Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and fascism on college campuses

[Omaha 680]

Then we need a lot more assholes.

[wuapinmon]

Then we need a lot more assholes.

These kids will learn soon enough once they leave the confines of a campus and seek to get a job. The pendulum has swung too far, but, this kind of assholery isn't ok. We don't need more assholes. I'm full of shit, and I get by just fine with one.

[imanihonjin]

These kids will learn soon enough once they leave the confines of a campus and seek to get a job. The pendulum has swung too far, but, this kind of assholery isn't ok. We don't need more assholes. I'm full of shit, and I get by just fine with one.

Are you being serious? If you are, I find it a bit amusing as his style and your style of responding to those you disagree with on CS are pretty similar.

[Omaha 680]

These kids will learn soon enough once they leave the confines of a campus and seek to get a job. The pendulum has swung too far, but, this kind of assholery isn't ok. We don't need more assholes. I'm full of shit, and I get by just fine with one.

These new generation snowflakes are essentially engaging in bullying (something they claim to detest) with the complicity of campus administrations and behind the guise of their own vulnerability. I'm normally with you that more civility is needed in discourse but in this case I have no problem with people verbally punching these kids in the nose.

[Jeff Lebowski]

He's right, but he's also a fucking asshole about it.

Haha.

Others may not appreciate the irony here, but I enjoyed it.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

"YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO US! WE'RE IN PAIN!"

Lol.

Again, they're coddling neurotics and giving them a megaphone. They should properly be told that they're nuts and their irrational musings don't deserve any further consideration.

[Shaka]

These kids will learn soon enough once they leave the confines of a campus and seek to get a job. The pendulum has swung too far, but, this kind of assholery isn't ok. We don't need more assholes. I'm full of shit, and I get by just fine with one.

Seriously? Why on earth is it healthy to foment this sort of culture on a college campus? Also what hiring manager in their right mind would want to give one of these little wussies a job?

Honestly, we are at the point where the academic community is actually harming these kids do doing the opposite of preparing them for life in the real world.

[creekster]

These kids will learn soon enough once they leave the confines of a campus and seek to get a job. The pendulum has swung too far, but, this kind of assholery isn't ok. We don't need more assholes. I'm full of shit, and I get by just fine with one.

I'm surprised you feel this way.

First, the premise that any of these students should feel they are in actual danger based on what can only be characterized as a very mild and direct political statement in chalk on the sidewalk is simply ludicrous. There was no danger. There was no confrontation. There is simply no rational basis for their position.

Second, The additional premise that college is a place where everyone should feel safe and cozy in an intellectual cocoon of security is similarly ludicrous. To the contrary, university is a place where everyone should feel free to explore new ideas and where everyone's ideas should be challenged. And it is this process which causes most of us to determine what we truly believe and, more importantly, what we truly ought to believe. They will likely not get this type of opportunity ever again. So while you are right that the real world may knock some sense into them, it can never take the place of the university setting for challenging and crystallizing beliefs.

As someone else posted, insisting that any discomfort or confrontation be avoided at all cost is just a form of bullying. They adopt that which they seek to avoid.

[wuapinmon]

To answer everyone's questions, and to pontificate a little, people go to college to get an education. You can argue that they go to get a job, but I disagree with all yall who say you do, and so does the academy. I don't really like to argue that point because we're losing and most of you think differently than I do about this; your argument is winning slowly, and the academy is going to eventually begin producing drones much like the public school system does. The gifted and the elite will always be exceptional, and they will be those who control the purse and who believe that their experiences and the paths they trod are the best (and only) ones to take, driven by a belief that wealth and accumulation of wealth equal happiness. Therefore, Boards of Trustees are increasingly appointing non-academics who try and view the Academy as a business (which it is not) and who sometimes do unethical shit like try to expel students in the first week after they enroll because they answer a survey and their modeling says that these students are the most likely to drop out (thereby hurting the USNews rankings, thereby hurting market share) [See: Mount St. Mary's ]. He fired tenured faculty for "disloyalty" for criticizing his remarks comparing students to bunnies that needed to be drowned. The Board of Sweet Briar, despite having less than 1,000 students and an endowment of $85 million, voted to close the college due to "insurmountable financial pressures." The faculty, alumnae, and student body revolted and came up with $12 million, sued the Board, and got the Virginia Supreme Court to force them all to resign. That's a rare victory.

But, the tide has shifted all victories are Pyrrhic. Reagan struck the first blow: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/arti...gher-education

And that gives way to asshats like Scott Mother<redacting> Walker doing shit like this: http://www.theatlantic.com/education...cation/385366/
Or NC State Senators trying to destroy one of the better state systems in the country by doing this: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/e...rofessors.html



So, while the STEM profs currently---and for the foreseeable future--bask in the dollars of political favor, the humanities examine the hows and why of rhetoric and argument, of intent and intentional fallacy, and countless other topics that the world deems pointless or meaningless or worthless. People come to the academy to get an education. Their parents send them there to get a job. But, the Academy seeks to insulate them from that mindset (at least it used to), and at the elite institutions, the ones where money has allowed people to not have to worry as much about the job (not in the same way, for example, that my students agonize over that), a culture of resisting the job mentality, the bullying, gleefully mocking, on-top-because-I'm-biggest-sexiest-charismatic-fastest crowd is no longer in charge. That mindset means that people are protected from "straight talk" and "telling it like it is." While a healthy dose of reality often awaits people once they graduate from college, the mocking is still assholery. Has Clay Travis ever been a fat black gay kid who likes anime in a white Southern suburban neighborhood? Nope. Does he know what it's like to be on the receiving end of someone screaming "FAG" or "NIGGER" or "WETBACK" or anything else that's been leaving the lips of Trump supporters these days? Nope. So, since the Georgia primary is long over, to see these chalked Trump 2016 things placed conspicuously around campus can convey a different message than perhaps Mr. Clay Travis is capable of understanding.

Finally, and this is the biggest reason why colleges are the way they are today. Seriously. This is why. Title IX.

These kids at Emory are all overreacting. But, there's probably someone who wasn't protesting, someone who didn't seek out the spotlight, who is a little freaked out. And, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires any college or university that receives ANY federal funding (thanks to a SCOTUS case and the 1988 Civil Rights Act) to provide an education free from any kind of discrimination. If they screw it up, all federal funding is pulled, which is a death sentence for all but a few elite institutions. So, to protect that kid who isn't saying anything, and to placate all the whiners who are, universities MUST do something. That's why there are emergency funds for this kind of stuff. Basically, Title IX means that if someone says they feel discriminated against, the College has to work from the assumption that they were, and then prove that there was none. It's so strict that, for example, I have taken students out of state before, and those students were not with me, but I overheard one of them say that a man slapped one of them on the butt in a bar, and I had to file a report, since that is a reportable event under Title IX, even thought it happened in another state, not on an official activity, and by someone in no way affiliated with my institution.

So, Clay Travis is right, but he's also an asshole.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Holy shit, wuap. Someone wrote "Trump 2016" in chalk. That's it.

[Uncle Ted]

I saw this NASA animation of a supernova explosion the other day and thought, "Man, that would make a great GIF for Wuap!"




Sorry, for highjacking the thread... carry on.

[Topper]

So, Clay Travis is right, but he's also an asshole.

I don't understand your response. The kids were pussies about chalk on the ground and he called them out on it. This isn't Kent State.

[old_gregg]

Has Clay Travis ever been a fat black gay kid who likes anime in a white Southern suburban neighborhood? Nope. Does he know what it's like to be on the receiving end of someone screaming "FAG" or "NIGGER" or "WETBACK" or anything else that's been leaving the lips of Trump supporters these days? Nope. So, since the Georgia primary is long over, to see these chalked Trump 2016 things placed conspicuously around campus can convey a different message than perhaps Mr. Clay Travis is capable of understanding.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Geez, I wonder what would make these kids think that their nutiness would be validated with acquiescence.

[Topper]

Geez, I wonder what would make these kids think that their nutiness would be validated with acquiescence.

I think it is a question of coddling of the snowflake generation. They are accustomed to very little challenge in their lives and their leaders tell them anything unfair must be changed immediately. I am surprised that nobody spat on "Trump 2016" which is what many other generations would have done.