Brown University, located in Providence, Rhode Island, was founded by Baptist leaders in 1764 with the Latin motto, In Deo Speramus: In God We Hope. I imagine these godly founders would be quite surprised with the recent announcement that, “Brown University’s student body president will be hand-delivering menstrual products to all nonresidential bathrooms on campus, including men’s rooms, with the help of 20 other students.”
As reported by Sydney Hutchison on CampusReform.org, “The initiative is intended to communicate the message that ‘pads and tampons are a necessity, not a luxury,’ and that not all people who menstruate are women.”
So there are menstruating men who need tampons?
And note that this is being done by Viet Nguyen, President of the Undergraduate Council of Students, who hopes that by “putting menstrual products in women’s, men’s and gender-inclusive bathrooms” the school can “‘set a tone of trans-inclusivity, and not forget that they’re an important part of the population.'”
In nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University’s new chief diversity officer has put forth guidelines for incoming students, including: don’t say “you guys,” since that could be interpreted as excluding women; don’t ask an Asian student for help in math or ask a black student if he plays basketball, since to do so would be to stereotype and thereby commit a “microaggression.” These must be avoided at all costs.
Ironically, an article announcing this stated that these guidelines were for “freshmen”—but doesn’t that very term exclude women? Isn’t this a microaggression in and of itself? Perhaps, just as Princeton University is trying to ban the “m” word from campus (meaning, the infamous “man” word), Clark needs to follow suit, referring to the “freshmen” class as “freshpeople” class or the “freshindividuals” class? Now we’re talking.
Across the country at California State University, San Marcos, a “trigger warning” was sent out notifying all students and faculty that there would be a pro-life display on campus next week.
An email from the university’s Office of Communications, obtained by CampusReform.org, pointed out that the “presentation is not a university sponsored presentation,” that it could be “disturbing and offensive,” but that presentations like this on campus were “protected under the First Amendment.” Oh, the evils of free speech.
The email also explained that resources would be available for students “who may need assistance” after being exposed to the pro-life display. They must not be traumatized by the reality of abortion. God forbid.
As for the meaning of “trigger warnings,” the Urban Dictionary offers a definition replete with what I would call sarcastic sanity.
A trigger warning is, “A phrase posted at the beginning of various posts, articles, or blogs. Its purpose is to warn weak-minded people who are easily offended that they might find what is being posted offensive in some way due to its content, causing them to overreact or otherwise start acting like a (expletive). Popular on reddit SRS or other places that social justice warriors like to hang out.
“Trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time due to the fact that people who are easily offended have no business randomly browsing the internet anyways. As a result of the phrase’s irrelevance, most opinions that start out with this phrase tend to be simplistic and dull since they were made by people ridiculous enough to think that the internet is supposed to cater to people who can’t take a joke.”
How dare the Urban Dictionary post such insulting stuff without a trigger warning!
Over at, at Champlain College in Vermont, “In an effort to become more inclusive for gender nonconforming students,” the school “handed out hundreds of pronoun pins during first-year orientation advertising the wearer’s preferred gender pronouns.”
What exactly did this look like? “Options included ‘she/her,’ ‘he/him,’ ‘xe/xer,’ and even ‘Hello, my pronouns are fluid. Please ask me!'”
And at Pomona College in California, new students “were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms giving instructions on ‘How to be a (Better) White Ally’ and stating that all white people are racist.” (Note carefully: If you are white and you differ with this assessment, then you are definitely racist.)
“The signs state white people should ‘acknowledge your privilege’ and ‘apologize if you’ve offended someone,’ adding that offensive language includes words like ‘sassy’ and ‘riot,’ which are ‘racially coded.'”
Yes, “‘Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism.'” And don’t you dare deny it! So say the so-called social justice warriors.
Also in California, reports earlier this week claimed that, “Segregated housing will now be available to black students at California State University Los Angeles as a means of combating ‘microaggressions’ and ‘racially insensitive remarks,'” with these alleged infractions coming from both students and faculty.
Wouldn’t the only solution, then, be fully segregated schools, where no such offenses could take place (at least theoretically)? Could it be that segregation is the new way forward, the path of progressivism, the wave of the future? Asian schools, black schools, Hispanic schools, white schools … what utopias they will be!
Of course, this probably won’t be enough, because microaggressions can still occur, which would necessitate perhaps breaking these down into all male and female schools, and perhaps requiring LGBT schools vs. straight schools as well. Thus you could go to an all-Asian, female, lesbian school or an all-black, male, straight school. Progress is wonderful, isn’t it?
The New York Times is denying these reports, citing Cal State campus spokesman Robert Lopez to the effect that the school had simply created dorm space for 24 students “oriented around the black community,” although the dorm space is “open to all students.”
Am I the only one who doesn’t follow exactly what this means? Either way, whether or not this is segregation, it’s not the first time this has been done in recent years.
Finally, at Cal State Berkeley, a course is being offered entitled, “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” sponsored by faculty member Dr. Hatem Bazian, who is so adamantly anti-Israel that he has called for an “American intifada.”
As Abraham H. Miller notes on Observer.com, Dr. Bazian “is co-founder of the militant Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization so virulently anti-Israel that it can shut down any speaker it disagrees with on almost any campus even before you could enunciate the monosyllabic word, ‘Jew.'”
And while Dr. Bazian denies that he is anti-Semite, “he blocked the appointment of a Jewish student to San Francisco State University’s Student Judicial Council on the grounds that the individual supported the State of Israel and was thus a racist by definition.”
With good reason, Miller’s article claims that the course is intended “to Erase Jewish History from Israel.”
Yet there are no trigger warnings or concerns about microaggressions here. After all, it’s only Jews who will be offended!
But with that, I’m out of space and will have to stop here, with one last word of wisdom: Parents, think twice before sending your kids off to school. Some campuses are better than others, and your kids are anything but guinea pigs to be thrown into the latest social experiment.
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