Attempt to defund Wesleyan Univ student paper for criticizing #BlackLivesMatter
Paper “neglects to provide a safe space for the voices of students of color.”
A Wesleyan University student named Bryan Stascavage who writes for the student paper, the Wesleyan Argus, recently penned an op-ed which was critical of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Since then, all hell has broken loose.
Here’s a sample of Stascavage’s column:
Why Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think
A 20-year-old man walks into a church and massacres nine people, claiming that he was afraid that America was being taken over by Black Americans, citing American race relations as evidence. About a month later, a man wears a GoPro, tapes himself walking up to a local reporter and a cameraman, and shoots them both on camera, proclaiming racial injustice in this country as his motive.
Police officers are looking over their shoulders as several cops have been targeted and gunned down. The week before classes started, seven officers were killed in the line of duty; a few were execution-style targeted killings.
An officer I talked to put it succinctly: “If they want to come after me, fine. Just come at me head on. Don’t shoot me in the back of my head. I’d rather go down with a fighting chance.”
Is this an atmosphere created by the police officers and racist elements in society itself? Many, including individuals in the Black Lives Matter movement, believe so.
Or is it because of Black Lives Matter? Many believe that as well, including a police chief who made his remarks after one of his officers was shot and killed—he claimed that Black Lives Matter was responsible for the officer’s death. Some want Black Lives Matter labeled as a hate group.
Since the article’s publication, students affiliated with #BlackLivesMatter and faculty, have launched a petition to defund the student newspaper.
You can read more about the petition here.
Andy Thomasen of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Group Petitions to Defund Wesleyan’s Campus Newspaper, Saying It’s Not a ‘Safe Space’
A group of students and faculty members at Wesleyan University are petitioning to defund the Connecticut campus’s newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, because “it neglects to provide a safe space for the voices of students of color.” According to an article in theArgus, the protesting group has also pledged to boycott the newspaper until its demands are met. Among them:
- Space on the newspaper’s front page should be devoted to submissions from minority voices.
- Positions should be created at the newspaper that count for course credit or work-study.
- Diversity training should be provided to members of all campus publications.
The Argus reports that the petition to strip the newspaper of its student-group funding was discussed in a Sunday meeting of the Wesleyan Student Assembly and that it will be the subject of an open forum on September 27.
We cover this sort of thing at College Insurrection all the time but this is an exceptional example of what’s happening on college campuses across the nation.
Academia has become infected with a strain of progressivism which loathes free speech and uses accusations of racism to stifle anything with which it disagrees.
Robby Soave of Reason has more:
Wesleyan Black Lives Matter Group Vows to Punish Student Newspaper for Thoughtcrime
In response to a recent Argus op-ed that was mildly critical of BLM’s tactics, the protest group launched a petition calling for newspaper staff members to undergo diversity training and set up a space on the front page specifically for “marginalized groups/voices.” If no one submits content for this space, Argus staff members are instructed to instead print an advertisement “for your voice.” More than 100 students and faculty members have signed the petition.
Unless these and other conditions are met, members of Black Lives Matter will dispose of any copies of The Argus they find. They also want the student government, which allocates funding to The Argus, to take action. Troublingly, they seem to have the support of both the student government president and vice president.
The petitioners’ demands are so absurd that even the far left site Gawker has noticed:
Liberal Wesleyan students hilariously fight to ban the free press. http://t.co/QVGdASjBf2
— Gawker (@Gawker) September 22, 2015
Hah. The Wesleyan petitioning students are so ridiculous that even Gawker is making fun of them. GAWKER.
— Popehat (@Popehat) September 22, 2015
Hell no. What are you made of, @wesleyan? Terrifying https://t.co/xZ70Qi4keG
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 22, 2015
Too many of today’s college students believe they have a right to not be offended and that the point of higher education is activism and protests.
This is a problem that’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
If it walks like a duck …
Black Lives Matter IS a hate group.
#BlackLivesMatter means nothing if not #OnlyBlackLivesMatter, and its corollary.
Education is when you are allowed to hear all sides of any argument and then make an informed decision as to which has the more valid position. Indoctrination is where you are exposed to only one side and all other sides are muffled ensuring that you only hear the “approved” message. My God! What are we becoming?
This is how the Collective works. They’ll do it with a petition, but they’d LOVE to do it with fire and death if they could get away with it.
In my experience the progressives prefer to do it via law. Rather than have law be influenced by culture they much prefer to USE law to change culture. The prime example is marriage and the way many are leveraging the associated laws in a totalitarian way. And it’s why many obsess about religion being in any way associated with anything governmental or public. It is the quickest and most effective way to control it since our Constitution doesn’t allow legislation directly.
All those special little snowflakes that can’t abide a differing opinion. Especially women who see a “microagression” or “privilege” claim in every facet of life — these women have set back the cause of women’s rights by a century — right back to the Victorian times. Why they haven’t fainted away is beyond me.
Thanks to the wonder of targeted advertising, I just found out that Amazon sells BLM t-shirts.
The irony is delicious. One of the richest white crackers in the world is getting even richer by selling t-shirts to people who think crackers are the root of all their problems.
Isn’t capitalism great?
They aren’t asking for a safe space to voice their opines. They have that. Their demands are of be paid to do so. This is extortion.
Did the Pope intentionally schedule his visit to coincide with Yom Kippur?
sorry . . . inappropriate posting . . . wrong article
“Some want Black Lives Matter labeled as a hate group.”
SPLC, here’s another group for your hate and extremist list.
The SPLC, with its collective fingers in its collective ears, doesn’t hear you. “La, la, la, la, la, la…”
Progressivism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, whatever it calls itself on any given day must inexorably follow the same arc again and again:
● A passionate set of people decide, for the good of all, it would be really nice if everyone were to think and act a certain way. Other people disagree.
● The passionate people decide, for the good of all, the people who disagree should be convinced to think and act a certain way. The other people still disagree.
● The passionate people decide, for the good of all, the people who still disagree ought to be forced to think and act a certain way. Now some of the other people absolutely refuse to agree.
● The passionate people decide, for the good of all, the people who still absolutely refuse to agree must be punished for not thinking and acting a certain way. And so, the people who still refuse to agree begin to openly resist their punishment.
● The passionate people decide, for the good of all, the people who are resisting their punishment shall be lead to open ditches and shot in the head.
And every new generation of fools says, “Not us. We’re smarter than those guys were. It will work this time!”
I don’t feel safe unless everyone agrees with me.
Some on the left are noticing the totalitarian impulse on college campuses to stifle speech and are speaking out about it. Lots of Jonathans: Jonathan Chait has written about it. Jonathan Turley writes about it on his blog quite regularly. Professor Jonathan Haidt (who I would note that after spending years studying conservative morality and thought now considers himself a political centrist rather than a committed liberal) very recently co-wrote with Greg Lukianhoff from FIRE an article about it that was published in “The Atlantic”. Kirsten Powers wrote a whole book about it. Michelle Goldberg wrote about it at “The Nation”. Todd Gitlin, a former ’60s radical who helped found and was president of SDS and who is currently a professor at Columbia University has written about it. And there are others.
I agree that it may get worse before it gets better. But it seems like there are people on the center-left lining up against it. So the pendulum may start to swing back toward speech tolerance soon. At least I hope so.
It will get worse mainly because the effort is being led by the most energetic but least knowledgeable and experienced group – students. Sadly it may take a generation to work it’s course just as it took a generation to evolve from the hippy goal of being left alone to the current state of absolute totalitarian control over words and thought.
Progressivism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, whatever it calls itself on any given day must inexorably follow the same arc again and again:
Nice reminder of the process Lenin followed after forcibly dissolving the Constituent Assembly. Only it took him about four less steps than the bullet points above.