Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Sometimes Mockery Is The Best/Only Response

Today's delicate flowers come to us courtesy of UC Santa Barbara, which means that I'm footing the bill for their education:
UC Santa Barbara has scheduled a meeting for Saturday afternoon meant to allow students distressed by the newly created “UCSB White Student Union” Facebook page “to talk, get support, or express their feelings"...

“Although we respect and uphold First Amendment rights and freedom of expression, we are very concerned by any actions that might be perceived to create a hostile climate at our university,” (vice chancellor of student affairs) Klawunn’s email stated. “It is possible to express different points of view and debate issues without being divisive and causing distress and upset in our community.”

The meeting was scheduled on the heels of a Dec. 1 Facebook post by the “UCSB White Student Union” that uses humorous satire to mock Black Lives Matter student protestors. The post, making the rounds on the Internet, offered its own list of “demands.” Among them, banning Charlie Sheen- and pirate-themed parties and calling for a “Napoleon Bonaparte Resource Center” to combat “oppression against persons of Europe@n descent (PED) on campus"...

It (an email from Klawunn) also reassured the campus community that “there is no such registered [White Student Union] student organization at UCSB, and no UCSB student or affiliate has acknowledged any connection to such an organization.”
If a White Student Union Facebook page offends, scares, threatens, or distresses you--not a White Student Union, mind you, but a satirical Facebook page--then you, delicate flower, and not the people who put up the Facebook page, are the one with the problem.  You belong in a greenhouse, not a university.

4 comments:

  1. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar.

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  2. I saw (also on FB) UC Berkeley announce that they'd had the same thing happen, and that it was a fake group--in that it was done by non-UCB people. The rest of their blurb was similar to the SB one. I think their main goal was to tell people not to get all upset. Getting all upset and outraged sure is fun, though!

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  3. Speaking of the UC system, though, I was happily surprised to see this the other day. http://www.dailycal.org/2015/12/04/338224/

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  4. Not a bad article.

    Being surrounded, as I am, by liberals, I get offended every day. I don't see too many people being worried about that. On the other hand, I'm not cutting off the heads of people with whom I disagree; if I did that, perhaps people would be more concerned about offending me, the way they're concerned about offending radical Muslims.

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