Education

Therapets For Students, And The Downward Definition Of Mental Illness

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Therapets - Mental Health - University - Students

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The current focus on student mental wellbeing infantilises grown adults, pathologises everyday emotions and trivialises real mental health issues

Earlier this month, our “Tales from the Safe Space” series looked at the way in which mental health is being trivialised and used as a tool to infantilise students on our university campuses – specifically Cardiff University on that occasion.

Now, Spiked (one of the first outlets to sound the alarm about the defining downward of mental health issues) take up the case again, in light of goings on at the Edinburgh University Students’ Association:

For the past year, the Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) has been promoting a message of ‘wellbeing is everything’. EUSA has introduced a special mental-health fund, and our president even took a pay cut to boost the totals. Now, after a year of mental-health activism, some of the dangerous effects are being felt. Students are being infantilised and are pathologising normal experiences. Students at council meetings are complaining that they are being ‘intimidated’ by hand-raising or head-nodding. And, surprise surprise, there has been a 75 per cent increase in the demand for counselling.

EUSA has been advertising its new ‘de-stress therapets sessions’. This follows the rising trend of animal therapy on campuses in the US. For example, students at Oberlin College flocked to their Safe Space along with a ‘therapy dog’ after academic Christina Hoff Sommers (‘the factual feminist’) delivered a controversial speech.

Therapy dogs are used worldwide to help those suffering from PTSD. They are also used by carers to assist children with serious autism, and in hospices to help bring joy to those suffering in isolation. Now, therapy dogs are being used to ‘treat’ students suffering from exam stress. Students, no longer trusted to deal with the challenges of academic life, are being treated as if they are suffering from debilitating illness.

And it’s not just therapets. You can also see the wellbeing obsession in ‘self-care’ initiatives, offered at Oxford and elsewhere, where students are encouraged to do finger-painting or bake cupcakes. Or the Safe Space at Manchester, a plush, comfy room where students can retreat to when the ‘triggering’ is just too much. When students aren’t being told they’re mentally ill, they’re being treated like easily upset children.

Therapets. For students. Not for returning veterans who witnessed death, carnage and unbelievable stress close-up while serving our country in uniform. For students.

The mind boggles.

Charlie Peters, University of Edinburgh student and author of the piece, points out the damaging effect that this dumbed-down mass application of mental health treatments is already having in the real world:

The emotionalisation of politics, academia and debate has damaged the intellectual capacity of students. If you ask a student today what they think about a pressing social issue, they’ll tell you how they feel about it. Thinking is no longer important – emotions are. Rationality and reality go out the window when offence-fearing students are asked a difficult question. As for those who deviate from the prevailing groupthink, they tend to answer weakly, or insincerely, so as not to upset the campus thoughtpolice.

But campus hypersensitivity is not only damaging the academic sphere – it is stretching already limited resources and pulling them away from those who are truly suffering. Student therapists are being overworked, and the quality of care is bound to suffer. Queues of students complaining about exams, deadlines and stress are putting a strain on resources to the detriment of those who are genuinely in need.

It is also dangerous – and contrary to the very idea of university – to debate ideas primarily in emotional terms, as students are encouraged to do by the excessively broad focus on mental wellbeing and the cult of Identity Politics.

There is a real element of selfishness at work here. But then perhaps it is no surprise that a generation raised to believe that they are unique and precious snowflakes have difficulty considering the needs of others, or appreciating that by clogging up student mental health services complaining about exam stress or their”trauma” at hearing contradictory ideas in class might actually result in fewer services available for those with, say, depression or bipolar disorder.

As this blog recently remarked:

This is dangerous stuff, inflating good mental health with a regression to a sanitised version of childhood, with face painting and cookies and puppy dog videos. And whatever transitory benefit it may provide to students who are not really mentally ill but are simply stressed or homesick, it will do nothing for – and in fact diverts attention and resources away from – the far smaller number who are genuinely in need of help.

True mental health comes about by building a healthy resilience to the kind of everyday emotional bumps and scrapes which characterise adult life. In the real world, people sometimes have completely contradictory views about fundamental issues, but must nonetheless live, shop and work together.

Safe space policy makes that harder by sending the message that students should not have to so much as glimpse opposing ideas, while the entire cult of Identity Politics is built on the notion of a backbiting Hierarchy of Privilege, where everybody is an oppressor and nearly everyone (except for cis white men at the top of the pyramid) is also oppressed.

Therapets for students. And bouncy castles, and finger-painting, and Play Doh and puppy videos.

Soon these people will have jobs.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Queen Margaret University Students’ Union

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Who Is To Blame For Nightmares Of Donald Trump?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Donald Trump - school

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Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Apparently American schoolchildren are being terrorised by the thought of Donald Trump winning the presidency.

Buzzfeed reports:

The presidential campaign is stoking fear and anxiety among children of color, according to a survey released Thursday of about 2,000 teachers.

The report, “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on Our Nation’s Schools” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), puts much of the blame on Donald Trump’s comments about undocumented immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and building a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Even though the survey questions didn’t identify any candidates, out of 5,000 total comments more than 1,000 mentioned Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton were named less than 200 times.

“My students are terrified of Donald Trump,” said a middle school teacher with a large student body of African-American Muslims. “They think that if he’s elected, all black people will get sent back to Africa.”

More than two-thirds of the teachers reported that children of immigrants and Muslims expressed concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. More than one-third reported seeing an increase in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.

“Students are hearing more hate language than I have ever heard at our school before,” said a high school teacher in Helena, Montana.

Another teacher who responded to the survey said a fifth-grader told a Muslim student “that he was supporting Donald Trump because he was going to kill all of the Muslims if he became president!”

But who is actually at fault here?

Is Donald Trump really to be blamed for the fact that American liberals, in their impotent anguish, have concocted all manner of exaggerated lies about Trump, and made any number of disjointed extrapolations between what Trump has actually said and what they think he would do in office?

Let’s be clear – Donald Trump has said some incredibly stupid and offensive things. But the closest he has come to announcing a plan to kill all American Muslims was his declared intention to halt all further Muslim immigration into the United States. Now, one can argue that this is a fear-based, prejudicial, unworkable and unconstitutional proposal (it is), but this still comes nowhere near suggesting that Trump plans to “kill all of the Muslims”.

So where are these terrified schoolchildren getting their ideas, I wonder?

The answer is obvious. They are not being scared by Donald Trump himself, or by any of the things which the presidential candidate has said. They are being scared by the things which other people – typically Trump’s most vehement left-wing critics – are saying about him. These are people who hold their own political views in such high esteem (and the truth in such low regard) that they are comfortable telling children lies about the intentions of a presidential candidate as a means of whipping up public opposition.

A responsible adult would reassure these children that the president lacks any constitutional power to deport African Americans anywhere.

A responsible adult would point out to these children that Donald Trump has never once suggested that he wants to deport black people or kill all Muslims.

And a responsible organisation would be more concerned that young schoolchildren are being grossly misled and misinformed by their parents and other authority figures, and make that the focus of their report rather than Donald Trump.

Unforunately, we are now witnessing a (hopefully) small number of parents and teachers effectively terrorising their own children and students with an entirely false vision of Donald Trump, a caricature even more cartoon-like than the real thing. This is not a tremendously responsible way to raise children, and all the more surprising coming from the side of American politics which perpetually claims to be so concerned for the “mental safety” of students.

So before we even get to trigger warnings and safe spaces, perhaps the first rule for protecting the mental safety of children should be that grown adults – including parents, teachers and those in the media – refrain from telling scurrilous lies in pursuit of their anti-Trump political agenda.

There are enough genuine reasons for America to reject Donald Trump without the Left waging their own psychological war of terror against their own schoolchildren.

 

Donald Trump Hat - Make America Great Again

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Top Image: slate.com

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Identity Politics: Where Does It End?

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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When asked, a majority of these students accept that a short, white male is in fact a tall, Chinese woman simply by virtue of declaring himself so

Where does it lead when young people percolate in an environment where personal feelings always trump objective reality and where there is no greater crime than failing to praise and play along with the assumed identity of another person?

This video gives us a clue. Take 4 minutes of your time to watch it.

When the interviewer (Joseph Blackholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington and a white male of average height) posits to students on campus that he is, in fact, a very tall Chinese woman, almost none of the students are able to bring themselves to contradict him, or to admit that they disagree with his statement.

What this video shows, above all, is a level of terror of committing thought crime more commonly seen in totalitarian societies and dystopian novels. Identity Politics makes every person (with a partial exception for cis white men) simultaneously an oppressed victim, a champion of the oppressed and a potential oppressor, with adherents gaining in status the more they can emphase their “victim” and “champion” sides while negating their “oppressor” qualities. And because this is a revolution which readily eats its own children – even those with long records of fighting for the movement can be undone with nothing more than a careless choice of words – everyone is perpetually on edge and terrified of giving offence, for fear of looking like an oppressor and consequently losing status within the community.

None of these students want to appear on camera failing to readily accept the declared racial and gender identity of another person, even when that other person is a smirking young man who is clearly trying to entrap them. They cannot tell him simply to take a hike, that he is obviously not a six-foot Chinese woman, because video footage would then exist of them being oppressive and failing to validate the existence of this man’s non-existent identity. And in identity politics circles, this would be committing social and reputational suicide.

Dreher sighs:

This is a freaky thing to watch. These are actual college students. Adults who have the right to vote. And their reason is so compromised that they are unsure what the man in front of them is, so terrified are they of saying the wrong thing.

Ah yes, students at the University of Washington, where they are scared out of their minds by the possibility of seeing a Halloween costume that makes them turn tail and run for their Safe Space™. These people are ripe for dictatorship. They will not let themselves see reality if it offends against the party line.

The only difference between this cowed behaviour and that seen in a totalitarian society is the fact that the students and other identity politics cultists do this to themselves. There is no higher authority, no dictatorship, which transmits these values and insists that they are observed. It is an entirely self-enforcing cult, though concerted efforts are underway to bully university administrators into enforcing the doctrine and punishing the new heretics without first having to be cajoled into doing so through protests and shaming.

Blackholm and the Family Policy Institute of Washington may have been joking, but we are now seeing real-world cases to test our judgement – like that if Stefonknee Wolscht, a 52 year old father of seven who decided that despite having had a family and raised numerous children, he is, in fact, a six-year-old girl.

Where does it end? Nowhere good. This madness will not stay confined to the academy – indeed, it is already leaching out into wider society. But as this blog remarked earlier this year:

Since we seem intent on burying our heads in the sand and denying that there is anything wrong with our new Politics of Identity, by that time our Prime Minister will probably identify as a Beagle, the Home Secretary will be a barn owl except on Tuesdays, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be a goldfish who looks suspiciously like George Osborne’s grown-up kid wearing a wetsuit, Number 11 Downing Street having been converted into a walk-in aquarium in deference to their “mental safety”.

Something to look forward to.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Fighting Social Justice Warriors At Ohio University By Adopting Their Tactics

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Ohio University College Republicans - Graffiti Wall - SJWs - Identity Politics

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University Social Justice Warriors, with their victimhood culture and authoritarian tactics, are in danger of creating an equally illiberal conservative backlash

In a recent piece, Rod Dreher speculated as to what might happen if and when the usual targets of social justice warrior bullying come out of their defensive crouch and begin to fight back, playing the SJWs at their own game.

(The upshot: while an entirely understandable reaction, nothing good can from it; free speech will then be under assault from both ends of the political spectrum).

This comes in the context of Donald Trump-supporting students having their free speech right to advocate for Trump’s candidacy treated by snarling left-wing activists and cowed university administrations like some kind of grave assault on the safety of the campus community.

Dreher writes:

One likes to think that most students have enough residual dignity to restrain themselves from behaving like bully-babies.

What if that changes? What if students — whites, males, and other out-groups — decide that they’re going to fight fire with fire, and adopt Trumpian methods on campus, challenging the sacred victim status of the SJWs, and claim the mantle of victimhood for themselves, and intimidating university authorities until they get what they want? Trump has shown what you can do to acquire power if you just don’t give a rat’s rear end what people think of you. That is, if your own belief in yourself and your righteousness is so absolute that you are not susceptible to believing that it is undignified or dishonorable to present yourself in the public square as a victim. Trump’s genius is to present himself as both victim and victor, and that kind of thing is not going to work on campus. But sooner or later, the tactics of the SJWs are going to be taken up by their opponents, because that’s the only way they will save themselves from being entirely disempowered on campus, and in time, in the workplace. Trump has shown that establishments are weaker than people think, and can be pushed over. So have the SJWs. All that campuses need now are counterprotesters to the SJWs, making similar uncompromising demands from administrators, driven by nothing but their feelings of grievance. Then we can have a proper war of all against all.

Thanks, SJWs.

Unfortunately, this counterprotest is already coming to pass, with some American conservative students now adopting the same language of fragility and victimhood used by their leftist tormentors.

The College Fix reports:

The College Republicans at Ohio University say they are under siege by peers for painting a message on the campus free speech wall defending the First Amendment.

In a barrage of cyber harassment over the last day, they have been called racists, described as Klansmen, and accused of literally threatening the campus — all over a painted message that read “Trigger warning: there are no safe spaces in real life! You can’t wall off the 1st Amendment.”

“It got so much hate, I just don’t know if I have ever received so much hate in my life,” David Parkhill, 19, president of the Ohio University College Republicans, said Thursday in an interview with The College Fix.

“Granted, I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t think it would be that much hate,” he said. “We are basically a minority on this campus. Our opinion is so put down and so crushed, it’s almost like we don’t have a say.”

While the Ohio University College Republicans doubtless have a point – one can imagine campus life not being much fun for anyone with openly conservative convictions in the current climate – what is depressing here is the way in which David Parkhill, president of the OU Republicans, uses the same whining language of victimhood and oppression to elicit sympathy for his own embattled minority.

Nobody likes a pity party, but that is exactly what will get if conservative and liberal students face off against each other not as they should, through lively debate, but rather through constant, tear-stained appeals for the university authorities to intercede on behalf of their respective sides.

And in a sense, one cannot blame the Ohio University College Republicans for behaving in this way. They have watched for months and years while identity politics-wielding left-wing students get every little thing that they demand from spineless university administrations, and shame into submission anybody who stands in their way.

It is not therefore an illogical leap when other students conclude that this is the best and most effective way of advancing one’s own agenda. If the Social Justice Warriors can mobilise support and win concessions by emphasising (and frankly, grossly exaggerating) their supposed victimhood and oppression, why should conservatives not do the same?

But this can lead nowhere good. For a start, the SJWs have much more practice at wielding identity politics as a weapon. It is their bread and butter, they do it every day. Every linguistic trick and campaigning tactic to elicit the last drop of sympathy and support from sympathetic university authorities is already known to them, while as the Ohio University example demonstrates, conservative students are still taking their first baby steps at playing the victim.

Therefore, in the short term, conservatives will not only continue to be outgunned by the SJWs, they will squander whatever sympathy and respect they otherwise deserve by lowering themselves to the same tactic of  appealing to their weakness and minority status as a valid reason to clamp down on the freedom of others (SJWs) to organise and protest.

And in the longer term, if through repeated practice young students become adept at flaunting their fragility and exalting in their helplessness, both sides will fight to a bloody draw, with nobody able to say or do anything on campus without immediately triggering a protest and counter-protest. University will truly no longer be a place for the discussion of ideas, but a sheltered place of “comfort and home” for weak-minded adult babies, an intellectual demilitarised zone protected by a field of verbal landmines laid by every competing minority group over the academic and political discourse.

In other words, this is not the anti-SJW backlash that we have been waiting for. While it is unsurprising to see Ohio University College Republicans seeking to fight back in the way they believe will make the most difference in the short term, while they still have to live on campus, their adoption of the SJW’s own weapons and tactics will do nothing to halt the longer-term slide into authoritarianism, infantilisation and ever-more restrictive behavioural codes.

All of which makes it even more vital that the adults in the room – professors and university administrators – stop being so darn terrified of their own student populations, and actually start push back against any student or advocacy group which attempts to use their supposed fragility as a reason to shut down free speech for others.

As this blog has argued, students alone cannot halt the growth of safe spaces and censorship on their college campuses. Though liberty-minded students will have to be the foot soldiers in any such fightback, they can only succeed if they are given sufficient air cover by those in positions of authority and moral leadership – and on too many campuses, this has been pointedly lacking.

Some universities – like Mizzou – are starting to pay a high price for attempting to appease the mob rule of the SJWs.

How long will it be until more universities realise that they need to fight back and stand up to the identity politics takeover, or else face a similar fate?

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 27 – Ohio University, Tear Down This Wall

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Ohio University - Trump 2016 - Chalk - Hispanic Latino Student Union - Cultural Sensitivity

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At Ohio University, mortal offence is in the eye of the beholder

Another day, another American university cravenly submitting to the identity politics bullies and their weaponised mental weakness.

Now, the president of Ohio University has apologised to students in a letter because unknown other students dared to exercise their First Amendment rights by spraying a political sentiment (expressing support for Donald Trump – pass the smelling salts!) on the university’s famous Graffiti Wall.

The Athens Post reports:

The graffiti wall by Bentley Hall was found painted over with the words “Trump 2016” and “Build The Wall!!” on Thursday.

Some Ohio University students were upset by the display.

“I felt disgust, frustration and I expected more from this campus,” Joshelyn Smith, a senior studying communication and public advocacy, said.

The Hispanic and Latino Student Union at OU put together an emergency meeting that took place in OU’s Multicultural Center after finding out about the mural and ultimately painted over it at 3 p.m. Thursday.

“The goal of the meeting was to start a discussion,” Carla Triana, Hispanic and Latino Student Union president, said. “We heard about (the mural) at 9 this morning, and we had to do something instantaneously. We had to educate people on why this was offensive.”

Yes – clearly nothing was more important than holding an “emergency meeting” to explain why declaring support for a political candidate on a wall honouring free speech is so “offensive” as to warrant seeking out and punishing the perpetrators.

Sadly, much as we saw with the college Equal Opportunities administrators who gleefully shredded the US Constitution in an attempt to soothe the hurt feelings of a student (really an undercover reporter) who claimed to feel “triggered” by the document, Ohio University was lightning quick to apologise to the outraged students.

Even though these students are nothing but bullies, attempting to use their hurt feelings as a weapon to shut down the fundamental free speech rights of others, Ohio University leaders could not find it within themselves to stand up to the identity politics cultists and tell them to grow a thicker skin.

Campus Reform reports:

The president of Ohio University sent a campus-wide email expressing sympathy for those “hurt” by pro-Trump slogans written on a free speech wall last week.

[..] The Hispanic and Latino Student Union called an emergency meeting—attended by university president Roderick McDavis— to “start a discussion … on why this was offensive,” after which they decided to paint over the messages.

[..] McDavis assured attendees that he shared their concerns, and was working to accelerate the development of a cultural competency element for freshman orientation, following that up the next day with a message to the campus community discussing the “beauty and power” of words in the context of sympathizing with those offended by the Trump-inspired messages.

“Yesterday, I met with students and members of our Hispanic/Latino community who saw words that troubled them on the Graffiti Wall,” McDavis wrote. “Indeed, this wall is a place of free speech and expression; however, the words painted were troubling because they had a very different meaning to some than they may have to others viewing the message or even to those who painted the message.”

But this frantic attempt by McDavis to mollify the angry students by adopting their identity politics language and accepting the premise of their complaint is exactly the problem. When you move away from an objective standard of what constitutes unacceptable (or “problematic”) free speech toward a worldview where speech can be restricted or punished based on the subjective feelings and interpretation of certain third parties, then you no longer have anything like freedom of speech.

If the words “Trump 2016” or “Build the Wall” were troubling to some students because they chose to interpret them as “I hate Hispanic/Latino people” rather than “let’s adopt this policy in a (counter-productive) attempt to enforce our border”, does this mean that the political idea can no longer be expressed for fear of upsetting those who apply the worst possible interpretation of the words in their minds?

What about other political statements? If one follows this logic, do we not end up in a situation where any conservative sentiment is liable to be banned after being wilfully misinterpreted by angry students wielding their fragile “mental safety” as a weapon?

(And incidentally, although it does not excuse Trump’s worst rhetoric about immigration, the fact that the identity politics practising American Left immediately interpret any call for immigration control as smoking gun evidence of deep racism – meaning that the political opinions of countless people are effectively made taboo – is one of the reasons why Donald Trump is now serving as such a successful and dangerous pressure release valve for years of previously unchannelled anger).

This is a textbook case of how not to respond to an identity politics-based student power grab on campus. As soon as university administrators conceded the premise of the complaint – that words spoken, written or painted can cause “harm”, and that this is unacceptable even if the harm is only incurred by applying the worst possible interpretation of the speech in question – they lost the war. They frantically scrambled to mollify the students in an attempt to buy themselves peace, but they will only succeed in emboldening the student activists to take offence even more easily and demand even greater concessions in future.

One can predict with reasonable confidence that there will now be one or more forced resignations from the Ohio University faculty or administration in the coming year, either as a result of what has already happened or because of some future non-existent transgression against the student population. And it will be richly deserved, for those who fail to defend academic freedom and free speech have no place running our universities.

 

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