Question: When is a college’s “diversity program” full of fail?
Answer: When a group of liberal students in Massachusetts boycotts it.
According to an article by Megan Patoskie, a student at Bard College – Simon’s Rock, in The Llama Ledger:
Students boycotted the 7th annual Diversity Day on Wednesday, Nov. 14 outside of the campus library and classrooms and distributed grievance fliers in order to express their views on how diversity is approached on campus. Approximately 50 students boycotted from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but attracted a larger audience throughout the day as other students and faculty proceeded to the annual scheduled workshops.
Diversity Day is an annual campus event during which students are required to attend three workshops from a selection of 40 offered. These workshops focus on social justice issues related to race and gender, religion, body image, and sexuality. The event replaces classes for the day.
The protest was actually in response to one student’s distribution of “The Diversity Day Challenge”, which questioned the value of diversity.
“I came here because over the past couple weeks, you’ve had this individual running around campus questioning the importance of our diversity,” Mohammed Adawulai ’09 said. “In doing so, I think when you question the importance of diversity in a community, especially when you’re doing it from a position of racial, gender verbiage, you tend to undermine the very existence of the people who look different from you; it questions the very importance of your well-being, the contribution you make to society. I thought that was wrong.”
In a video featuring the boycotters, one student says the event makes her feel like a “token spicing up a cultural narrative”, while another complains that a “white supremacist” would not get sent home. As one man succinctly puts it, “Diversity Day has not worked”.
A snippet from the boycott statement provided by student Julia Griffin gives further insight to the complex, quasi-First Amendment-oriented thinking behind this action:
… We feel that Diversity Day operates, at best, as a consolation prize where the actual needs and rights of oppressed students have been ignored. Things we wish to bring to public attention are:
- We have been asked to justify our feelings of being unsafe and threatened in response to a white supremacist ideology
- We have been further victimized, we have been called “bullies,” and we have been told to tolerate intolerance
- We have been given the message that the first amendment right of one student overrides the right of students to speak out in their own defense
- We were publicly told by the provost, Peter Laipson, to “be mindful of strong emotions,” and have been told by the community at large to be complacent in the face of our own oppression as an ongoing defense of first amendment rights
- The suggestion that an emotional response to harassment and hate speech is wrong or uncalled for, simply because it does not mirror the apathy of the oppressor, is a notion which necessarily arises from a position or influence of privilege or denial—It is impossible for us to not be emotionally affected and any suggestion otherwise invalidates our lived experiences and dehumanizes us…..
But what protest is complete without a counter-protest? From Patoskie’s report:
During the protest, an anonymous flier entitled “Boycott the Boycott” was copied and circulated, arguing that by holding a boycott, the students were siding with those who disagree with having any Diversity Day. The flier claimed the boycott and those involved were “selfish in thinking that [their] opinion is the only one that isn’t being heard” and questioned “whether the movement causes greater disruption in the body of this campus than it attempts to solve.”
Circular firing squad, indeed!
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Comments
Boycott is so sexist. They need to get the boy out of boycott and replace it with a gender neutral word.
I propose itcott or neutralcott.
/end of sarc
… a “one-cott”
As my very diverse, bilingual, part Japanese/German/Korean/Czech/Jewish/French undergrad daughter said when I had her read this just now,
“These people really need to get a life.”
Pops couldn’t have said it better himself, even in the third person.
As Warren has proven, anyone can claim a race minority status and get “special treatment.”
This is the socialist plan coming together to create a culture of pliable submissive batteries.
The only legitimate conception of diversity pertains to the uniqueness of individuals. Any other definition is prejudiced and serves to denigrate individual dignity.
About a year ago I heard a pro-diversity PSA on the radio several times (wish I had recorded it) where a “mother” was explaining to her “daughter” how diversity makes us stonger. It singled out several groups (Asians, Hispanics, Africans, American Indians, women, and a few others) and cataloged, using gross generalizations, each group’s contributions to our society.
So here I am, driving down the street, cackling out loud as the PSA beautifully stereotyped all the usual minority groups.
The entire Affirmative Action/diversity argument is ripe with hypocrisy and Möbius logic.
The notion that we can fix past discrimination of groups of individuals (who often are no longer are alive) by discriminating against other groups of individuals is an effort to prove that two wrongs make a right.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself
And heed well their advice,
Even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss…..and when!
Consider that two wrongs never make a right
But that THREE………do.
Wherever possible, put people on hold.
Be comforted that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer main-te-nance.
Chorus
You are a fluke
Of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing behind your back.
A Deteriorata quote on a comment thread. I think I love you.
College entrance exams need to include a section on critical thinking.
They were being critical without the thinking.
I am a firm believer and proponent of diversity, so long as everyone looks and thinks like me.
You are the latter day Henry Ford. And nobody dare disagrre with me.
can someone show me where in any city in the U.S. diversity has impproved government or community life in any way ….anywhere that crime has dropped ….property values have rose…. the city is cleaner …safer …. less costly …..schools have improved ….I have never had anyone answer that question with anything but intangibles
What these students fail to understand is that when they speak English they are speaking the language of the oppressors. They need to stop speaking and writing in English and use the pre oppression language of their ancestors. Nahuatl or Swahili or any of the other languages of the victims of white European oppression and victimization.
If they can not speak the language of their ancestors they should refuse to speak at all. Do not support the culture of oppression and conquest by speaking their language. Honor your ancestral culture by remaining silent.
I suggest “Esperanto”. It belongs to nobody, and everybody.
The largest selling movie in Esperanto stars William Shatner, who also has help to make Klingon well used.
Opposition to the diversity day seems to be the only evidence of “hate” and “intolerance” these guys can muster.
Weak.
[…] LEGAL INSURRECTION – A big thanks to Bill Jacobson for his support, observations, editing and wit. Please check out my new post on Legal Insurrection — and click on the Amazon link to the right!!! (My post – College Diversity Supporters Form Circular Boycott Squad) […]
Any posts that starts with “When is a college’s diversity program full of fail?” is a dog-bites-man story. While it is particularly farcical in this case in a sorta I-am-diversier-than-thou way, really, when is a college diversity program *not* full of fail?
It’s making me dizzy…
[…] WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE JOBS WHEN THEY GRADUATE, SO WHY NOT? College Diversity Supporters Form Circular Boycott Squad. […]
This is some of the scariest stuff I have seen in a while. “We are told to tolerate intolerance”. Oh the horrors! And they want to send white supremist students home? What the heck are they talking about? White supremist ideology running rampant on the campus of a Massachusetts college? Seriously?!?
And I can barely understand most of their points. What a mush-brained puree of leftist cliches.
They feel “unsafe” and “threatened” because someone has the nerve to put up a poster saying “Can you name 5 benefits of diversity other than ethnic food and music?”. Obviously they can’t, or they would have done so quite vocally. I think the only true threat here is to the rice bowls of the diversity commissars.
Boy, are these hothouse flowers in for a surprise when they step off campus at the end of four years.
These “diversity days” are institutionalized Alinskyism — deliberately rubbing raw our nation’s racial wounds. Three mandatory sessions of race-grievance? Instead of classes? Makes me glad I’m long out of college.
It seems from the boycott that at least some of the students understand at a gut level that they are being coerced into something profoundly un-American and immoral, but don’t have the resources to properly explain why. Needless to say they will get no assistance from the college they are spending so much to attend.
If this is what passes for normal at Bard college, what possible value could their be in pursuing an education there?
If one accepts the idea of education as the pursuit of known truth, the very existence of a Marxism inspired “Diversity Day” establishes beyond any doubt that there is little truth to be learned at this college.
That these students now claim to be oppressed is proof that the inmates are running the asylum. I wouldn’t want to get within 50 miles of this place, let alone set foot on campus.
“I think when you question the importance of diversity in a community, especially when you’re doing it from a position of racial, gender verbiage, you tend to undermine the very existence of the people who look different from you; it questions the very importance of your well-being, the contribution you make to society.”
It’s funny how it never occurs to them that this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY’VE BEEN DOING TO WHITES FOR DECADES. The PC left LOVES attacking, demonizing, and undermining white people with purely racist verbiage and they’ve explicitly, deliberately been doing exactly that for a very long time.
It’s perfectly okay in America to attack whites out of a purely racist animus. In fact, it’s mainstream.
I’m confused. Which side is supposed to be the Judean People’s Front and which side is the People’s Front of Judea?
As a representative of the Front for the People of Judea I am offended by your denial of my experience. The JPF and the PFJ legitimize the hegemonic oppression of the FPJ by white supremacist dominators and they make me upset. I demand you be silenced by the authorities for violating my first amendment rights. And I demand more pudding in the dining hall whenever I want it.
It’s Bard College. The whole edifice exists as a mechanism for turning out unemployable sub-Marxoid cretins to go off and infect other institution like mould spores. The circular firing squad is simply what happens when the participants in a circle jerk have a falling out. It’s so hermetically sealed that I am very surprised the original student who posted the criticism of “Diversity Day” had either the wit or the nerve to do so.
Not so much a circular firing squad as the Keystone Thought Kops.
It’s almost as if they sense there is a problem, but not having been given the proper tools – e.g. Reason and the fruits of the Enlightenment – they cannot find a way out.
They lost those tools for intelligent thought and communication by way of attending a college which was an “early adopter of progressive education”. First in the nation to offer a Human Rights Major.”
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. As they say.
For some reason, reading this makes me think of the Israeli requirement that when you turn 18, you get to do 2 yrs of mandatory military service.
I think that would be much more character building than any sort of diversity training could ever accomplish.
Sorry this is at Bard Jr. It’s not even relevant to things that happen on this planet.
This is a school that originally had a motto from Revelation 2:10 (Dabo tibi coronam vitae – I shall give thee the crown of life), which, on its face, would appear to “oppress” the Jewish students, as we tend to stop short of the Book of Matthew.
The new motto is Bard, A Place to Think, which obviously does not include using a f***ing Thesaurus, given how many times the word “oppress” or some variation thereof appears in the list of grievances. Might I suggest some alternatives:
abused, afflicted, aggrieved, annoyed, beaten down, belittled, burdened, crushed, despotized, diminished, disheartened, dispirited, distressed, dumped upon, encumbered, forced, handicapped, harassed, harried, hounded, kept down, maltreated, outraged, overcomed, overloaded, overpowered, overwhelmed, persecuted, picked on, plaguede, pressed, preyed upon, put down, put upon, ridden, ruled, saddened, saddled, smothered, subjugated, suppressed, taxed, tormented, tortured, trampled, troubled, tyrranized, vexed, wronged
Second-rate diversity program boycotted by second-rate greivance mongers which, in turn, is boycotted by the second-rate sponsors of the original second-rate diversity program. Second rate, synonyms: half-assed, dimwitted, dull, jackleg, jerkoff, pedestrian, predictable, worthless, useless, banal, insipid, mundane, platitudinous, pabulum, derivative, unimaginary, uninspired, trite, stock, hackneyed, formulaic, unexceptional, unimaginative, unremarkable, conventional, customary, run-of-the-mill, garden variety, with a heavy-dose of sanctimonious.
These young people had better be careful not to link their comments about White Supremacists to “Critical Race Theory”. They could set off a new round of embarrassment for Soledad O’Brien. http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/29/soledad-obriens-starting-point-cant-get-off-the-starting-blocks/