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This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

okwu.edu

221–230 of 707 posts

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#221
post #9
post #3

I find it baffling that there are people, in the real world, who somehow think that for unexplained reasons they have the right to not be offended or be made to feel uncomfortable. Somehow they believe that their feelings are the responsibility of everyone else.

Most baffling is that they seem to be the majority by now...

A good friend of mine has a saying on this topic: "Avoid the fallacy of confusing the majority with the majority voice. The majority voice is controlled by people who have the time and energy to make their voice heard; a lot of people are too busy working on their passions to bother to join the discussion."

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't know what video you're referring to. What rational point was the professor trying to make? That white people dressing in racially-charged costumes should not be shunned?

I think this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0 Along with some NYT coverage on this general topic: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/02/when-a-gener... This issue of students complaining about trigger warnings and the need for safe spaces certainly seems to be increasingly prevalent, but that could just be due to the media giving it more attention.

Interesting that according to that NYTimes link, offensive speech is considered protected "free speech," while people objecting to offensive speech does not qualify. I have just as much a right to tell you you're an asshole and not welcome near me as you do to say offensive things to me.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#223
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I sympathize with your viewpoint, perhaps I can shed some clarity on the other side. The concern is not feelings getting hurt, but rather physical security as a person of minority status. This is something that a white heterosexual middle-class male (such as myself) can probably never fully appreciate, but I try to sympathize. Imagine what it is like to be black in a country where just a few generations back yo…

Actually white heterosexual middle class males can totally appreciate these things. Imagine what it is like to be white/asian in a country where a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by black men and where black on white crimes are 5.6 times more common than white on black crimes [1]. Imagine what it is like to be Christian when a disproportionate number of terror attacks are committed by Islamic types. M…

From your link:

>These data cover all violent crimes except murder, but the number of murders is tiny compared to other violent crimes.

So, we've started by cherry picking our data, a really strong start.

Next we go on by comparing apples and oranges. You've reached the conclusion that as a white male you should be afraid of black people, but the data you linked shows otherwise.

While 13.7% of violent crimes against white people were committed by black people, 56% of violent crimes against white people were committed by other white people.

You are 4 times more likely to be violently attacked by a white person than a black person, if you are a white person. So if you are afraid of being attacked by a black person, you must be 4 times more afraid everytime you see a white person (that is, if you are being logically consistent, rather than using confirmation bias to support a worldview of racial superiority, though your link suggests otherwise)

In this light, it is completely irrational to have anywhere near the fear of black people (or any other race) than you do for white people.

Further, if you are of a race other than black or hispanic, you are more than twice as likely to be violently attacked by a white person (40.3%) than a black person (19.3%).

The only thing damning against black people these statistics show, is that black people are vastly more likely to be violently attacked by other black people than by any other race. This is the same case for all the other races included. People of any given race are much more likely to have a crime committed against them by someone of their own race, than by someone of any other race.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#224
post #6

I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view. Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue. I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way…

Having spent far more than my fair share of time around University students (11 years), I can assure you that the complaint is likely what the student said. It smells very much like what students today are saying. Remember the other professor who had students call the police because there were mice in their apartment?

I graduated last year, and I can assure you that I never heard anything remotely similar to this during my 4 years in an undergrad business program.

I discussed this exact topic with my close high school friends while we were home over Thanksgiving weekend, so I also got perspectives from recently-graduated students in the liberal arts and business at Columbia, WashU, Vanderbilt, and Cornell to fill out my sample.

None of them had ever directly heard or seen any comparable behavior during their time in school. We had all heard of isolated incidents of intolerance in the news, and had the sense that such sheltered students could be found on campus, but we didn't personally know or associate with anyone who could be so extreme or intolerant in their beliefs. Which caused us to ask: how does a student like this get a spot at a decent university? Who raises their child to be so intolerant?

So I have to disagree with your claim that such intolerant and childish comments "[smell] very much like what students today are saying." There is a vocal minority of students who say and do things that do not represent the larger body of students as a whole. There always will be. The average college student is still too busy meeting people, playing sports, dating, drinking, traveling, doing internships, interviewing for jobs, and (occasionally) going to lectures to make a big fuss out of anything that might offend him/her.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#225
post #6

I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view. Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue. I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way…

Or, https://youtu.be/yRujuE-GIY4

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#226
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One takes offence, one does not give it. It's an idiopathic condition. I'm a white male, but I grew up being called Gwailo, Gaijin, Auslander, and when I finally returned to the anglosphere in my early teens, I was still an outsider as I spoke with a weird accent and was by that point a through-and-through third culture kid. I got the crap bullied out of me, and eventually figured out that it only hurt if I took it t…

> Folks need to have thicker skin Why? Congratulations on being such a paragon of excellence. Why should we require such virtue of all humans? Instead of expecting you to develop a thick skin (are you sure this is a good thing?), why can't we try to reform your aggressors in the first place?

> why can't we try to reform your aggressors in the first place?

Because "we" are not special. "We" are not better than anyone else. It's none of our business to try and change how other people are.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#227
post #199

I have a friend who attended OKWU a few years ago. She shared this piece on Facebook in approval. From what I know from her education there, this place is essentially a "safe-space" for Christians. If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out. If you don't follow its rules, you are kicked out. If you drink, smoke, have premarital sex, are lgbtq, don't follow their strict ethics…

Doesn't matter. There's an anecdote about a student being a crybaby and that's the biggest threat facing humanity today. Get with the program. We can deal with the Christians once we sort out the safe spacers.

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#228
post #6

I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view. Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue. I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way…

I like it, similar to what they do in some pre-marital or marriage counseling sessions. One side lists a grievance, then before the other side responds they have to repeat what they heard and get confirmation before responding. "So if I'm hearing you right, you don't like it when I... Did I understand correctly?" It feels ridiculous when you do it at first but it becomes an incredibly helpful tool.

I use this all the time.

"You want to add feature X because ..."

... and then, once we've clarified what the request is all about, and I'm sure about what's going on, only then can you move in to help, offer advice, or crush their souls with a series of devastating blows.

No, don't do the latter. Show your side of the story and get them to say it out loud. "Okay, you're right, putting a Perl 6 interpreter in the interrupt handlers of the network stack does sound kind of crazy now."

Doing this makes you a lot easier to work with, or at least that is the perception. :-)

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an exaggeration to say that someone's view is dangerous to civilization.

Not one person. It's a prevailing attitude. And the idea that we should renounce freedom of speech in order to prevent hurt feelings - if it ever gains legal force - absolutely is a danger to civilisation.

>the idea that we should renounce freedom of speech in order to prevent hurt feelings

Who is saying this?

Re: This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

#230
post #6

I think the world would be better if, before you're allowed to respond to someone being wrong, you have to first be able to express their position in a way that they agree represents their view. Because 'political correctness' isn't the cancer at the heart of social politics, it is straw-manning. On both sides of every issue. I'd be surprised, perhaps even amazed, if Dr Piper had represented the complaint in any way…

"respond to someone being wrong"

I believe this might be your bone of contention. The speech was a mission statement, more or less, with an introduction that is very catchy and exciting and clickbaity, but overall irrelevant to the main argument. This is not a response of right or wrong. Obviously the leader thinks people who oppose him are wrong, but the main thrust of the argument past that intro is "where is what we are going to do here".

For example, obviously a long cultural time ago, although it was only a bit more than a decade, all the seniors at the school I finally graduated from (I was a part timer) took the same giant Holocaust class. It was a required interdisciplinary liberal arts survey class, of a topic that changed every year. I believe they had "death" as the topic another year. They were obviously kind of a downer phase. For cultural change reasons they don't do this anymore, which is a shame. Anyway the point of an interdisciplinary liberal arts class isn't to debate philosophically if the topic is right or wrong, but to teach the students how to actually apply the full spectrum of liberal arts, all of them, because you're all well rounded individuals now, to a topic.

Someone who disliked the idea of confronting a rather foreign culture and world view could fight against the class by demanding that you're not allowed to respond to the Holocaust intellectually unless you can first express Hitler's position in a way that modern Nazis would agree accurately represents their view. Why yes I did just "Godwin" you. But of course that logic is total bunk. The real purpose of the class is to teach the students how to observe then analyze the inter-related whole of the topic, across multiple disciplines. That requires application of intellectual skills, not right or wrong judgments. You don't need to express agreement with the text of mein kampf to see how the economic situation dovetailed with the political situation dovetailed with the cultural situation etc. My term paper was how architecture related to the other liberal arts in the reich WRT to propaganda and scale and form etc.

Really the only reason why they gave us the Holocaust as a study topic was to scare the hell out of us, if we fail to learn the skills of cross disciplinary observation, analysis, and synthesis skills taught in the class, maybe something that bad will happen again. Now for over sensitivity reasons, or more likely profound lack of courage, we can't get that reward, can't learn to avoid evil by intellectual analysis. That opens a whole nother can of worms where the campus is now a safe space free of gas chamber triggering, but the whole country overall is far less of a safe space, because the current grads are emotionally coddled, less intellectually skilled, and far more cowardly unless acting in mob actions. Luckily mob action historically has always been effective and rational, correct? And we can make up for personal cowardice with more drone strikes, correct? And the politician that proposes the simplest sounding solution is probably the best because we no longer have the intellectual rigor to analyze, correct? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

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