University of Michigan Article Defends the Idea of Safe Spaces
“safe spaces aren’t just havens in which to escape stereotyping and speak openly about oppressive behaviors without being told”
This came from the school’s engineering department. The sciences are not immune to progressive politics.
Campus Reform reports:
UMich helps dispute ‘myth’ that ‘safe spaces’ aren’t necessary
A University of Michigan engineering writer, Kate McAlpine, argues the idea that safe spaces are unnecessary is a “myth” in an opinion editorial promoted on the university’s official website.
In the third part of her six-piece series titled “Six Diversity Myths,” McAlpine set out to prove that safe spaces are more than just a place where minority communities can run away from their problems.
Rather, they are places where people from these communities can “thrive.”
The University of Michigan featured her explainer on this “myth” on its official engineering department website.
“But safe spaces aren’t just havens in which to escape stereotyping and speak openly about oppressive behaviors without being told, ‘You’re being too sensitive.’ They are places in which the cultures most comfortable to many students and faculty thrive,” McAlpine wrote.
McAlpine explained that microaggressions, while not meant to be harmful, add up and can feel like mountains to minority communities. She likened this to times when minorities generalize White people.
“By now, most White people have had a dose of what this feels like: It’s the flare of annoyance at the way white men are dismissed as ‘another white guy,’ for instance, or the way ‘white feminism’ essentially means ‘racist feminism,’” McAlpine explained.
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Comments
These arguments are the same ones used to support segregation in colleges, including segregated dorms and dining halls. They are simply an extension of “safe spaces” to include where they eat and sleep.
I fully support segregation on campuses. Not racial. I say, separate dorms for those with serious majors (STEM), soft but relevant majors (music), and then the styrofoam majors like grievance studies.
The STEMs and the soft/relevant students will have a (relatively) quiet place to study, with few distractions. The styroes will have all the room they want in which to snivel, whine, and bemoan, without belittlement.
You may have something there. “Galileo House,” “Stravinsky House,” and “Milano House.”
Realistically, people will eat and live with people that they are comfortable with. There is a difference between picking the people you invite out for lunch and de jure segregation.
This is most important on the question of campus judicial codes, admissions policy, and faculty/staff hiring. Justice is “blind”; admissions should be “blind” and based upon merit; and hiring should be “blind” and based on objective criteria.
Colleges have made the news more and more by straying from this. Critical race theory or “anti-racism” is taking the violation of these norms for granted, and then twisting them around to demand reparations against whites, particularly white males.
Everyone should be (COVID permitting) allowed into the campus cafeteria. Nobody should assign you to a table to dine with strangers. Nobody should impose a speech code on only the white students. Nobody should set quotas on minority admissions, and nobody should set minority hiring quotas. These things are simply wrong and contrary to the true spirit of an academic community.
You know what are two world-class safe spaces? Liberia and Venezuela. One of them is guaranteed to satisfy whatever ails ya.