Tales From The Safe Space

Tales From The Safe Space, Part 18 – At Edinburgh, The Revolution Eats Its Own

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Imogen Wilson - Edinburgh University - Students Union - Safe Space Policy - Identity Politics

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Censured for raising her hand and shaking her head in a student council meeting, but don’t feel sorry for her – this student fully supports the draconian Safe Space policy which saw a complaint raised against her

Edinburgh University has long been one of the dodgiest academic institutions in the country when it comes to tyrannical student activism and the suppression of free speech.

The university has consistently scored Red in the Spiked Free Speech University Rankings, with the student union’s bizarre rules banning “hand gestures which denote disagreement” or applause when a motion fails to pass marking the institution as a particularly insufferable place to take a degree.

(It’s amazing that they tolerate applause at all).

Therefore, in such a sanctimoniously authoritarian atmosphere, it was only a matter of time that the Identity Politics revolution which currently subjugates Edinburgh University claimed one of its own revolutionaries. And in this case, the victim is a student union officer (vice President of academic affairs) named Imogen Wilson, someone no doubt more used to doling out punishment for thought crime than being on the receiving end.

Wilson’s crime? Raising her hand to speak during a meeting of the student council, and then later – pass the smelling salts! – shaking her head in disagreement with something which was said.

The Daily Mail reports:

A student was almost kicked out of a meeting after she violated a ‘safe space’ by raising her arm at Edinburgh University.

Imogen Wilson wanted to make a point at Thursday’s student council session when she was told off by officials.

The vice-president for academic affairs at the university’s Student Association was accused of failing disabled students by not responding to an open letter.

She immediately raised her arm to disagree but was made the subject of a ‘ludicrous’ complaint and told not to make the gesture again.

Imogen was also warned for shaking her head during the meeting as it again breached the ‘safe space’ which is part of the university’s Student Association rules. 

But before you feel too sorry for Imogen, bear in mind that she is an enthusiastic proponent of Safe Space policy and the whole range of illiberal, stultifying policies which are crushing freedom of thought and expression at her university.

The Huffington Post explains:

Wilson later shook her head whilst someone was speaking, and was threatened with another safe space complaint.

“I completely understand the importance of our safe space policy, and will defend it to the ground, but I did not think that was fair, and had it gone further I would have either left or argued against it,” she said.

So Wilson was more than happy for the speech and behaviour of others to be strictly regulated and censored while on campus, but is now throwing a petulant tantrum when she herself accidentally steps on one of the very Identity Politics landmines that she and her student tyrant comrades have been busy laying throughout the political and social discourse, and in the students union rulebook.

This is also hilarious:

A fourth-year student at the meeting, who wished to remain anonymous, told HuffPost UK: “The whole thing was a ludicrous abuse of the entire intent of safe space.

“We were having one of the most emotionally tense councils of the year, with the vote on the BDS movement and people speaking who live in Palestine or are Israeli on both sides of the issue.

“There was ample risk of there being an actual safe space issue taking place—an anti-semitic or islamophobic comment for instance—but the whole debate was actually remarkably civil despite how emotional it was.

“So for someone to have abused the very legitimate purpose of safe space rules to get at someone they politically disagreed with was pretty low.

Gosh, so there was a real danger of an “actual safe space issue” occurring – the possibility that someone might have said something a bit crass or offensive about Palestinians or Israelis, thus immediately shattering the fragile psyches of the adult babies studying at Edinburgh University. How terrifying.

(And as always, it is great to see a students union spending its time debating the issues which really affect the day-to-day life of students on campus – like the BDS movement, whose principle agents will surely be quaking in their boots awaiting the verdict of a bunch of jumped-up student activists in Edinburgh).

But funniest of all is the fourth-year student’s complaint that in targeting Imogen Wilson, her accusers had “abused the very legitimate purpose of safe space rules to get at someone they politically disagreed with”.

Well, who would have thought that such cynical behaviour might be a consequence of laying so many verbal and behavioural traps everywhere? Who could have anticipated that by making so many rules governing who is allowed to speak and what they are allowed to say, it might provide an irresistible temptation for students to manipulate those rules to their own benefit, or to spitefully punish someone with whom they disagree? Who could possibly have foreseen such a shocking development?

Clearly not the adult babies of Edinburgh University, who – when they are not high-mindedly resolving the Middle East peace process on behalf of grateful Israelis and Palestinians – are so busy trying to entrap one another with their precious Safe Space / Identity Politics rules that they totally lose sight of why they are at university in the first place.

 

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Top Image: Daily Mail

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 17 – Woman Assaults Student For “Cultural Appropriation”, Claims She Is The Victim

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

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Identity Politics preaches that violence is an acceptable tool of coercion to make other people conform

Watch this video of a woman – believed to be Bonita Tindle, possibly a university employee – accosting a white male student in the corridor of a campus building at San Francisco State University, because she objected to the “cultural appropriation” behind his choice of hairstyle.

The Daily Wire gives context:

In a video published on Monday, a black female said to be a campus employee accosts a white male said to be a student at San Francisco State University out of hostility to the “cultural appropriation” of his dreadlock hairstyle.

“You’re saying I can’t have a hairstyle, because of your culture? Why?” asks the white male, who appears to be wearing a dress.

“Because it’s my culture,” responds the black female.

“Do you know that it was in Egyptian culture? Are you Egyptian? Naw,” replied the male student with animated body language.

Interjecting, a black male observer who appears to be wearing pink leggings asks the white male if he’s Egyptian.

As the white male attempts to leave up a staircase, the black female grabs his left arm sleeve. Giving in to the pull, the white male demands to be left alone as he descends back to the main floor.

Except that this is not the whole story. The white male student does indeed attempt to leave up a staircase, and is repeatedly prevented from doing so by the female. He is clearly, demonstrably trying to leave the scene and is prevented from doing so by the person accosting him.

At one point (20 seconds and 25 seconds in), she actually pushes him back as he attempts to walk up the stairs, prompting the student to say “Yo, girl, stop touching me.” Once he makes it up the stairs, the female has a hold of his sleeve and tries to cajole him back down, saying “come back”.

But then, when he does, she has the temerity to exclaim “you put your hands on me!” as though an unconscionable assault on her own person has taken place. “Do not put your hands on me” she warns, gleefully, as she takes out a notepad, presumably to document her own very biased take on the incident.

Forget the stupidity of taking offence at cultural appropriation in the first place.

Were it not for the fact that the encounter was recorded on video, it is not difficult to imagine the white male student being reported to campus authorities for having “put [his] hands” on his own aggressor, being dragged through a disciplinary process and quite possibly being found guilty at the end of it – especially given how spineless many university administrations have proven to be in the face of student power grabs.

Bonita Tindle - Assault White Student for Cultural Appropriation - Identity Politics

Consider the mindset one must have to accost a perfect stranger, harass them about their personal appearance, push them and actively prevent them from leaving, and then turn around and complain “you put your hands on me!”.

Consider, too, the entitled, mischievous grin of the perpetrator as she harasses the male student, believing that her weaponised Identity Politics-driven actions give her the license to do whatever she pleases, because she is “in the right”. We saw exactly the same look on the face of the young student protester who vandalised a pro-life campaign stand and was then unable to explain her actions to a campus security officer.

There is nothing noble about this person’s attempt to fight “cultural appropriation”. This is the action of someone who has been taught that she can get away with anything if only she only uses a few words from the Identity Politics lexicon as her shield. And if the San Francisco State University administration are even remotely competent, the aggressor will (if she is indeed a university employee) be terminated effective immediately.

But the point is not this one incident, caught on camera. Other, similar incidents like these are happening on college campuses across America with increasing frequency.

The same toxic ideology of Identity Politics has infected our academic institutions in Britain, and we are only lagging a couple of years behind the United States.

Those of us sounding the alarm are not making this stuff up. I follow this issue closely and have Google Alerts set to inform me when new stories break about campus authoritarianism, free speech curtailment and Identity Politics-inspired violence, and there are simply too many for me to cover on this blog. I currently have a backlog of over twenty incidents, each one worthy of comment, most of which will never be written up here for sheer lack of time.

Watch the video. Because this is where worshipping the cult of Identity Politics leads. Remarkably, it does not turn out well-rounded, robust young adults ready to become productive, engaged citizens. On the contrary, our Safe Space and Trigger Warning culture is turning out a generation of snarling, vindictive crybabies, people who are completely incapable of managing interpersonal relationships and interactions without the assistance of the higher authorities to which they constantly turn for help.

And when there is no higher authority to hand, these Identity Politics priests and priestesses are quite happy to lash out physically, assured of the righteousness of their cause.

This is no longer a joke. Bad actions – now including physical assaults – spring from bad ideas. And the cult of Identity Politics is the academic mother lode of bad ideas.

 

Update: It has been confirmed by San Francisco State University that the aggressor is not directly employed by the institution. The university has opened an investigation.

 

More outrageous “Tales From the Safe Space” are documented here.

 

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 16 – The Prequel Begins Long Before University

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School - Marking - Grading - Red Ink - Infantilised - 2

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The banning of red ink for marking schoolwork – just one small part of our Prizes for Everyone educational culture – directly feeds the student authoritarianism on our university campuses

Over the course of this “Tales from the Safe Space” series we have seen glimpses of a coddled, fragile yet snarlingly authoritarian generation of young activists who perceive any disagreement with their ideology as tantamount to a physical and mental “assault” on their person.

These students demand not only complete submission from fellow students and university administrators to the arbitrary laws of Identity Politics, they also have the audacity to portray themselves as being so uniquely victimised and oppressed that unlike the generations which came before them, they alone need special protection and validation from an external authority. This, of course, is achieved through the establishment of safe spaces and draconian restrictions on freedom of thought and speech for everyone else on campus.

But students do not suddenly become baby-faced tyrants the moment they cross the threshold of college or university at the age of eighteen. Young people today are acted upon by three key environmental factors: the rise of Identity Politics as a movement, the West’s growing disregard for freedom of speech and the therapeutic culture in which we now live.

Every day brings new examples of each of these areas of civilisational decay. And one key factor in our modern day therapeutic culture is the way in which state schools increasingly pander to the feelings of their pupils rather than seeking first and foremost to impart a rigorous education and a strong character. Of course there are many noble exceptions. But if we ever believed that there would be no negative consequences to our present Everyone Wins A Prize culture, then we were sorely mistaken.

The Daily Mail reports on the latest depressing example:

Teachers have complained about a ‘ridiculous’ marking system which forces them to use pink ink for negative comments because it is ‘less aggressive’ than red.

The bizarre system is being implemented by some headteachers who believe pink is a softer colour which will make children feel less like failures.

Many are also making staff use up to six different coloured pens to give different types of feedback to pupils as part of a ‘triple’ or ‘deep’ marking strategy.

In one example, a school has asked pupils to respond to teachers’ comments in purple or blue, and if teachers want to give encouragement they have been told to use a ‘positive’ green pen.

[..] Lee Williscroft-Ferris, a modern languages teacher from Durham, said that in one school he worked at he had to draw a pink box at the end of each piece and insert positive comments in green ink and suggestions for improvement in pink.

This is not a new phenomenon. The Mail reported a similar story back in 2013:

Tory MP Bob Blackman revealed his anger after being told a secondary school in his Harrow East constituency had banned teachers from using red ink.

He told MailOnline: ‘A teacher contacted me and said I cannot believe I have been instructed by my head to mark children’s homework in particular colours and not to use certain colours.

‘It is all about not wanting to discourage youngsters if their work is marked wrong.

‘It sounds to me like some petty edict which is nonsense. It is absolutely political correctness gone wild.

The University of Colorado study often cited as being behind these ridiculous changes to school grading procedures warns that the colour red evokes “warning, prohibition, caution, anger, embarrassment and being wrong”. But surely that’s the whole point? Where there is error, the teacher’s red pen should be there to bring truth, and do so in an unambiguously clear way.

According to the same researchers, “in the context of communication, writing in red seems to shout in the same way as writing in all caps or writing which is underscored”. In other words, the current drive to eliminate red ink from schools stems from the same self-absorbed social media culture which frets that someone doesn’t like us because they failed to put a smiley face or a kiss at the end of their text message. But do we really want to be applying the neuroses experienced by the first generation to grow up with the internet to the current crop of students going through school?

While some of us might like friends, colleagues and bosses to validate us at every turn and sugar coat their feedback to us in warm and constructive ways, real life will not always be so kind. And children should be made ready for the world as it is, not as some naive idealists wish it should be.

School is the place where it is possible to fail in a safe and relatively consequence-free environment. Many people that students meet and collaborate with in the real world will not take the time to encouragingly point out the good parts of a report, presentation, product or other piece of work that generally failed to meet expectations. In some cases, the feedback may be quite harsh, often deservedly so.

This criticism is not usually an attack on the person, or an attempt to “invalidate their experience” or whatever other therapeutic phrase du jour is being used to pathologise everyday life. It is simply a statement that the work produced is incorrect, or in some way not up to specification. And children need to learn how to handle such feedback at a relatively early age. Young minds must be prepared for the challenges of life, not coddled and protected before being released unprepared into the wild.

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We in the West increasingly live in an environment described by Rod Dreher as “a culture of autonomous individualists who don’t order their lives toward a common religion, or anything higher than what they desire”. And to that I would add that there is also an ascendant culture in which no longer values truth, where changes in how a person chooses to “identify” are taken to instantly overwrite reality.

In this brave new world, where even deluding oneself into thinking that one is an animal trapped in a human body is increasingly common among certain people, the awkward fact of a human birth certificate is just an inconvenient bureaucratic error to be erased as a new identity is created.

No wonder then that the teacher’s red pen is so hated – it stands as testimony to the despised idea that there is an objective reality, and often a right and wrong answer. For children who are raised to believe that everything they do is special and praiseworthy, and that their feelings are somehow sacrosanct and never to be trodden upon.

As my Conservatives for Liberty colleague Sara Scarlett puts it:

For years, children have been artificially insulated from any form of loss or emotional upset. The common practice of everyone getting a prize for taking part in sports regardless of how good they are, or how much effort they have put in. The reasoning being that no one’s feelings should get hurt. Whilst I appreciate that adults want their children to have happy childhoods, this has been taken way too far. It is not just the job of parents and educators to make children’s lives as happy as possible. It is the job of parents and educators to make their children into adults who can thrive in the adult world.

The rise of students who cannot exist outside of a ‘safe space’ shows that parents and educators have failed in many respects. Children should be exposed to competition and tests, offered incentives for doing well in them and working hard because that builds resilient adults who are ready for a world where not everyone gets a part in a blockbuster movie or a book deal. In trying to create a world where children are never subjected to rejection or losing, they are unprepared for an adult world where so much of life is about how you deal with rejection, loss, grief and disappointment and avoiding it is impossible. This is, after all, precisely what school is for; a place to fail when the stakes are low.

So as we can see, today’s young adults are uniquely susceptible to the toxic brand of Identity Politics coursing through universities, starting from the moment that they arrive on campus.

From birth, parents and teachers have instilled in these young adults the belief that they are special, unique and beyond reproach. And from there, it is only a small step toward internalising the language of Identity Politics to paint oneself as an oppressed or privileged individual who must be constantly mindful of – and responsible for – the slightest impact that their words or actions have on others.

That’s how you go from grading essays using friendly purple ink to a coddled, incredibly privileged black Yale student aggressively screaming at her college master because he refused to establish dictatorial, school-like rules governing what other adult students were allowed to wear at Halloween.

And that’s how abandoning red ink in schools today helps to create the baby-faced student tyrants of tomorrow.

 

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 15 – Barack Obama On Campus Censorship

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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President Obama’s timely criticism of the Safe Space Generation of students

It may come as a surprise to his conservative critics, but President Obama’s stance on the creeping authoritarianism and Identity Politics culture infecting American college campuses is very much on the side of free speech and robust debate.

Pressed to discuss his views on “politically biased colleges” at a high school town hall event held late last year, Barack Obama said:

Sometimes, y’know, there are folks on college campuses who are liberal and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side. And that’s a problem too. I was just talking to a friend of mine about this, you know, I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t wanna have a guest speaker who, you know, is too conservative. Or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. And you know, I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either.

I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view, y’know? I think that you should be able to – anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ’em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying “you can’t come because, y’know my – I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say”. That’s not the way we learn either.

It is interesting to watch the reaction of the students standing behind Obama while he makes these remarks. Some are clearly bored and not paying close attention, but most clap politely when Obama reaches a natural break in his speech.

However, there is also a significant minority of students in the audience who are giving what can best be described as death stares. Clearly they do not like what they are hearing one bit, because Obama’s pragmatic suggestion that college is place where autonomous adults go to debate sometimes difficult ideas in the pursuit of personal and intellectual growth is contrary to everything that they have been taught is progressive and socially just.

Note in particular the two women on the top right of the screen when Obama says that campus speech restrictions are more suited to the former Soviet Union, approximately 3 minutes and 50 seconds into the video. While the other students seem to have fairly neutral expressions at this point, these two students look angry, sullen and passive-aggressive. The president of the United States has dared to come to their school and blaspheme against the Cult of Identity Politics to which they fully subscribe, and so they sit there, arms crossed and doubtless feeling quite triggered, plotting their revenge.

The point is this: it only takes a few such angry zealots to cow and intimidate an entire student population – and university administrations which should know better – into embracing every corrosive aspect of the Identity Politics culture. Of an entire student body, only a minority will drink deep enough from the well of competitive grievance culture that they turn and become the angry, authoritarian stars of many a YouTube video. But those who do are incapable of leaving everybody else alone. They cannot practice their new secular religion privately; all must share in their beliefs and abide by their behavioural codes, on pain of punishment.

Just seven years ago, the image of an African-American man addressing a group of high school students as President of the United States would have been seen as a powerful display of the social change that is possible when free speech is celebrated, guaranteed and used. Barack Obama, whatever one thinks of his record in office, did not become president by sheltering inside an academic safe space, after all. But Identity Politics does not encourage reflection on progress made; it primarily fosters resentment about the sins and injustices of the past.

Today’s generation of Identity Politics-practising students can talk endlessly about their “pain” and write interminable, barely literate screeds demanding that they be sheltered, acknowledged and validated in everything that they do.

But I doubt that a single one of them could write “Dreams from my Father“.

 

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 14 – Too Many New Stories To Track

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

This Is A Safe Space - Embroidery

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In which Semi-Partisan Politics admits defeat…

When I began the “Tales From The Safe Space” series, my intention was not for it to dominate the blog to the extent which it has done over the past couple of weeks. But I have continued to write the stories up, because each case covered here has exposed or highlighted a different side of the Identity Politics issue, and I think there has been something unique to say about them all.

That being said, there are other pressing things happening in the world. In Britain specifically, the coming EU referendum (and the upcoming launch of the Leave Alliance) is deserving of more coverage, as is George Osborne’s imminent Budget, which looks set to provide more fodder for our “What Conservative Government?” series.

Therefore, future “Tales From The Safe Space” may come in the form of occasional digests and summaries of stories from around Britain and America – since new campus controversies seem to be occurring faster than I can cover them individually on this site as a one-man operation.

So, without further ado:

A pro-life bus advertisement in Ottawa was reported to “trigger” several activists who objected to its message:

 

Activists at universities in southern California and Arizona are demanding that campus authorities ban U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials from recruiting on campus, on the inevitable grounds that it makes students who are in America illegally feel unsafe:

Protesters at several campuses in Southern California and Arizona have demanded administrators cut all ties with the federal agency, and some have protested agents’ presence on campus. Students say border protection representatives make students – especially students in the country illegally – feel unsafe.

At UC Santa Barbara in late January, a parade of students boisterously demonstrated against border patrol recruiters at a campus job fair, loudly chanting “f*ck your borders, f*ck your walls.” One organizer told The College Fix agents’ attendance was “triggering” for undocumented students, adding “there is no space on this campus for an organization that continues to threaten the safety of students.”

Last fall, after UC Irvine students circulated a petition that called on administrators to remove a U.S. Customs and Border Protection booth from the school’s fall career fair – saying officers’ presence would make the campus unsafe for students in the country illegally – the agency backed out of the event.

A student committee at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge abruptly changed the theme of a party which was to be based on Jules Verne’s novel “Around the World in 80 Days”, because of fears that student costumes would amount to cultural appropriation:

Cambridge university students have caused an Around the World in 80 Days-themed party to be cancelled because they claimed it could encourage “cultural appropriation”.

Undergraduates complained that the theme could even be seen as racist if revellers dress up in clothes from a different ethnic group.

Students at Pembroke College are now arguing about whether axing the event was restricting their freedom of expression or preventing offence towards ethnic minorities.

And in slightly more hopeful news, Peter Tatchell – recently the victim of a ridiculous attempt at Reverse No-Platforming by a particularly virtue-signalling and fame-hungry NUS activist, covered on this blog – has come out against university authorities who are often just as hostile to free speech as the safe space-dwelling students they serve:

University officials who censor student journalists pose as great a threat to free speech as controversial “safe space” policies, a leading activist has said.

A freedom of expression row has erupted at University College London (UCL) after The Independent revealed that the institution had been accused of threatening and intimidating one of its student reporters.

Rebecca Pinnington, 21, said she was made to feel “intimidated, anxious and scared” after UCL warned she may face disciplinary action – including expulsion – for possessing confidential documents found on a public university server.

The university initially denied that threats had been made, but last night conceded that the letter handed to Ms Pinnington “set out the full range of penalties available in the disciplinary code”.

Generally welcome words, and good to see the veteran activist taking the fight to the campus authoritarianism of university administrations as well as over-sensitive students.

And finally, a very welcome piece in the student newspaper of my own alma mater, Warwick University, pushing back against cultural appropriation hysteria:

Why do we all have to stick to our own cultures and not be allowed to merge? People should be able to wear whatever they want, and to engage with other cultures freely.

Just think what this could mean for the fashion world if culture-fusion clothing became more acceptable. Maybe the diversity would allow men to would have more clothing options too. This year at the Oscars the male actors all showed up wearing practically the same thing! It’s not really their fault; there just aren’t enough clothing options for men. In the future they could come to the Oscars in a sherwani? A Kilt? Or various other traditional clothes that I don’t know the names of because they aren’t mainstream enough.

A lot of fashion trends, are inspired from other cultures. There are some global trends emerging in fashion, for example I noticed that as crop tops and high wasted skirts became popular in the West, simultaneously South Asian designers reignited the lenga trend (which is basically a crop top and a long high wasted skirt).

Good to see some more voices raised against the attempts by censorious student activists to enforce a new kind of cultural apartheid on campus, whereby the enjoyment of one culture’s cuisine, fashion or art outside of its original context is viewed as tantamount to modern day colonialism.

More – inevitably – to follow soon.

 

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