Complaints to Bias Response Team at U. Michigan Often Target Professors

Complaints to Bias Response Team at U. Michigan Often Target Professors

This is what happens when you create an environment that encourages people to snitch on each other.

The College Fix reports:

Complaints filed with UMich Bias Response Team often target professors

Classroom discussions — and in particular complaints about professors — are a significant source of verbal bias grievances recently lodged with the University of Michigan’s Bias Response Team, according to records obtained by The College Fix.

The language professors used often upset students, as well as complaints of misgendering and offensive jokes, according to copies of bias complaints filed during the spring semester.

The College Fix obtained the 15 most recent verbal bias complaints filed with the University of Michigan’s Bias Response Team through a public records act request. In other words, the Fix sought only complaints of bias that were verbal in nature, not written.

The specific request for verbal complaints was an attempt to review how the spoken word is received in an atmosphere designed to include thought-provoking and sometimes controversial discussions. Moreover, the verbal request aimed to look into whether students’ right to free speech — even offensive speech — is a common complaint to the Bias Response Team.

While admittedly a small sample size, the 15 verbal complaints that stemmed from incidents during the spring 2018 semester indicate that overheard conversations in dorms and libraries become fodder for bias complaints, and that classroom discussions and professors’ actions are also targeted.

In particular, six of the 15 complaints stemmed from classroom incidents involving professors. This was ascertained despite university officials heavily redacting details of the incidents in the reports provided to The Fix.

One incident involved a student becoming upset over use of the n-word during a class reading. After explaining why hearing the word “made me upset,” the bias report stated, the student remained distressed at the professor for defending its use after the scholar explained: “saying the word was acceptable because it was in the content of the reading.” The university redacted what was being read, exactly.

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