that the purpose of higher education is to be challenged, to be exposed to different views and, above all, to be exhilarated by the exercise of free speech — other people’s as well as one’s own.

The marketplace of ideas is not for sissies, in other words. And it would appear that knowledge, the curse of the enlightened, is not for everyone.

The latter is meant to be an observation, but on many college campuses today, it seems to be an operating principle. A recent survey of 1,100 colleges and universities found that only 18 percent require American history or government, where such foundational premises as the First Amendment might be explained and understood.

The survey, by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, assesses schools according to whether they have at least one required course in composition, foreign language at the intermediate level, American government or history, economics, science, mathematics and literature. Coincidentally, the very institutions where students are dominating what passes for debate also scored among the worst: Missouri, D; Yale, C; Dartmouth, C; and Princeton, C — all for requiring only one or a few of the subjects. Amherst scored an F for requiring none of them.

Such is the world we’ve created for young people who soon enough will discover that the world doesn’t much care about their tender feelings. But before such harsh realities knock them off their ponies, we might hope that they redirect their anger. They have every right to despise the coddling culture that ill prepared them for life and an educational system that has failed to teach them what they need to know.

Weep for them — and us.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...a97_story.html

Spare the rod and spoil the child. These brats need a good spanking.

Friend and I were discussing this earlier. We need to start pro bullying rallies. Bring back bullying. Not the beat up nerds in the locker room bullying, but the name calling, eye for an eye, good old fashioned bullying.

I suspect that quite a few spankings will be gotten shortly after they leave school and have to confront the world. Work is supposed to suck - that's why they have to pay us. But not working can suck worse, especially if Mom and Dad can't carry you indefinitely. Sadly for the brats, it will be a hard lesson coming way too late.

just placing guessing on the next NFC-E rivalry game:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1449076304


i took this pic so when i change all the score guesses to a draw (since there's no losers in life), ill remember them.

Our remote interrogation software was recently updated. It apparently no longer interrogates Master/Slave devices, but Parent/Child ones

How long until orphans complain?

Had to check, apparently I'm a Millenial since I was born in '82 all the way up to 2004 as the last birth year.

Given how much society has changed just in my lifetime, that seems like a pretty large gap to include. I didn't experience participation trophies, crazy leftist college professors trying to make me Sual Alinsky Jr, or many other of the crybaby whiny crap associated with that term.

Now that I'm single again, I find I can barely even hold a conversation with a woman that is 10 years younger me. The self-absorbed, uniformed (college grads too) people I meet truly make me wish for a modern plague.

I'm afraid that in another 20 years even the French will think of America as a bunch of pussies.

I've recently been having a similar conversation with an old high school friend of mine down in FL. The conversation began a couple of weeks ago, prior to this thread, and it wasn't really deliberate, just sort of happened.

She was a schoolteacher for about 10 years at the elementary (primary) grade levels. Nowadays, she's some kind of fancy program manager in the county school system. Today's college freshmen were her third-graders ten years ago, so she's probably in a pretty good position to objectively analyze the situation and provide context.

Excerpts of chat follow. Blue is me, red is her.

I am happy to have Joe on the forum.

So, I recently came upon this article. I'll post the article in toto first, and then discuss subsequently. I've highlighted the one passage which I found redeeming.


Can colleges protect free speech while also curbing voices of hate?

By Nick Anderson and Susan Svrluga November 10

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1449333674
A member of the black student protest group Concerned Student 1950 addresses a crowd at the University of Missouri in Columbia after the announcement Monday that system President Tim Wolfe would resign. (Jeff Roberson/AP)

College campuses across the country have plunged into an intense debate that pits free-speech advocates against those who want to rein in insults, slurs and other offensive expressions.

Student uprisings at Yale, the University of Missouri and elsewhere show a passionate desire to confront racism and bigotry in all its forms, from the disgustingly overt — a fecal swastika smeared on a bathroom wall in Columbia, Mo. — to the subtle or even unintentional offenses known as “micro-aggressions.”

But the drive to combat hurtful and hateful speech is colliding in some places with principles that educators have long held dear: freedom of speech and academic expression. Universities are struggling to strike a balance as they seek to foster a climate that is at once tolerant of racial and cultural differences but also unafraid of a robust clash of viewpoints.

“Every college president faces a challenge in creating a welcoming and productive environment but at the same time encouraging the free exchange of ideas,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. “A lot of ideas can be very unwelcoming. How you handle those is something that a lot of people worry about.”

On Tuesday evening, Yale officials addressed the debate head-on. They told the university community that they embrace the school’s diversity and want to ensure that all groups are treated with respect. But they also emphasized the centrality of speech on the Ivy League campus.

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/20...EeW-ixri5PUPdg
Yale students march in New Haven, Conn., on Monday in solidarity with minority students who are decrying racism on campus. (Isaac Stanley-Becker/For The Washington Post)


“We also affirm Yale’s bedrock principle of the freedom to speak and be heard, without fear of intimidation, threats, or harm, and we renew our commitment to this freedom not as a special exception for unpopular or controversial ideas but for them especially,” Yale President Peter Salovey wrote in a joint statement with a dean.

Many academics are heartened that students from minority groups feel emboldened to speak out forcefully against indignities they have suffered quietly for generations. The abrupt resignation Monday of the University of Missouri System’s president — amid pressure from civil rights protests over his response to troubling racial incidents at the school — showed the surging power of these student voices.

Derald Wing Sue, a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College at Columbia University, said events in Missouri showed the results of students’ pent-up frustration at having to routinely endure insulting expressions of bias. “It is cumulative,” Sue said. “Years of being discriminated against, being fatigued and tired of having to take it.” A racial epithet or a swastika, in that environment, he said, can be “the match, the spark, that creates the explosion.”

Others fear that colleges are jeopardizing freedom of expression, including the freedom to make verbal mistakes, a core academic value. Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said he worries about a rising tendency toward censorship on campus. Shibley cited the rapid expulsion of two University of Oklahoma students in March after they participated in a fraternity’s racist chant, captured on a video that went viral online.

“Anytime someone is punished for pure expression, that is an attack on the principles of free speech,” Shibley said. “It’s not the government’s job to pick what speech is good and what speech is bad. We’ve always said the remedy for bad speech is more speech.”

University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh faced a similar situation in March when the school learned about a racist, sexist e-mail a student had sent to members of his fraternity. Loh met with the student, and accepted his apology and decision to leave school for the semester. But Loh and other U-Md. officials concluded that the e-mail, “while hateful and reprehensible, did not violate university policies and is protected by the First Amendment.”

Loh asked the community to forgive the student and start a dialogue to improve the campus climate in College Park.

“We have a responsibility to advance the values that define a community,” Loh said Tuesday. “We have to take affirmative steps in education and outreach before these incidents happen.”

Schools nationwide, public and private, have grappled recently with controversies about speech and expression. Some critics wonder whether colleges have become too politically correct, obsessed with preventing “micro-aggressions” and promoting “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” — a view expressed in a recent article in the Atlantic headlined “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign last year rescinded a job offer to a professor, Steven Salaita, after critics took offense at the tone of comments he made about Israel on Twitter. The American Association of University Professors later censured the school for breaching principles of academic freedom.

Williams College in Massachusetts was roiled last month after a student club, called Uncomfortable Learning, invited author Suzanne Venker to speak. Many students objected, citing what they saw as Venker’s rejection of feminism. Reaction was so intense that students canceled the event, concerned for her safety. A student then reinvited her, but she declined.

At Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the student newspaper, the Wesleyan Argus, faced a sharp backlash in September after publishing an opinion piece critical of the tactics of the Black Lives Matter movement. The student government later took steps toward cutting the newspaper’s budget for next year.

Rebecca Brill, the twice-weekly paper’s co-editor-in-chief, said she drew two lessons from the episode: that student journalists must listen closely to their community if their work causes an uproar and that free speech is essential to the dialogue.

“This is clearly a nuanced issue,” Brill said. “I would never want to be totally blind to the hurt that the op-ed caused some students.” But the 21-year-old senior from New York added that the piece spawned “interesting and productive” conversations on campus.

“It is a dangerous precedent to try to silence a voice you don’t agree with,” Brill said. “We need to be able to say what we think about issues we’ve given thought to.”

Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan’s president, declared support for free speech after the episode.

“The institution has to protect people against attack that causes harm,” Roth told The Washington Post. “But it should never protect people against ideas that are difficult to digest.”

At Yale, two recent incidents touched off protests late last week. Students alleged that fraternity brothers turned black women away from a party, saying, “White girls only,” a claim the fraternity’s president has denied. The university is investigating the incident.

And a faculty member who lives in one of Yale’s residential colleges wrote an e-mail raising questions about a message from school officials that urged students to consider whether their Halloween costumes might offend someone by stereotyping a culture or race.

“I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation,” wrote Erika Christakis, an early-childhood educator. She is the wife of Nicholas Christakis, the Silliman College master. She added: “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

The two defended the e-mail later on social media, but their comparisons to debates about free speech and “trigger warnings” only made students angrier.

Many students gathered outside the main library to write messages in chalk. When the first black dean of Yale College walked up, they surrounded him in a remarkable, sometimes tearful, sometimes angry conversation, with the crowd swelling to more than 100. The dean, Jonathan Holloway, mostly listened. The next day, he sent an e-mail that read, in part: “Remember that Yale belongs to all of you, and you all deserve the right to enjoy the good of this place, without worry, without threats, and without intimidation.

“I don’t expect Yale to be a place free from disagreements or even intense argument; I expect you to disagree on a wide range of issues. In so many ways, this is the purpose of our institution: to teach us how to ask difficult questions about even our most sacrosanct ideas.”

At Missouri, protesters angered by racist, anti-gay and anti-Semitic incidents on campus — and what they felt was an inadequate response from administrators — exerted enough pressure to force the system’s president, Tim Wolfe, to resign Monday. Within hours, the chancellor of the Columbia flagship, R. Bowen Loftin, stepped down as well.

On Tuesday night, the campus reeled from posts on Yik Yak, a social-media app, which included a threat to black students and a post that read, “Well tomorrow Mizzou will really make national news.” MUAlert, the university’s online emergency information center, released a statement saying that the university “is aware of social media threats and has increased security.”

Earlier Tuesday, the campus police sent a message to all students urging them to report immediately all “hateful and/or hurtful speech or actions” they see.

“While cases of hateful and hurtful speech are not crimes,” the message said, if the people involved are students, the university can discipline them.

While many people celebrated the chance to change campus culture and send a strong message that bigotry would not be tolerated, others wondered where and how the line would be drawn for unacceptable speech.

“In the U.S., it is not a crime to be a racist moron. So the university cannot punish students simply for being bigoted,” said Ben Trachtenberg, an associate law professor at Missouri who agrees with the protesters that there are some real problems with race on campus. “So it does create some tension when people say things that are both entitled to First Amendment protection and extremely hurtful. The line between mere bigotry and actual harassment and threats is not always obvious.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...eee_story.html

Apart from the one passage which I highlighted above, I'm offended by the fundamental tenor of the article (see, straight white cisgendered males can be offended, too). In exploring whether "hate speech" can be curbed while still protecting "free speech", the article adopts a fundamental assumption that "hate speech" ought to be curbed in the first place.

This is distressing.


What troubles me especially is that, in recent years, I found myself AGREEING with the ACLU from time to time. When I was a kid, the ACLU was an organization which was portrayed as being stout defenders of socialism, which was a not entirely unwarranted depiction. So to find that they are increasingly becoming the clearest and most rational voice in an increasingly muddled debate strikes me as the tipping point into a sort of bizarro-world.

Here is why I way that. The Tl;DR version is that while the ACLU might not agree with what you have to say, they will apparently defend your right to say it.




HATE SPEECH ON CAMPUS
Many universities, under pressure to respond to the concerns of those who are the objects of hate, have adopted codes or policies prohibiting speech that offends any group based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

That's the wrong response, well-meaning or not. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content. Speech codes adopted by government-financed state colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. And the ACLU believes that all campuses should adhere to First Amendment principles because academic freedom is a bedrock of education in a free society.

How much we value the right of free speech is put to its severest test when the speaker is someone we disagree with most. Speech that deeply offends our morality or is hostile to our way of life warrants the same constitutional protection as other speech because the right of free speech is indivisible: When one of us is denied this right, all of us are denied. Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has fought for the free expression of all ideas, popular or unpopular. That's the constitutional mandate.

Where racist, sexist and homophobic speech is concerned, the ACLU believes that more speech -- not less -- is the best revenge. This is particularly true at universities, whose mission is to facilitate learning through open debate and study, and to enlighten. Speech codes are not the way to go on campuses, where all views are entitled to be heard, explored, supported or refuted. Besides, when hate is out in the open, people can see the problem. Then they can organize effectively to counter bad attitudes, possibly change them, and forge solidarity against the forces of intolerance.

College administrators may find speech codes attractive as a quick fix, but as one critic put it: "Verbal purity is not social change." Codes that punish bigoted speech treat only the symptom: The problem itself is bigotry. The ACLU believes that instead of opting for gestures that only appear to cure the disease, universities have to do the hard work of recruitment to increase faculty and student diversity; counseling to raise awareness about bigotry and its history, and changing curricula to institutionalize more inclusive approaches to all subject matter.



QUESTIONS

Q: I just can't understand why the ACLU defends free speech for racists, sexists, homophobes and other bigots. Why tolerate the promotion of intolerance?

A: Free speech rights are indivisible. Restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone's rights because the same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. Conversely, laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend the rights of civil rights workers, anti-war protesters, lesbian and gay activists and others fighting for justice. For example, in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago, the ACLU successfully defended an ex-Catholic priest who had delivered a racist and anti-semitic speech. The precedent set in that case became the basis for the ACLU's successful defense of civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and '70s.

The indivisibility principle was also illustrated in the case of Neo-Nazis whose right to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1979 was successfully defended by the ACLU. At the time, then ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier, whose relatives died in Hitler's concentration camps during World War II, commented: "Keeping a few Nazis off the streets of Skokie will serve Jews poorly if it means that the freedoms to speak, publish or assemble any place in the United States are thereby weakened."

Q: I have the impression that the ACLU spends more time and money defending the rights of bigots than supporting the victims of bigotry!!??

A: Not so. Only a handful of the several thousand cases litigated by the national ACLU and its affiliates every year involves offensive speech. Most of the litigation, advocacy and public education work we do preserves or advances the constitutional rights of ordinary people. But it's important to understand that the fraction of our work that does involve people who've engaged in bigoted and hurtful speech is very important:

Defending First Amendment rights for the enemies of civil liberties and civil rights means defending it for you and me.

Q: Aren't some kinds of communication not protected under the First Amendment, like "fighting words?"

A: The U.S. Supreme Court did rule in 1942, in a case called Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, that intimidating speech directed at a specific individual in a face-to-face confrontation amounts to "fighting words," and that the person engaging in such speech can be punished if "by their very utterance [the words] inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." Say, a white student stops a black student on campus and utters a racial slur. In that one-on-one confrontation, which could easily come to blows, the offending student could be disciplined under the "fighting words" doctrine for racial harassment.

Over the past 50 years, however, the Court hasn't found the "fighting words" doctrine applicable in any of the hate speech cases that have come before it, since the incidents involved didn't meet the narrow criteria stated above. Ignoring that history, the folks who advocate campus speech codes try to stretch the doctrine's application to fit words or symbols that cause discomfort, offense or emotional pain.

Q: What about nonverbal symbols, like swastikas and burning crosses -- are they constitutionally protected?

A: Symbols of hate are constitutionally protected if they're worn or displayed before a general audience in a public place -- say, in a march or at a rally in a public park. But the First Amendment doesn't protect the use of nonverbal symbols to encroach upon, or desecrate, private property, such as burning a cross on someone's lawn or spray-painting a swastika on the wall of a synagogue or dorm.

In its 1992 decision in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a city ordinance that prohibited cross-burnings based on their symbolism, which the ordinance said makes many people feel "anger, alarm or resentment." Instead of prosecuting the cross-burner for the content of his act, the city government could have rightfully tried him under criminal trespass and/or harassment laws.

The Supreme Court has ruled that symbolic expression, whether swastikas, burning crosses or, for that matter, peace signs, is protected by the First Amendment because it's "closely akin to 'pure speech.'" That phrase comes from a landmark 1969 decision in which the Court held that public school students could wear black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War. And in another landmark ruling, in 1989, the Court upheld the right of an individual to burn the American flag in public as a symbolic expression of disagreement with government policies.

Q: Aren't speech codes on college campuses an effective way to combat bias against people of color, women and gays?

A: Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. For one thing, depending on how they're interpreted and enforced, they can actually work against the interests of the people they were ostensibly created to protect. Why? Because the ultimate power to decide what speech is offensive and to whom rests with the authorities -- the government or a college administration -- not with those who are the alleged victims of hate speech.

In Great Britain, for example, a Racial Relations Act was adopted in 1965 to outlaw racist defamation. But throughout its existence, the Act has largely been used to persecute activists of color, trade unionists and anti-nuclear protesters, while the racists -- often white members of Parliament -- have gone unpunished.

Similarly, under a speech code in effect at the University of Michigan for 18 months, white students in 20 cases charged black students with offensive speech. One of the cases resulted in the punishment of a black student for using the term "white trash" in conversation with a white student. The code was struck down as unconstitutional in 1989 and, to date, the ACLU has brought successful legal challenges against speech codes at the Universities of Connecticut, Michigan and Wisconsin.

These examples demonstrate that speech codes don't really serve the interests of persecuted groups. The First Amendment does. As one African American educator observed: "I have always felt as a minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights of any persons, we'll be next."

Q: But don't speech codes send a strong message to campus bigots, telling them their views are unacceptable?

A: Bigoted speech is symptomatic of a huge problem in our country; it is not the problem itself. Everybody, when they come to college, brings with them the values, biases and assumptions they learned while growing up in society, so it's unrealistic to think that punishing speech is going to rid campuses of the attitudes that gave rise to the speech in the first place. Banning bigoted speech won't end bigotry, even if it might chill some of the crudest expressions. The mindset that produced the speech lives on and may even reassert itself in more virulent forms.

Speech codes, by simply deterring students from saying out loud what they will continue to think in private, merely drive biases underground where they can't be addressed. In 1990, when Brown University expelled a student for shouting racist epithets one night on the campus, the institution accomplished nothing in the way of exposing the bankruptcy of racist ideas.

Q: Does the ACLU make a distinction between speech and conduct?

A: Yes. The ACLU believes that hate speech stops being just speech and becomes conduct when it targets a particular individual, and when it forms a pattern of behavior that interferes with a student's ability to exercise his or her right to participate fully in the life of the university.

The ACLU isn't opposed to regulations that penalize acts of violence, harassment or intimidation, and invasions of privacy. On the contrary, we believe that kind of conduct should be punished. Furthermore, the ACLU recognizes that the mere presence of speech as one element in an act of violence, harassment, intimidation or privacy invasion doesn't immunize that act from punishment. For example, threatening, bias-inspired phone calls to a student's dorm room, or white students shouting racist epithets at a woman of color as they follow her across campus -- these are clearly punishable acts.

Several universities have initiated policies that both support free speech and counter discriminatory conduct. Arizona State, for example, formed a "Campus Environment Team" that acts as an education, information and referral service. The team of specially trained faculty, students and administrators works to foster an environment in which discriminatory harassment is less likely to occur, while also safeguarding academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Q: Well, given that speech codes are a threat to the First Amendment, and given the importance of equal opportunity in education, what type of campus policy on hate speech would the ACLU support?

A: The ACLU believes that the best way to combat hate speech on campus is through an educational approach that includes counter-speech, workshops on bigotry and its role in American and world history, and real -- not superficial -- institutional change.

Universities are obligated to create an environment that fosters tolerance and mutual respect among members of the campus community, an environment in which all students can exercise their right to participate fully in campus life without being discriminated against. Campus administrators on the highest level should, therefore,

• speak out loudly and clearly against expressions of racist, sexist, homophobic and other bias, and react promptly and firmly to acts of discriminatory harassment;
• create forums and workshops to raise awareness and promote dialogue on issues of race, sex and sexual orientation;
• intensify their efforts to recruit members of racial minorities on student, faculty and administrative levels;
• and reform their institutions' curricula to reflect the diversity of peoples and cultures that have contributed to human knowledge and society, in the United States and throughout the world.

https://www.aclu.org/hate-speech-campus

1990 birth here, Can't agree more.



My generation is one of children. It is extremely difficult to actually converse with someone. The only people I find worth being around, are those from single parent working homes who grew up poor. They actually had to work to achieve. They needed to make due, and figure out how to be an adult. So much whining and complaining, constantly wanting praise and validation for no accomplishments. Blaming others for literally every problem.

I work as a mechanic, and watching the "life cycles" of our oil-changers is mind-blowing.

They're so tired, can barely work. "Oh, I can clock-out for lunch?" Up and off they are, nearly skipping. No work but the bare minimum. Bitching about money when they blow it all on bullshit, yet they have basically no tools. Hell, I'm sick of giving ANYONE anything anymore. "Having a 3 year old at home makes it tough to buy more tools". Abortions are cheap, so is birth control or at least pulling out. :jerkit:



As for women, it's even worse. They still have the minds of high-school girls. Except now they're fat, or got knocked up with no baby-daddy in the picture, with a cashier job and no plans for anything else. :vash:

Not if the reactions come mostly from white "liberals" who have turned feigned outrage into a sport rather than the purportedly offended minorities.

All these cries of microaggressions of "sexism" and "racism" have trivialized actual cases or rape and real racism. They're crying wolf.

Reminds me of the dragnet surveillance the gov't likes to do on everyone, instead of actual old-fashioned targeted police work. The former didn't stop any of the recent shootings/attacks.

^ This.

I'm honestly surprised that no one has yet gotten up and denounced the fact that the meaning of the word "rape" has been effectively diluted by its use to describe all manner of conflicts, many of which involve no actual sexual contact of any kind.

Moving on...

The President of Northwestern University has decreed that racial segregation on campus is perfectly ok, provided that the people creating and enforcing the segregation are members of a minority group.

Weren't whites a minority in South Africa during the Apartheid era? I guess that made it ok.


I’m Northwestern’s president. Here’s why safe spaces for students are important.

By Morton Schapiro January 15

Morton Schapiro is president of Northwestern University.


College presidents have always received a lot of mail. But these days we get more than ever. Much of it relates to student unrest, and most of the messages are unpleasant.

Our usual practice is to thank the sender for writing and leave it at that. The combination of receiving more than 100 emails and letters a day and recognizing that the purpose of many writers is to rebuke, rather than discuss, leaves us little choice about how to respond.

But that certainly doesn’t mean we don’t think long and hard about the issues being raised. Some writers ask why our campus is so focused on how “black lives matter.” Others express a mixture of curiosity and rage about microaggressions and trigger warnings. And finally, what about those oft-criticized “safe spaces”? On this last topic, here are two stories. The first was told to me privately by another institution’s president, and the second takes place at my institution, Northwestern University.

A group of black students were having lunch together in a campus dining hall. There were a couple of empty seats, and two white students asked if they could join them. One of the black students asked why, in light of empty tables nearby. The reply was that these students wanted to stretch themselves by engaging in the kind of uncomfortable learning the college encourages. The black students politely said no. Is this really so scandalous?

I find two aspects of this story to be of particular interest.

First, the familiar question is “Why do the black students eat together in the cafeteria?” I think I have some insight on this based on 16 years of living on or near a college campus: Many groups eat together in the cafeteria, but people seem to notice only when the students are black. Athletes often eat with athletes; fraternity and sorority members with their Greek brothers and sisters; a cappella group members with fellow singers; actors with actors; marching band members with marching band members; and so on.

And that brings me to the second aspect: We all deserve safe spaces. Those black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace. There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn’t one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn’t have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place.

Now for the story from Northwestern. For more than four decades, we have had a building on campus called the Black House, a space specifically meant to be a center for black student life. This summer some well-intentioned staff members suggested that we place one of our multicultural offices there. The pushback from students, and especially alumni, was immediate and powerful. It wasn’t until I attended a listening session that I fully understood why. One black alumna from the 1980s said that she and her peers had fought to keep a house of their own on campus. While the black community should always have an important voice in multicultural activities on campus, she said, we should put that office elsewhere, leaving a small house with a proud history as a safe space exclusively for blacks.

A recent white graduate agreed. She argued that everyone needed a safe space and that for her, as a Jew, it had been the Hillel house. She knew that when she was there, she could relax and not worry about being interrogated by non-Jews about Israeli politics or other concerns. So why is the Black House an issue in the eyes of some alumni who write saying that we should integrate all of our students into a single community rather than isolate them into groups? I have never gotten a single note questioning the presence of Hillel, of our Catholic Center or any of the other safe spaces on campus.

I’m an economist, not a sociologist or psychologist, but those experts tell me that students don’t fully embrace uncomfortable learning unless they are themselves comfortable. Safe spaces provide that comfort. The irony, it seems, is that the best hope we have of creating an inclusive community is to first create spaces where members of each group feel safe.

I suspect this commentary will generate even more mail than usual. Let me just say in advance, thanks for writing.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...18d_story.html

I suggest "Whites only" signs on the rest of the buildings. Segregation is okay if everyone can do it.

Upon re-reading the above article, one paragraph towards the end sticks out:
My own personal experience has been that houses of worship, and in particular those of Judeo-Christian leaning, tend to be incredibly inclusive. So long as you're not carrying a bomb, nobody is going to care (or even notice) that a protestant enters a Catholic church, a Jewish temple, or even an Islamic mosque. And they're not going to kick you out (or whine that you're oppressing / microagressing them) for engaging in discussions with those present which draws into question certain elements of their faith, such as debating whether intercession within the catholic faith impinges upon idolatry and the "no other gods" policy, or disputes the order-of-operations conflict within Genesis 1/2.

I know this because I have done these things. While Billy Graham gets a lot of press, the majority of religious scholars in the US actually tend to be pretty tolerant and open-minded.



The reason that president Schapiro hasn't gotten any letters questioning the presence of Hillel house or the Catholic Center is that the members of those organizations aren't engaging in segregation and rebuking the presence of anyone who isn't just like them.

I'd wager that Schapiro is not a veteran.

The most expert teacher of "uncomfortable learning" is a USMC Drill Instructor. By the time he's finished his work, the "blackest" black and "whitest" white are brothers that would die for each other and will remain friends for as long as they live. Because what is ingrained is that we are individuals defined by our character and honor.

It saddens me the direction this country is going with all the emphasis on group identity. The general atmosphere now is worse than I can ever remember. I hear troubling "group-think" opinions frequently from those I know. It makes me grateful for my military service that brought me into close contact and confidence with people from all walks of life.

It occurs to me that, despite the fact that we were a bunch of Satan-worshiping metalheads, the youth of my generation were among the most tolerant and inclusive of any in recent memory.

"The future's so bright . . . ."

Maybe they need to build "safe places" for those with open minds and willing to learn.

That seems to be the smallest minority on college campuses these days.

When I was in school, that space was "the campus, everything within it, and also the entire surrounding community."


This seriously weirds me out. I'm a Cuban who went to school in the deep south at a huge public university (UF), and I never, EVER encountered anything so violently reprehensible that I was unable to deal with it and had to seek emotional shelter in a safe space.

And I know for an absolute fact that the world is not a more hateful, violent, intolerant place than it was 25 years ago. The 70s and 80s absolutely sucked if you were a minority in redneck-country.

So what gives? In all seriousness, what the fuck happened that's made a whole generation unable to deal with living in the real world? I mean, I know that it's somehow my generation's fault for raising this generation, but how did we manage to fuck things up this badly?

Lol. Growing up in Palo Alto I saw a lot of this. In high school i got sent to what was basically a political correctness camp. Don't say mean things, don't make jokes about certain things, etc.

It was kind of useless. My jokes only got more crude. People who are easily offended do not stay in our circle of friends for very long.

Palo Alto was a bubble if I've ever seen one. Glad I made it out of there as a normal person. I think.