The backlash has begun against the "victimhood culture' that has become so prevalent across America's college campuses and universities, but it is far too little, far too late.
The scene has become familiar in the headlines, images and videos, "children" acting out, crying, screaming and having temper tantrums, much as one would expect when a child is first sent to daycare or kindergarten, where for the first time they are not surrounded with the security a parent offers or with scheduled play dates with only parent approved friends, or the protection against situations that may make them feel uncomfortable.
The problem here is the headlines, images and videos are coming from the nation's college campuses, being seen throughout America's universities where the culture of 'victimhood' is being rewarded with school officials's resignations, where these collrge age kindergateners are being allowed to disrupt whole campuses, school libraries, and basically making life a living hell for anyone that disagrees with them or refuses to join their protests and their demands of "trigger warnings" and "safe zones."
Video below - Yale Students Harass Professor of Silliman College For Defending Halloween - after professor Erika Christakis, associate headmaster of the school’s Silliman College, sent an email to the college’s members suggesting that they shouldn’t be overly sensitive about Halloween costumes that engage in “cultural appropriation.”
Instead, Christakis encouraged students to tolerate them and avoid trying to censor expression.
While some universities have bowed down to these children that have been dubbed "cry bullies," others are now realizing the slippery slope and dangerous nature of allowing this type of behavior to continue... and they are speaking out.
For example, Dr. Everett Piper, the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University has issued a statement titled "This is Not a Day Care. It’s a 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......."
Dr. Piper goes on to offer some advice, which basically states if these children want to be coddled rather than taught, to go elsewhere, stating "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"
He concludes with the following:
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.
Another example of this backlash that is coming out against these college kindergarteners comes from Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker, via LaCrosse.com, where she addresses the ridiculous notion of trigger warnings and safe zones for college aged children that are supposedly preparing to enter the big bad world , by stating "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 "institutionalization of grievance and victimhood," was also addressed by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch in a speech he gave on Monday while accepting the Hudson Institute's Global Leadership Award, where he began by stating "Before delivering my modest message, I feel obliged to alert college students, progressive academics and all other deeply sensitive souls that these words may contain phrases and ideas that challenge your prejudices — in other words, I formally declare this room an ‘unsafe space."
Greg Lukianoff, author of author of "Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate," encompasses the issue in one simple sentence, via an article at US News, titled "From Megaphones To Muzzles" where he states ""I think we're teaching this generation of students the intellectual habits that will make them anxious and depressed," he says. "If they think there will [always] be someone out there with the power to police" speech, "that's setting students up to be constantly enraged and frustrated with the world."
In Parker's LaCrosse essay, she mentioned a survey conducted by American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), which after a bit of searching I was able to find and it highlights why our college age students are acting like kindergarteners as well as spotlighting why America is doomed to becoming a third world nation where our constitutional rights are a memory of days gone by.
In a a review of more than 1,100 institutions across the country on 18 percent teach U.S. History/Government, the very courses that educate students on the Constitution and Bill of rights, and only 3 percent are teaching basic economics!
“One wonders what tuition and tax dollars are going toward when most colleges don’t require basic economics, foreign language, American history or even literature,” said Dr. Michael Poliakoff, director of the What Will They Learn?™ project. “Are we really preparing our nation’s next generation of leaders when our colleges are failing to ensure that students have the skills and knowledge they need for successful careers?”
Think about those numbers.... if only three percent of America's students are being taught basic economics, how are they going to be as future leaders with no understanding of what it takes to make a country thrive economically? Our current leaders cannot even grasp the basic fact that anyone living on budget already understands, you cannot pay out/spend more than you take in.
If only 18 percent of America's children are learning about American history and government, is it any wonder why the college age kindergarteneres don't understand the basic concept of free speech, freedom of press and freedom of religion?
Details from the video above:
Campus safe spaces and trigger warnings notifying students of potentially disturbing material may be strangling thought and education in the name of sensitivity and political correctness. How excessive delicacy around references to sexuality and controversial subjects are causing even liberal teachers to struggle with educating their students, and the changing perspective of young people towards more protected--and possibly gravely unrealistic--understanding about idea exchange is explored by writer Rani Neutill, in this Lip News Interview, hosted by Elliot Hill.
"I believed in trigger warnings when I taught a course on sex and film. Then they drove me out of the academy" - Rani Neutill, via Salon.
I don’t have the answers. Hell, I gave up on the whole thing. This was the last straw for me. I didn’t know the answers but I knew this was a crisis. Colleges are the new helicopter parents, places where the quest for emotional safety and psychic healing leads not to learning, but regression.
I don’t know about trigger warnings outside classes that deal with race, gender and sexuality, but I do know that if you promote trigger warnings in subjects that are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable, you’re basically promoting a culture of extreme privilege, cause I’m pretty sure that the trans women who are being murdered weekly, the black men who are victims of police brutality daily, and the neighborhoods in America that are plagued by everyday violence, aren’t given any trigger warnings. Let’s be honest: life is a trigger.
