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Report: U. Illinois, Champaign-Urbana Bias Response Team Functions as Speech Police

Report: U. Illinois, Champaign-Urbana Bias Response Team Functions as Speech Police

“appears to take it a step farther by either foisting educational conversations on students or barring them from talking about certain subjects”

Why do institutions of higher learning even have bias response teams? It’s like something out of a dystopian science fiction story.

The College Fix reports:

At University of Illinois, 265 bias complaints enforced by literal ‘speech police’

In the wake of a recently filed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana bias response team, The College Fix reviewed the 265 bias complaints the public university fielded during the last year. The lawsuit charges the university’s Bias Assessment Response Team (BART) with being a literal “speech police” force.

At the end of each school year, the university issues a report detailing all of the previous year’s bias reports, and the report for the most recent year available, 2017-18, summarizes the complaints and how campus officials followed up in just about every case.

While there were 265 total complaints, 98 of them involved a single incident in which the campus shuttle, Suburban Express, sent an e-mail attempting to attract Asian students that said “You won’t feel like you’re in China when you’re on our buses.”

The 128 unique complaints included a wide range of topics: sometimes trivial or politically correct incidents, other times complaints revolved around use of the n-word or other derogatory language. In a few cases, professors who said controversial things were the subject of complaints. Two big issues during that school year also focused on a “build the wall” event and the school’s controversial former mascot, a Native American chief.

But while many universities have bias response teams, what seems to set the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana apart is that its team has a sort of punitive arm to it, the lawsuit alleges. Many campus officials who run the bias response teams say they simply collect the data, but UICU appears to take it a step farther by either foisting educational conversations on students or barring them from talking about certain subjects or even contacting other students.

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Comments

well what’s the point of having a response team if you’re not going to respond? Be grateful they haven’t been issued with batons or cattle prods.

Nothing surprises me about the University of Illinois administration given its long history of incompetence and dishonesty. Over just the ten years or so, a host of administrators have been forced out–that is to say, reduced to faculty status at stil inflated salaries–in one scandal after another.And in its greed for the extra dollars, UI-Urbana is one of the leading recruiters of Chinese nationals as students and potential stealers of U.S. technology.

” While there were 265 total complaints, 98 of them involved a single incident in which the campus shuttle, Suburban Express, sent an e-mail attempting to attract Asian students that said “You won’t feel like you’re in China when you’re on our buses.” ”

Having been in China and on Chinese buses, I know exactly what this is about. I was on a bus once where I could probably have picked my feet off the floor and not fallen due to pressure from the people packed all around me. I believe the ad was written by a Chinese, and that many Chinese would find the ad effective. There’s nothing wrong with it.

But it seems that some Asians are making up for lost time, having learned that they too have the snowflake / crybully privilege. 90 complaints about a perfectly normal advertisement, who would want to be at the same university as those spoilers?

    artichoke in reply to artichoke. | June 15, 2019 at 9:40 am

    Oh yeah notice that my description of riding on Chinese buses implies that everyone was standing. Of course that goes without saying. Packed together, standing up.