By Professor
Doom
Across the country, our students have been
trained to believe that it’s fine to use violence to prevent someone from
speaking. While years ago, a riot to prevent a speaker was major news, now
they’re so common that even local newspapers hardly consider it worth covering.
The reason we have these riots is our
schools are populated with, well, non-students. The reason our schools are
populated with non-students is because the administration of those schools
don’t care: they’re paid based on butts-in-seats, and the butts need not even
be in seats, merely registered as students.
A very basic idea to stop the riots is to
get rid of the rioters, but, across the country, admin just doesn’t have the
spine/integrity/intelligence to do the right thing.
Back in April, Heather McDonald tried to give a
speech at Claremont College, and protesters attempted to prevent people from hearing what she had to
say. This was not simply holding signs, they were physically blocking the doors
and access to the venue.
Other schools have sought to placate the
protesters, giving them boons for their thuggish behavior. Claremont wisely
decided upon a different tactic:
To be fair, only 7 students (of
approximately 170 rioters) received disciplinary action based on their
inappropriate behavior but….YES!
The College followed a full, fair, and
impartial student
conduct process before the determination of findings,
sanctions, and the resolution of appeals. Efforts to politicize and interfere
with this process had no influence on timing or decisions. Students had an opportunity to be heard, pose questions, ask for
further investigation, and raise objections throughout the process. The
independent panel of three (one panelist each from the faculty, staff, and
student body) determined their findings of responsibility on a preponderance of
video and photographic evidence and a limited amount of witness testimony.
Sanctions were based on the nature and degree of leadership in the blockade,
the acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility, and other factors.
--emphasis
added.
As per the emphasis above, the students
here were allowed to speak—I wonder how many refused to speak, since such a
refusal would demonstrate they honestly believe people should not be allowed to
say what they will. I really wish I could learn this about these students,
because knowing these students are intellectually honest about their beliefs
would lead me to reconsider the possibility they are wrongheaded. Too bad, and
ultimately we should pay attention to the people running the place anyway.
The people running our schools call
themselves “leaders” but they really should be stewards. A steward protects and
cares for the school and that’s why I cheer the actions of the self-proclaimed
leadership at McKenna College. By showing the student base there that violent
opposition to opposing ideas will not be tolerated, the administration is
taking an action that will help to preserve the school’s integrity, and thus
the school.
Compare to Mizzou, which has a policy of
endless appeasement of rioters. Instead of teaching rioters that such behavior
will be punished, the rioters instead learned that violence and threats of
violence will get rewards. The end result of Mizzou’s leadership? Their student
base is dropping, as nobody in their right mind wants to go to a school
notorious for riots and with a reputation for anything but education. They’re closing their dorms for lack
of students, and may
well close the school in a few years if the appeasement continues. Mizzou has
leaders, not stewards, so I’m sure they’ll get massive golden parachutes for
their leadership when the school closes.
Back to Claremont. Only 5 students were
removed from campus for their anti-civilization behavior, and then only suspensions;
seeing as nobody was physically hurt, I’m not about to argue with the fairly
light penalties. It’s at least something,
and will do far more for education at that school than additional appeasement.
The Left-wing Hate media naturally will not
respect Claremont’s ruling:
The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf complained that the
school's punishment for the student protesters was “overly harsh.”
He quoted Nana Gyamfi, a human rights lawyer based in Los
Angeles, who said Black Lives Matter was “justified” for shutting
down conservative events because they felt their lives were “threatened.”
An example from Gyamfi was that once in 2015, an “anonymous
figure” posted a death threat on a Google document that was created by
an alumnus of the school to promote racial diversity.
Friedersdorf said he wouldn't go so far as to describe Mac
Donald as a threat to students' safety, but he still thinks the college should
have promoted a culture of free and open debate instead of clamping down on the
students without proper warning.
Wait, what? You need to warn students that
they’ll be punished for engaging in violence and threatening behavior? I’m
sorry, I know they’re still sort-of kids, but a year’s suspension (the heaviest
sentence, on three of the 170 students involved) won’t end their lives, and
might give them a chance to re-dedicate themselves to education…instead of more
violence.
The Atlantic ran a full on hit piece against Claremont, trying to make it look like admin
was coming down on the wrong people. It’s an embarrassingly bad representation
of events at Claremont; I won’t even dignify the piece with clarifications. The
gentle reader should note carefully: there’s not a single comment regarding
this piece of “journalism.” From this we can gather how many readers take The
Atlantic’s coverage seriously. Much like with CNN, many Left-wing Hate media
sites have lost considerable readership due to being caught being unarguably
wildly dishonest on so many occasions.
In any event, we now have something
important: Claremont is taking a completely different response to the riots.
Now we just have to sit back and see if the riots continue. If they do, then
the “leaders” who continue their policies of appeasement will at least have
some defense for their spineless behavior.
This is exactly why we need to allow
opposing points of view. If all our institutions all had no choice but to think
the same way about everything, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to see if maybe
there’s another solution to rioting besides appeasement followed by further
appeasement.
I suspect the riots will end at
Claremont, and then, I hope, I won’t be so alone in holding the appeasers in
such contempt.
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