“Feel free to be yourself and say what you feel; because those that mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind.” – D.S.
It’s common enough that one could pack an essay with examples. Or an entire book.
When I was in college, this sort of thing was already getting ridiculous. Students were disciplined because a harmless prank was described as racist or intimidating by some nitwit. During my senior year, the whole campus got stirred up because someone was running around drawing swastikas and writing ‘nigger’ on the walls. Then this happened.
By all accounts, it’s gotten worse since I graduated.
Fixed link. The url needs an open quote as well as a close quote. Or leave them both out.
Comedian Chris Rock has stopped performing for college students because they’re so easily offended. It’s a phenomenon that’s been going on long enough at least for George Carlin to have noticed it too.
Again the disconnect here … can someone explain it to me?
College students complaining about professors and being easily offended is nothing new. It goes back to his conservative student’s mocked complaint and to George Carlin complaining apparently. The change allegedly is in how college administrators and department heads deal with the complaints … or at least in how teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track fear the complaints will be handled.
I am sure that fear is real. I am not convinced that it is based on reality.
The reality may simply be that there are few tenure track positions opening up (Baby Boomer older professors can keep going a long time and do). It may be that some people do inappropriately use a position of authority in writing class as a soap box for promoting their political perspectives or are stupid in how they communicate.
Interesting. I was heretofore unaware that Ted Koppel is (a) the source of all of society’s present ills, and (b) the progenitor of a far-reaching cult of deadly TV-news-anchor zealots. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone mention his name— but I hadn’t considered the Voldemort aspect, so now the pieces are falling into place. Ignorance fought!
Back when I was in school (20 years ago), there were definitely these, for lack of a better description, super-liberal, easily offended, let’s not offend ANYONE types. For the most part, they were concentrated in the student affairs parts of the university that I went to- housing, student life, etc… Back in those days, they were really big on being sensitive; I remember them making a big point about vegetarians and how (I was a RA) if we were planning a barbecue or something, we should have vegetarian options. I think back, and think that it was 1994; hardcore vegetarians were pretty thin on the ground back then, and it was likely an egregious waste of taxpayer money (it was a state school) to pay extra for special vegetarian options for that ONE vegetarian that might show up. But that was ok in these people’s minds, because it was sensitive to their needs.
I’m not surprised at all that there may have been a flip in that crowd becoming the majority, or at the very least, presuming to speak for the majority without the majority protesting too much these days, and that’s why you hear people getting offended by stupid shit like “Huckleberry Finn” or having to put trigger warnings on all sorts of stuff because some of these people can’t suck it up and deal with the world as it is.
Same here. There were enough of them to be noticeable at my small liberal arts college. For the most part, they were harmless. Some were friends of mine. The vegan bunch tended to be mocked. The feminists were regarded as serious and thoughtful, but maybe as having gone a bit too far (some of them, anyway). One guy had a picture of Che on his dorm room wall and refused to accept his diploma in protest of US involvement in Central America. I too was opposed to US involvement in Central America, but failed to see what not accepting my diploma would accomplish.
The radfems were actually feared a bit. Somehow they and a couple of professors from the womens studies department (actually not a department, but an interdisciplinary major, I guess) had gotten on the committee in charge of hearing complaints about sexual violence or harassment, and they were a bit scary. They believed that questioning an accuser about anything she said was just as much rape as whatever she was alleging. That became problematical in a couple of instances of which I was aware.
I blame parents. I generation ago, parents would have deferred to the institution or the professor to run the school/class. Now we have whiny kids with helicopter parents who will lodge complaints about threats to their special snowflakes.
“Huckleberry Finn” is a perfect example of this new phenomenon, as controversy surrounding the putative racism in it dates back only less than a century:
As our society moves toward greater equality and toward respect for folks with different backgrounds, a lot of really good things are happening (same-sex marriage, more women in executive positions, transgender acceptance, a black president, etc.). Many good things that should happen aren’t happening (serious work on remedying past racist housing policies, for example).
And then there are some silly overreaches. People working to make things more fair are going to include smart people doing this work, but also dumb people doing this work, because, wait for it, some people are dumb. Some people, feeling a sense of power associated with being part of a political movement, will make unsubstantiated accusations.
If you hear an unsubstantiated accusation, and you say, “show your work,” that’s legit. If it’s so stupid that you say, “That’s idiotic,” that can be legit too, although it’s always worth considering whether it’s really idiotic, or if it’s just that you haven’t thought about it that way before. If you say, “Lookit the Social Justice Warriors!” then you’re the idiot.
The overall movement of our culture toward equality and mutual respect is good, but insufficient. It’s something we all oughta work harder at. The fools on the extreme who make overreaching foolish claims in no way change those basic principles.
Where in my post did I ever say this: (a) the source of all of society’s present ills,
Here you are guilty of taking liberty of overstatement: (b) the progenitor of a far-reaching cult of deadly TV-news-anchor zealots.
If I were to go into the particulars of the man’s evil actions during the time of his Nightline tenure, plainly describing how he abused the great power handed to him and the damage to certain social matters, things in here might become so white-hot that I’m not sure I care to deal with it.
Call that a copout if you like, but I was only intending from the get-go to simply add a touch of thought-provokingness to the discussion and that was it.
I’ll have to google the Voldemort thing, thanks for sharing it.
Of course! Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light. It’s so obvious now.
Ok, well I’m no fan of TK either. Without going into the details I’d say if not for him the world would not be the disaster it is today. However, it would still be a disaster, just some other form of disaster. None of this has anything to do with what the OP is talking about.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the number of shits people give about Ted Koppel.
Most folks probably don’t even know his name, as his time was some years ago, but it doesn’t lessen how it was him who pretty much single-handedly obliterated any chance for the races to make peace … and get on with tackling the many real problems of the world.
Seems a little odd that a smart guy like you would be so okay with what Koppel did, saying the world would still be a disaster. My own belief is that the world, especially the States, would be much better than it is now … if he’d never arrived on the scene and did his butcher job for all those years.
Yes and no. I think a lot of this is indirectly tied to the huge increase, way outpacing inflation, of the cost of higher education. Over the last several decades colleges decided to make themselves more and more expensive as there was a seemingly endless supply of paying students. You routinely have students graduating with 5 and 6 figure debt loads. And on the back end you have colleges beating down tenure and squeezing as much work as possible out of desperate grad students.
That trend has slowed down markedly in the last few years, but college is still enormously expensive and they (and their parents) are in a very real sense “customers” who have chosen to pay for very expensive service, and invariably there are expectations attached when you are paying a huge load of money for something. The days of students being effective non-entities who would have to prove themselves ended when colleges started increasing their prices through the roof. If you provide a select and expensive service you expect to be paid for, you have better be very attentive to your customers. The old teacher-student model is not reflective of a reality where the students are paying effectively hundreds of dollars an a hour to sit in a teacher’s presence and the college is squeezing the teacher as hard as possible. Students are clients these days and that changes the power dynamic.
The problem isn’t overprotected students. The main problem is the ridiculous setup of adjust professors in universities, and the fact that unless a professor is very high-profile, no one will stand up to the students and say, “This is a ridiculous complaint, and here’s why. And this is how adults handle these things.”
University administrations should stop pampering the little snowflakes. They should also treat their non-tenured-professor employees marginally better than slaves.
In my senior year of high school, someone wrote “nigers go home” on a wall of the school. :smack:
You clearly can’t deal with it now, given that you’re reduced to making stupid insinuations that make everyone else laugh. Shit or get off the pot.