Patterico's Pontifications

8/26/2016

University of Chicago Gets Real (ADDED: In Contrast, Pathetic Northwestern State University Offers Students Two Hours Per Week Free Speech… With Prior Notice )

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:49 am



[guest post by Dana]

In a letter sent to incoming freshmen, the University of Chicago informed students that the institution is run by actual grown-ups. Grown-ups who are disinclined to indulge and coddle the delicate fragility of this generation’s hyper-sensitive cupcakes:

Welcome and congratulations on your acceptance to the college at the University of Chicago. Earning a place in our community of scholars is no small achievement and we are delighted that you selected Chicago to continue your intellectual journey.

Once here you will discover that one of the University of Chicago’s defining characteristics is our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression. … Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship. Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others. You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort….

Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.

Here are some student and alumni reactions to the letter:

JUSTIN SHELBY:

The glory of the free market. There are plenty excellent schools that have embraced the hugbox model of education. If you want a hugbox friendly school, go to a hugbox friendly school.

EMILY ORENSTEIN:

Admin taking another big, condescending shit on safe spaces in the guise of “commitment to academic freedom.”

OSITA NWANEVU:

I’m honestly just intrigued by the University’s branding strategy. They reach out to incoming students and parents jittery about activism and/or minorities by scribbling out an anti-safe space letter that checks all the right anti-activist boxes even as they reach out to minority students and activists with diversity and inclusion initiatives and by literally running something called the “Safe Space Program”.

PAUL KIM:

This letter is not really an offense compared to the gross squashing of intellectual and spiritual freedom that is the common American discourse and what’s present even in the most basic of corporate jobs in America.

It will be interesting to see if this move back toward sanity and reasonableness will lead the way for other universities to follow.

ADDED: This from a public university in Louisiana:

The Northwestern State University policy requires students to apply 24-48 hours in advance before holding a public demonstration or assembly, and limits such activities to “one, 2-hour time period every 7 days, commencing on Monday.”

Public demonstrations are limited to three locations on campus: the Student Union Plaza, Prather Coliseum East Parking Lot and a so-called “Green Space between CAPA and Varnado Hall.”

–Dana

20 Responses to “University of Chicago Gets Real (ADDED: In Contrast, Pathetic Northwestern State University Offers Students Two Hours Per Week Free Speech… With Prior Notice )”

  1. How many of those incoming snowflakes are now looking at their second or third acceptance options??

    Dana (995455)

  2. Very few, would be my guess, Dana. Snowflakes don’t go to U of C. They go to the legacies, the second tiers, and the public universities.

    nk (dbc370)

  3. The crime surrounding and sometimes in the campus plus the fact it is on the wrong side of downtown from all the happenings up north already are reasons to look at options 2 and 3. However at this point of the year with most schools having started mid-august, you’re stuck. Maybe this a dog whistle to get more “rough” white males to handle business.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  4. The University said:

    Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.

    The University has just established a specific boundary. We will now see if no ‘safe spaces’ are created, nor ‘trigger warnings’ used.

    Anyone care to guess where I’d place my bet?

    The Dana who was graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1977 (f6a568)

  5. The Tribune article says it will be up to professors to choose to warn their students about course material. Not the same as the students being entitled to a warning, I don’t think. I remember a professor warning us that Coriolanus was a little bit bloody, but that was probably because there were girls in the class too.

    nk (dbc370)

  6. I predict we see a clarification/semi-apology in 3…2…1…

    Too much cheering by the right and a lot of consternation from the left about this letter. And even U of C is going to be hard pressed to go against the wieght of the leftist tide on something like this.

    A.S. (23bc66)

  7. they just wanna draw a bright line between themselves and the fascist social justice slutpansies at depaul i think

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  8. Yeah, but DePaul has stuff to do within drunkstumbling distance.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  9. Long live teh Trigglypig!

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgFa86RxFA

    Colonel Haiku (e5c973)

  10. yes yes but on the other hand u of c is really beautiful

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  11. Aw, poor Emily Orenstein–it’s really annoying when the grownups tell you idiots to take a hike, isn’t it?

    I will be very disappointed if the University of Chicago caves to the campus totalitarians on this.

    M. Scott Eiland (1edade)

  12. This is consistent with something else that I read about univ Chicago prior to this letter. This is not a new course of action for them

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  13. “Hugbox.” That’s a new one to me. Apparently there are multiple meanings, one of which is an internet meme that seems like it would offend anyone who actually had clinical involvement with the other in real life.

    Anyway, two hip-hips for UC for taking a bold, some might say academia-trolling, stand.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  14. they don’t have a football team making the school millions. so they don’t have to behave themselves.

    football player can strike (de69be)

  15. This is consistent with something else that I read about univ Chicago prior to this letter. This is not a new course of action for them

    MD in Philly (f9371b) — 8/26/2016 @ 12:33 pm

    You’rc catching on, Doc. And I mean that meaning I don’t intend to have the hangover of the whiff of corruption.

    Steve57 (41f53d)

  16. They do have a football team, Division III, Southern Conference to be Midwest Conference this year, for whatever it may be worth. Probably most useful in the “diversity” statistics. U of C’s forte is a student body with an average IQ of 135.

    nk (dbc370)

  17. Looked up the average GPA: 4.19. A = 4.00. They were basically all in honors/advanced placement classes in high school.

    nk (dbc370)

  18. The comments of Emily and Osita show that a lot of women just don’t belong in college. That, or there needs to be a return to the days of “colleges” for women like that that were designed as finishing schools more than a place for an actual education in a practical field.

    The Gentle Grizzly (544557)

  19. ADDED: This from a public university in Louisiana:

    The Northwestern State University policy requires students to apply 24-48 hours in advance before holding a public demonstration or assembly, and limits such activities to “one, 2-hour time period every 7 days, commencing on Monday.”

    Public demonstrations are limited to three locations on campus: the Student Union Plaza, Prather Coliseum East Parking Lot and a so-called “Green Space between CAPA and Varnado Hall.”

    Dana (995455)

  20. Somehow I can’t give the Univ. of Chicago a standing ovation. They’re still a hotbed of political correctness, run by PC nazis.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/school-found-accusers-claims-meritless-still-punishes-the-accused/article/2600436

    The University of Chicago may have won some points by refusing to adopt “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” for incoming freshmen, but its foray into social-justice activism still needs some work. Namely, its treatment of those accused of sexual assault.

    A male student, identified in court documents as John Doe, is suing UC after it found an accuser’s claims “meritless,” yet continued to punish and investigate him. Doe says in his lawsuit that UC removed him from a physics lab where he worked with his accuser even after her complaint was found meritless.

    …UC appeared to be, for some reason, hell bent on punishing Doe, to the point that when adjudicating the accuser’s second complaint, it used its 2015 student manual to hold Doe accountable for conduct that occurred in 2013.

    “It was impossible for John Doe to know whether his consensual physical encounters with Jane Doe in 2013 might violate subsequently created stringent mandates in UC’s 2015 Manual,” Doe’s lawsuit said…

    “Sexual assault” cases need to be investigated by the police, and adjudicated in a court of law. Not by schools. But trampling on due process is the whole point of these jihads against campus heterosexual sex. Also it’s a jobs program for angry, idiot feminists like trigglypuff who’ve made themselves otherwise unemployable by getting degrees in nonsense such as womyn’s studies.

    I don’t advocate that drunk college boys should be falling in bed with drunk college girls they barely know. I kinda think “John Doe” is getting what he deserves for sleeping with a female classmate in the first place. The way things are going these days I am thinking of advocating the boys, if they’re smart, should just forget terms like “Ivy League” or “Tier 1.” No college will do you any good if you don’t survive the experience by getting kicked out before you graduate, branded a sex offender. Just go to UNLV where prostitution is legal and go the Bunny ranch if and when you feel the need.

    The colleges and universities are just the petri dishes where the totalitarian left is cultivating these affirmative consent laws. You know; where you must ask permission at every stage is (what’s a “stage?” you’ll find out when you’re prosecuted) and get affirmative consent. In other words, sex will only be legal as long as you make love like no human beings ever in the history of humanity have ever made love. Coming soon to your bedrooms, married people.

    …The ALI will vote at its convention this coming week on whether to adopt a model penal code that would make “affirmative consent” when it come to sexual relations its official policy. Affirmative consent — or “yes means yes” — policies have already been adopted by many colleges and universities, and have become law in California and New York.

    A letter signed by some 120 ALI members says the group should vote down the changes as a vast expansion of the definition of sexual assault in the legal system.

    “The prosecutor need only say, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, under the State’s definition, it does not matter whether the complainant actually was willing,’” the ALI members wrote. “It is undisputed that the sex act occurred and there is no evidence in the record that the complainant communicated willingness. There is no consent if the complainant has not communicated willingness. You must convict if you find that the defendant recklessly disregarded that absence of consent.”

    Ashe Schow wrote in the Washington Examiner: “Such a definition would shift the burden of proof onto the accused, something not currently permitted in the U.S. criminal justice system. The accused would have to prove that they received ‘communicated willingness.’ This would mean that any time someone engages in sexual activity, they not only have to make sure they obtain this specific form of consent, but also proof of this consent.”

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/435412/little-known-powerful-american-law-institute

    Got that. If you’re accused of some sort of sexual misconduct by anyone, even your wife, you’re guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent with some sort of on-the-record “proof” of you of “affirmative consent” at each “stage” of the sexual encounter. How are you supposed to have a record of proof? Always video it like a Kardashian? Hire sex umpires/witnesses? Go down to the sex police station and ask for the “special honeymoon cell” every time the mood strikes? Oh, and forget about going out for dinner and drinks first. Women aren’t responsible adults after even one drink. They become legally incompetent and like children aren’t competent to give consent.

    Really. I’ve heard the leftist/feminist types who push these laws talk. And it may take some effort on your part but eventually they’ll admit there really isn’t an adequate defense against this charge. Again, that’s the point; they don’t want there to be an adequate defense. To be charged is to be guilty. They can’t tell you what would constitute proof, what is a “stage,” and what would qualify as affirmative consent. For them that’s a feature, not a bug. There is not aspect of your life leftists don’t want to regulated, and as far as the feminists are concerned all heterosexual sex is rape anyhow. So we haven’t seen the last of the ALI totalitarian left’s push to make affirmative consent laws the law of the land.

    And the University of Chicago is totes on board with the program. Yeah, I think I’ll save my applause.

    Steve57 (41f53d)


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