20 Replies to “What’s The Opposite of Diversity?”

  1. We’ve been bitching and complaining about this for almost 30 years.
    It is still going on.
    Parents and students still keep giving these people their $, even though college is a waste of time for 80% of the populace (something else I figured out 30 years ago…)
    If all people are going to do is complacently complain and roll their eyes and say “It’s PC gone mad!!!” for the zillionth time, I don’t care anymore.
    If you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
    Simple.
    Destroy the institutions completely OR be quiet. But honestly: hearing our side whine about “speech codes on campus” 30 years on is ALMOST as annoying as the speech codes themselves!

  2. Yet another rational for zero public funding of feel good nonsense.
    What was that great quote from a student protesting tuition fees? “I have the right to be given an education”.
    Shame we don’t ride horses anymore, the proverb of being able to lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink, applies here.
    Of course the University of Hard Knocks has been overrun by PC and feelgoodism, but it is still the only real education .
    When the bottom drops out of this fake economy, the real educations will begin.
    Drygoods, medicine and weaponry. Socially useful skills?

  3. A museum of sex? Well thank you! I told hubby sex was a thing of the past!

  4. I have chosen to go silent Kathy. Or rather, go underground. We have a big, fat, potty mouthed man-hating lesbian at work now and I treat her with exaggerated politeness. My daughter announced that she was a gay hipster and therefore my moral and intellectual superior – and I told her what I thought and walked away. My in-laws are all intolerant liberals spouting off but I don’t hear the trees falling in their forests anymore.
    Fact is I will keep plugging as long as I can but when the wheels come off and this bus full of loons goes over the cliff…I will be prepared.
    You go to school to take the sciences and technologies. If you have time to worry about stupid people trying to restrict your speech you are either in the wrong course or the wrong school.

  5. I’m not sure the argument “you’ve been bitching about it for 30 years and nothing changes so shut up” is an argument social conservatives would want to universally apply.
    Besides FIRE is not just bitching and moaning. They file lawsuits against universities and colleges so that students can regain their most basic rights and they usually win. It’s important work. Without organizations like them students would be at the mercy of tyrannical academics with nowhere to turn for help. Win or lose, I think that any controversy FIRE creates on campus gives students an alternative view of free speech, natural rights and libertarian (classical liberal) values.
    IMO, I doubt that the ultra progressive bubble created on campus has the staying power progressives hope for. Most students comply but think it’s stupid and will revert to normal after graduation. A small percentage of student will defy the codes on principle. The only ones who fully embrace it are ones who remain in the academic bubble or find ‘lifer’ jobs in progressive institutions. Another thought: as more parents and students realize most degrees are both overpriced and underwhelming career-wise and online learning grows, universities and professors will inevitable lose influence.Humanities and social science will be hardest hit.

  6. I disagree with keeping quiet. The campus speech codes sound exactly similar to our own Section 13 Human Rights code; that is, amorphous and subjective and thus, empirically unprovable. We spoke up – and Section 13 of the HRC is gone.
    We need to continue to speak up. That’s because silence is always taken for acceptance rather than fear of reprisal, or, despair.
    David Thompson (and his blog is superb) writes: “And so students face a vast and laughable catalogue of punishable sins ranging from “intentionally producing psychological discomfort” (at the University of North Dakota) and “inappropriate laughter” (at Sarah Lawrence College) to “eye contact or lack of it” (at Michigan State University). At Brown, any “verbal behaviour” that “produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement” is no longer tolerated, while other campuses, including Colby College, have outlawed any speech deemed to result in a loss of self-esteem.”
    Boy, lack of eye contact on The Host could send you to the stake in medieval Europe. But think about the other ‘sins-of-interaction’ outlined above.
    ALL of them are entirely subjective.
    ALL of them depend on the receiver’s personal emotive state, and it might have nothing to do with your speaking to that receiver; the person might be reeling from having failed their Logic 101 class.
    Essentially it means that truth cannot exist; you cannot express what you feel. What happened to freedom of speech?
    We must always speak out. Always.

  7. The UN International Bill of Human Rights, introduced in 1966, not to be confused with the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, was the groundwwork that set the stage for the censorship of speech. It wasn’t until certain groups of humans were afforded special rights that free speech began to be censored. This Bill paradoxically created intense division among human beings on the grounds of race, ethnicity, ability, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion and political affiliation-the Bill was essentially a dividing of the human rights pie when it was previously recognized that each human being was the whole pie.

  8. Local ATA (Alberta teachers association)had a retirement gathering thursday at our Legion.Steak, drinks,and some wine THEY brought. 40 members or so.
    Bartenders tips totaled $8.50.
    I have a feeling there’ll be a motion dealing with large groups, and a minimum gratuity.
    Yeah, they brought their own wine.

  9. The usual calamities will end this. War, economic depression, political stupidity.
    Than the cycle begins a new.

  10. Those of my children who have attended university during the last fifteen years discovered that they had to come their mouths shut if they had political or moral opinions that differed from what is now the norm. One of my sisters-in-law teaches at a college in Ontario and echos the experiences my children had.
    This was not the case when I was in school.
    I suspect that some time in the future, for one reason or another, this campus atmosphere will make a sharp adjustment in the opposite direction, to where they were in the past.

  11. I just wear my Lancaster bomber t-shirt and an NRA ball cap on campus, when I go. Hipsters won’t even look at me. Its like bug repellent for stupid.
    When I was actually in school in the 1990s I roundly ignored any and all PCisms at all times. Got called up on the carpet for it twice, had the head of the department actually swear at me the one time.
    Stared him down. I passed anyway. I suppose it didn’t hurt that I was 42 years old and 210 pounds of scary at the time.
    They can’t touch you. They have no power that you don’t give them. Tell them to f- off at every opportunity.
    I’m going to Vassar in July. Looking forward to the occasion, I’m buying a new and even more lurid Lancaster bomber t-shirt. Or maybe a Glock t-shirt… hmmm.

  12. Tell them to phuck off at every opportunity.. good advice.
    They are bullies after all, with NOTHING to back their dreck with.

  13. Boy, lack of eye contact on The Host could send you to the stake in medieval Europe. But think about the other ‘sins-of-interaction’ outlined above.
    ALL of them are entirely subjective.
    As are all atheist opinions. Enjoy what you have wrought…

  14. “..are entirely subjective.
    As are all atheist opinions.”
    ALL opinions are subjective. Facts are not.

  15. Go for it, Phantom! Vassar, BTW, is a dump. I was surprised when visiting a friend in Poughkeepsie to see what an ugly camupus it is, being an ivy-league college and all. It was March, grey and rainy. Maybe it’s a nicer campus in the summer but I was singularly unimpressed. It would appear to be even uglier on the inside.

  16. ET: Are you *sure* that Section 13 is gone? The motion to get rid of it passed in the House of Commons, but last time I looked it had not emerged from the Senate, which it must do and then receive Royal Assent. My sense is that the Senate is in no hurry to act on it and that the Government is in no hurry to persuade the Senate to act on it. It seems to be one more of those instances in which the Government is more interested in pretending to act than in acting.

  17. Roseberry, to my knowledge, it’s gone.
    The vote was a clear majority in the House and the Senate would be unable to mount a legitimate defense against it. It can babble all it wants but that’s just hot air.
    Harper supported getting rid of it; it was a CPC political agenda.
    So, I don’t agree with you that the govt wants it retained. It’s taking time in the Senate [another reason for getting rid of the wasteful in both money and time Senate and its unelected members] but for operational purposes, the Section is gone.
    If we were to move into a government where the elected members were constantly subject to the unelected Senate, then, then, we’d be in trouble.

  18. Batb, I’ve never been to Vassar, but Poughkeepsie generally is a dump. Drove around it a time or two in the 1990’s, it looked like downtown Hamilton. Wasteland of sagging old houses and shuttered store fronts. I can’t imagine age has improved things. New York generally is a crappy looking dump, IMHO. Funny how things improve 100% when you cross the border into Connecticut or Vermont.
    Corruption has consequences.
    Anyway, looking forward to staring down some lippy college students and bearded weirdies. Fun stress reliever.

  19. Give ’em hell, Phantom. ‘Agreed about Poughkeepsie. It’s … what you said! (My friend doesn’t live there anymore.)

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