Wednesday, April 26, 2017



'Ladies First:' Men Are Suffering Campus Injustice

Sexual assault on campus is a real problem, but false accusations are also ruining some young men. 

The “Dear Colleague” letter, the brainchild of the ACLU and other far-left activist groups, states that, under Title IX, it is the responsibility of institutions of higher education “to take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence” on campuses. The letter makes clear that, should an institution fail to fulfill its newly contrived responsibilities under Title IX, the Department of Education can impose a fine and potentially deny its access to federal funds.

However, this defense against sexual harassment seems to apply only to female students. Recently, a male student at Cornell who claimed he was sexually harassed and raped by a woman was himself expelled and charged with raping the very woman he claimed assaulted him. The male student claims he was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression after Cornell subsequently suspended him. Last spring, the day he was notified of his second suspension, he tried to commit suicide.

Sadly, another male student was successful in taking his own life after enduring a kangaroo court at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he was accused of writing anti-gay slurs against a self-identified homosexual male student. After the accused student’s tragic death, campus investigators admitted that there was no evidence to support the accuser’s claims. The father of the deceased student is now suing the accuser on the grounds that the accuser himself was the one making inappropriate sexual advances and pressed charges to protect himself.

The war against men on modern college campuses has spun out of control. Not only are a man’s claims of sexual assault brushed aside while a woman’s same claims receive unquestionable celebrity status, but many male students are afraid to even approach female students for fear of making said females feel uncomfortable and thus pressing charges. After all, according to many modern feminists, a man can sexually assault a woman without laying a finger on her. Those men who entered college hoping for some merry mingling with the opposite sex may find themselves expelled and publicly disgraced with a permanent record.

That said, promiscuity on college campuses — and in culture in general — doesn’t come without consequences.

It’s unrealistic to expect colleges to be successful at catching and punishing sexual predators. That’s simply not their core mission. Colleges are supposed to be sanctuaries where young people learn to be responsible, but instead they have shouldered the unnecessary burden of policing their students' sex lives.

The federally funded, Barack Obama-initiated, anti-campus-rape program “It’s On Us” touts a snazzy website and slick avatars to upload to your social media accounts, but it fails to offer common sense advice on stopping rape in its tracks: personal responsibility. Don’t drink yourself unconscious? Don’t put yourself in compromising situations? You won’t find such sound advice here — only a carefully edited video of professors and students reading from a script about how they are ready to “stand up for victims.” It’s almost enough to make one wonder if their goal is preventing victimhood versus celebrating it.

The Campus Sexual Assault Study of 2007, undertaken for the Department of Justice, found that the popular belief that many female rape victims have been slipped “date rape” drugs is false. “Most sexual assaults occur after voluntary consumption of alcohol by the victim and assailant,” the report states. An astonishing number of rape cases brought up by female students against male students fall apart in court, but still make headlines for years afterwards and often bring the accused men to disgrace and utter ruin.

Unfortunately, giving any advice to women about their behavior or attire is the unforgivable sin of our culture and the harbinger to becoming eviscerated by hordes of furious feminists. But the feckless accusations of these unscrupulous people have caused not only destruction but even death. Like conservative Christians, straight white males are becoming a minority group on modern campuses that the Left is eagerly attempting to extinguish. And that’s not the way to go about helping those young males become the men our society really needs them to be.

SOURCE 






Avoiding making eye contact or asking where someone is from are signs of RACISM says Oxford University in new snowflake row

Avoiding making eye contact with someone or asking where they are originally from have been deemed as racist micro-aggressions in a newsletter issued by Oxford University. 

The institution's Equality and Diversity Unit states these two common behaviours could potentially cause the listener 'mental ill-health'.

The Trinity term newsletter claims asking someone where they are 'originally' from implies that the questioner does not believe they are British.

The Trinity term newsletter also mentions 'not speaking directly to people' and 'jokes drawing attention to someone's difference' as possible forms of everyday racism. 

It says people doing these things are often 'well-meaning', but insists they are still reinforcing negative stereotypes and making people feel like they 'do not belong'.

But Professor Frank Furedi, author of What's Happened To The University, said the advice was 'Orwellian' and called on Oxford to 'wake up to reality'.  He told MailOnline: 'To go from simply stating someone is racist based on what they say to assume they are unconsciously racist is a very Orwellian turn.

'Microaggressions empower the accuser to say that it doesn't matter what you intend by that look, I just know by the look of your eyes you are racist. 'It is a very insidious way of thinking. Universities used to understand the reality that humans are complex.

'It would be nice if Oxford could wake up to reality.'

Oxford University said the advice was part of an attempt to fight discrimination and encourage equality of opportunity.

Students at the university recently took part in a campaign called 'I, too, am Oxford', to raise awareness of unconscious racism. 

At one college, Pembroke, students are advised by their representatives to report 'macro and microaggressions' to a welfare officer. She will then deal with the issue by 'mediation with the other party' or 'through the harassment policy'.

Professor Furedi said giving advice on avoiding microaggressions happens at 'virtually every' university in the USA, but is fairly new to the UK.

The Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent University urged British students to resist the trend, adding: 'A minority of students make it their own cause.

'But there are usually a lot of people who think it is stupid but they acquiesce to it and eventually the influence of these ideas becomes more prominent.' 

An Oxford University spokesman told MailOnline: 'The Equality and Diversity Unit works with University bodies to ensure that the University's pursuit of excellence goes hand in hand with freedom from discrimination and equality of opportunity. 'The newsletter is one way of advising and supporting staff towards achieving these aims.'

The row comes two months after a Cambridge college was accused of 'cultural misrepresentation' by students after serving 'Jamaican stew' and 'Tunisian rice'.

Students argued the dishes served at Pembroke College were not authentic to countries they were described to be from, The Sunday Times reported.

The original complainant said: 'I'm used to as a minority student being constantly invalidated when flagging up specific issues but if people feel their cultures are misrepresented they have the right to address this. 'Micro-aggressions are a reality of the everyday exist­ence of many people of colour.'

SOURCE 





The rot of political correctness

By Tammy Bruce

In today’s academy, truth is an invention. Expecting people to show up on time is racist. Censorship is good. Silencing opposing viewpoints imperative. Violence to enforce safety is natural.

For the last 25 years, under the guise of “political correctness,” we’ve been watching the inexplicable flow into our culture. The idiotic demands of political correctness in the 1980s, ironically relying on the decency of the American people for their acquiescence, was just the prep course, an amuse bouche before the main course of creating social chaos and destruction.

It sounds dramatic, and it is, and it’s also the only way the left maintains power — brainwashing people into believing that social norms must be destroyed in order to create a more perfect society. From the ashes would emerge the great collective phoenix.

Just ask the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Cuba and Venezuela how well that works out.

Last year, we watched political correctness on campus jump with abandon into its perfected state of fascism. Within a year, we moved from weeping students demanding safe spaces to direct, organized violence to stop speakers who do not pay allegiance to the left’s status quo.

Perhaps with the ascent of Donald Trump, it was the shock of realizing the American people weren’t Venezuelan and were not inclined to commit mass suicide.

Consider some recent revelations, the natural trajectory from the crowd a generation ago that was demanding manhole covers be called “personhole covers,” and making “mailman,” “fireman,” and “policeman” all verboten. We assented, and a thousand steps later:

Reporting about Pomona College: “Black students condemn ‘truth’ as an invention of white people, want conservatives expelled.” News about Clemson University: “Public university’s ‘diversity training’: Expecting people to show up on time is racist.” A headline about the work of an ungraduated researcher at University of Wisconsin-Madison: “Teachers should allow Ebonics because English grammar is too hard for minorities to learn.”

This “activism” at the academy is not only classically fascist, it destroys the future for the young people awash in its conditioning. Imagine, after all: What business, what culture, could survive a generation that thinks expecting people to be on time is racist?

Attempting to enact Orwellian rules at college is just one pastime of students. Free Beacon comments on the direct and often violent efforts to stop nonliberal speakers from being heard:

“With Notre Dame students feeling ‘unsafe’ at the prospect of Vice President Mike Pence speaking at their commencement, the riots at Berkeley caused by the presence of professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos on campus, and the explosive protest in March against author Charles Murray at Middlebury College that resulted in the assault of a professor, the war on campuses against freedom of expression and hearing opposing views is pervasive and troubling.”

To say the least.

Last week, the University of California at Davis’ Student Senate voted to remove the American flag from Student Senate meetings. If you want it to be visible, you have to file a petition in an effort to convince others.

Todd Starnes reported one UC Davis student’s support of the action on her Facebook post: “Why do you feel that advocating for the U.S. flag that represents a history of genocide, slavery, and imperialism is more important than stuff that actually matters like I don’t know, the violence against our LGBTQ Brown and Black students, rising tuition, resources for our students without homes,” she fumed. “What a waste of time.”

The odds are quite high that the students at this public university are relying on a variety of federal, state and alumni loans to finance their rage against the machine. Perhaps some of the assistance should be reconsidered when a classic education is taking a backseat to social justice warrioring. On Monday, I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program discussing this after the student leaders canceled a planned appearance on the program. Apparently, their college bubble was threatened.

Yet, college was supposed to be the bubble destroyer. Leaving home and all familiar, thrown into a new, challenging world. You are to be prepared for a world bigger than you, and certainly different from you.

Instead, we are infantilizing students, appeasing and placating them, condemning them to a life uncertain. Who needs time management? The ability to work and live with people unlike yourself? Why not resort to violence because you’re upset or angry or irritated?

It has been a perfect storm creating this disaster, one of which is the lowering of expectations of students in general because of the rot of political correctness. Our public schools have failed so miserably, universities now can’t hold applicants to any sort of standard.

Consider the frighteningly absurd decision by Stanford, as The Wall Street Journal reported: “Every year, Stanford asks its applicants an excellent question: ‘What matters to you, and why?’ Ziad Ahmed of Princeton, N.J., summed up his answer in three words. His essay consisted of the hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” repeated 100 times. He got in.”

We can answer Stanford’s question quite simply: What matters to us are college degrees that still mean something; graduates who are ready to contribute to society and are ready to pursue dreams in business, life and society. What matters to us is the future. What matters is us winning this existential fight for students and a nation being abandoned by the liberals running our universities.

SOURCE 


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