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Jewish World Review Nov 7, 2005/ 5 Mar-Cheshvan,
5766
Suzanne Fields
Trumping Moses and Matthew
Well, that's not so at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
At UWEC you can live in a dorm and watch a performance of "The Vagina
Monologues," but you can't join a Bible studies group. Any resident
assistant, or RA, as the live-in student counselors are called, can put on a
performance of the play, and one has, but leading a Bible studies class in
his or her own room and on his or her own time, is forbidden. Many students
want such a class, but they're out of luck.
The director of university housing says the ban is necessary to
enable the RAs to "share" the perspectives of the students, to make RAs
"approachable." Vagina perspective trumps the perspectives of Moses and
Matthew in behalf of "approachability." That certainly sounds postmodern
enough.
Where have we found such empty-headed university administrators?
This destructive silliness goes to the root of politically correct
attitudes: Feminist ideology, good; the Bible, bad. Dismissing the begats so
easily begets intolerance and ignorance. Reaching for moral equivalence, the
housing director reassures critics that the Koran and the Torah are banned,
too. The university is now considering an extension of the bans to forbid
political and ideological discussions.
Such flouting of the traditions of free speech and good
sense is typical of the disease of political correctness that in various
forms infects many campuses, denying students a fundamental understanding of
the meaning of free speech. "The First Amendment doesn't end with Bible
study or with 'The Vagina Monologues' it guarantees a student's right to
perform both," says David French, president of the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE), a six-year-old watchdog organization and
clearinghouse for the bad news of campus offenses against free speech.
This latest offense follows another objection at UWEC where the
student senate barred funding to any campus organization that promotes a
"particular ideological, religious, or partisan viewpoint." That covers just
about anything a curious student could talk to anyone about. Not so long
ago within the memory of Americans still alive universities set rules
to inhibit sensual temptation, to protect young people at an age when they
were particularly vulnerable to sexual promiscuity. Now sexual promiscuity
is barely an elective, and Big Brother and Sister Nanny shield everyone from
the temptation of intellectual debate of secular and religious philosophies.
By banning free speech, the universities impose indoctrination in lieu of
learning. The Founding Fathers are spinning, but they're only dead white
men, after all.
FIRE's website (thefire.org) includes maps with ratings of
colleges that routinely punish students and faculty for saying things that
hurt feelings and threaten "self-esteem." Although some college
administrators retreat in the face of challenges of these speech codes, a
casual survey turns up a catalog of taboos of language and dumb jokes.
Bowdoin College, for example, bans jokes and stories
"experienced by others as harassing." Brown University prohibits "verbal
behavior" that produces "feelings of impotence, anger, or
disenfranchisement," whether "intentional or unintentional." Colby College
outlaws speech that causes "a vague sense of danger" or a loss of
"self-esteem." The University of Connecticut prohibits "inappropriately
directed laughter." Only dangerous subversives dare watch "Comedy Central"
at UConn. Syracuse University nixes "offensive remarks . . . sexually
suggestive staring . . . [and] sexual, sexist, or heterosexist remarks or
jokes." No daydreaming of trysts at Syracuse.
West Virginia University tells freshmen to use language that is
not "gender specific." So "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" are out; "lover" or
"partner" is in. Maybe they'll stage a production of "Romeo and Juliet" in
drag. The University of North Dakota defines harassment as anything that
intentionally produces "psychological discomfort, embarrassment, or
ridicule." If a "person" comes out of the ladies room trailing toilet paper
from the bottom of her foot, a la Gilda Radner in a memorable "Saturday
Night Live" skit, make sure you don't tell her about it.
These speech codes would be laughable if they weren't so
serious. But there's a larger lesson here. "If students on our nation's
campuses learn that jokes, remarks and visual displays that 'offend' someone
may rightly be banned, they will not find it odd or dangerous when the
government itself seeks to censor and to demand moral conformity in the
expression of its citizens," warns FIRE. "A nation that does not educate in
freedom will not survive in freedom, and will not even know when it has
lost." We need those FIRE alarms.
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