Being 'PC' and 'safe places' on campus. The Younger gens

[Mudfuzz]

I'm all for PC if everyone that plays the PC card lives by it, but it can't go both ways if you want to be treated PC then you better fucking treat EVERYONE else just as PC.. do on to others as.. and all that...

[t-rey]

Yeah, I think that's right. It's the myth of the self-made man/woman at play. But if you didn't make yourself, then you have a lot of compensating to do. Paging Horatio Alger.

Yep. And the thing I've noticed about the legitimately self-made people I've encountered - they don't often go on blathering about how they are self-made and why can't everyone else just pick themselves up out of their pity party and make a few million like they did.

I'm all for PC if everyone that plays the PC card lives by it, but it can't go both ways if you want to be treated PC then you better fucking treat EVERYONE else just as PC.. do on to others as.. and all that...

YES.

[snipelfritz]

I just had a thought on this subject. To play devil's advocate:

The rise in "safe space"/overly PC culture among college students has come in correlation with rising costs of schooling and little alleviation on those who are paying for their own education. With a whole generation putting themselves into such a financial burden to attend universities, it's not particularly surprising that there is less willingness to pay to be exposed to attitudes they've already discarded.

While I personally dislike the black and white idea that colleges are serving their students as customers, it seems logical that financial circumstances are leading students to be more frugal in the ideas for which they are paying increasing amounts (or accruing greater debt). One must regard the economics of those seeking higher education rather than taking the belittling attitude that they're simply looking a gift horse in the mouth. With all of the political rhetoric of making higher education more affordable, there are very little to no actual results apparent. Exposure to varying thoughts and ideals is undeniably a worthwhile pursuit as is the idea of higher education being provided at reasonable cost. However, when the practical life of the student fails to reflect the ideals that benefit them, why should we react so grotesquely that they don't accept the ideals which aren't so palatable. It's really no surprise that students feel more entitled to a comfortable environment when they're putting themselves in greater discomfort to get there. A comprehensive, open-minded education is of a abstract value while the actual dollar value of a degree is on the rise. In times of austerity, a younger generation is simply flexing it's muscles to prioritize what ideas are first on the fiscal chopping block.

In a haphazard analogy: It's rather rude to tell someone to eat their vegetables when they've just paid for the meal.

But that's just a thought. I don't agree with the "safe space" mindset, but it seems like a far more mature way to approach the issue than to dismiss students as "coddled."

EDIT: And yes, I realize the natural reaction to this argument would be to highlight the disparity between those who have less economic means and those who are driving the PC outrage craze. However, one can only see that rebuttal as anecdotal at best and even further as a rather non-academic reduction to a bipartisan culture war instead of just one perspective on a systemic issue.

[casecandy]

I have sat in on safe space discussions and not participated because I'm not part of the demo, i.e. I'm an adoptive parent and I'm a regular reader of a FB group for adult adoptees where "Comments from non-adoptees will be gracefully deleted." I respect the sanctity of the safe space. If people want that, then I'll let them have that. "You do you," that's my motto.

For me personally a safe space is the least conducive and stimulating environment for thought and intellectual development. If I can't bounce my ideas up against ideas I disagree with, how am I supposed to grow? Take the dreaded casecandy vs SPACERITUAL and D.o.S. hate triangle. Do you know how much I've learned from those conversations? I am now a solid Minutemen fan. If I hadn't argued with D.o.S. about the Minutemen I'd've never become a Minutemen fan, I'd still think they were overrated. I purposely join FB groups where I disagree with the main line so that I can hone my debate skills.

In Daniel Dennett's book, I think it's called The End of Faith, he talks about ideas we disagree with as "trampolines." I didn't even need him to explain what he meant before it clicked. Case in point: I'm a very spiritual person, reading and enjoying a book called The End of Faith.

So while I respect people's desire to have a space where they're not constantly rehashing the same tired debates, I do think that safe spaces are on a slippery one-way slope to becoming echo chambers. Echo chambers are my personal nightmare.

[casecandy]

"It doesn't matter how this looks to other people, it matters how it looks to you... Fighters fight."

[Invisible Man]

In a haphazard analogy: It's rather rude to tell someone to eat their vegetables when they've just paid for the meal.

All of the thinking here makes good sense to me. The tension contained in this idea (and the opposite of it) is one of the things that's making higher ed's current situation generally untenable. Colleges are asking for more money (which isn't always their fault, but who cares) to do essentially the same work. Faculty want guarantees that they can do their research without pandering to the whims of nineteen and twenty year-olds. Students want accountability of faculty, many of whom are not interested in helping their students develop "real life" skills (see focus on abstruse research above).

Both sides have a point. Faculty want autonomy in an economy where one has to justify work as feasbile and valid in the eyes of bean counters. Students feel entitled because they're mortgaging their futures so that they can have a shot at a good job, and they accuse faculty of not understanding that their world resembles The Hunger Games when it comes to employment opportunities.

The big issue is that we trust faculty and administration to "know better." If we give in to student demands, then they do become customers, and we start chasing them rather than leading them. And that's a scary proposition. But still, it's hard to deny that students are owed something, even if no one can figure out what it is.

So the question (to my mind, anyway) becomes a matter of figuring out what in the hell colleges are for. If they're designed to be unassailable institutions where we develop intellect and the ability to reason, then no, fuck that customer service model. If they're career colleges or degree mills, then they're clearly built along the lines of a corporation, and adopt some of its practices (i.e., they chase the money).

I've worked at multiple iterations of both types, and places that fell in between the extremes. The "academic" type is incredible when it works--like a drug, I could ride the high of a good class for a couple days. But that model seems to dying as neoliberalism claws its way out of the corpse of the university--I think it is too late to save this model. The other one (business/career/vocational college) does not do good work, but they pursue a viable customer service model that makes people happy, as it has acceded to their demands. Those placees don't have the cultural capital of research institutions, so they've always been chasing.

That's part of what's so scary about Missouri, whether the changes in administration were warranted or not. That's a big place that values intellectual freedom, and it let's students determine what that freedom looks like. It was a big pillar to fall in the debate about PC on campus, and about how this is gonna play out in the future.

Internet forums aren't great places for long-form discussion, so apologies for my long-ass posts--bumper sticker logic doesn't really serve us well on this stuff. Long story short: college is going to look really different, I think, for our kids than it did for those of us who went. Like...really different. I'm involved in some of these changes at my institution, but I can't say a whole lot about it yet.

[Invisible Man]

Yep. And the thing I've noticed about the legitimately self-made people I've encountered - they don't often go on blathering about how they are self-made and why can't everyone else just pick themselves up out of their pity party and make a few million like they did.

I always figure (because I include myself in this number) that those people understand how much chance and good fortune goes into "making it." One of the biggest make-or-break moments for me was getting into a really good graduate program. I didn't have the credentials that others did--I came from a middling state school, no publications, blah blah, and most of my cohort were Ivy League-types. Someone who sat on the admissions committee told me a year or two into my stint there that she liked my writing sample because it was about murderous robots (Karel Capek's R.U.R.). So basically my entire future and fortune hinged on my fucking weird ideas about labor and robots, and that one person advocated for me.

Note that I am not a millionaire. But still, we all roll the dice, and thinking that you're hot shit because you rolled snake eyes (or whatever is good in dice--I don't fucking know) speaks to the smallness of a mind, I think.

[casecandy]

their world resembles The Hunger Games when it comes to employment opportunities

Accurate.

[gunslinger_burrito]

We've got some smart peeps here.

If I may add a thought or two...

I don't think "safe spaces" have a place in public. And I personally really dislike the term and usage of "trigger warning." I think that if something "triggers" you then you have some deep-seated psychological issues that need to be worked out, whether they're PTSD, childhood truama, or whatever. The place for that is with some sort of therapist, not a school, and if you're going to go to therapy for some particular issue, isn't the therapist going to want to talk about that issue, and not avoid it so as not to "trigger" you? ( I can just imagine more privileged kids going to therapy for stuff that really isn't a big deal, and having the therapists basically tell them that they need to grow up...) Fears can ONLY be solved through confrontation. THAT being said, if someone is really so "triggered" by issues of, say, sexuality, then they shouldn't be taking a course on it. To say that you want to learn about an issue and then cherry pick which parts of it you actually want to discuss is totally self-defeating. If the most vocal whiners really are the more privileged ones, then all that's doing is confirming for them that they can get whatever they want if they persist enough. If the aim of a school, ANY school, is to teach younger generations about the world, there cannot be any editing. Regardless of the students' backgrounds, the world is the way the world is and presenting an edited version of it will seriously fuck up how those younger generations will react to it. Truth is the best teacher. Unedited truth.

I don't know much about the inner politics of colleges, but in my opinion they'd be better off by basically saying "these are the courses, this is how we do things on this campus, and if you don't like it, you can go to another one." But, of course, that would involve these campuses not being for-profit organizations. When the goal is largely to make money, then quality is going to suffer to pander to the "customers."

In Daniel Dennett's book, I think it's called The End of Faith, he talks about ideas we disagree with as "trampolines." I didn't even need him to explain what he meant before it clicked. Case in point: I'm a very spiritual person, reading and enjoying a book called The End of Faith.

So while I respect people's desire to have a space where they're not constantly rehashing the same tired debates, I do think that safe spaces are on a slippery one-way slope to becoming echo chambers. Echo chambers are my personal nightmare.

Sam Harris wrote The End of faith. Was it in that book that he talks about the trampoline idea, or was it actually Dennett, in one of his books? I'm just curious.

Social media is creating more and more echo chambers because it's so easy to ban people or delete comments that someone disagrees with. Add that element to campuses, and look at what we have...... Social media has started to rob people of life-long careers, ruin peoples' lives and reputations, and to me that's unacceptable. Don't even get me started on the deluge of misinformed, quotes-taken-out-of-context memes all over the internet.

All that being said, I wouldn't wish any censorship on any of it. Just more actual education. If you encounter (in person or online) some of this stuff we're talking about, the only way to make it better is to try and inform people. I mean, seriously, how much time do some of these social justice warrior types spend ranting about something they didn't take 15 seconds to google? If someone says something that sounds like it could be BS, of misinformed, even if their intentions seem good, then maybe it's time to say "hey, let's google that real quick. I want to know more about that."

I'm getting off topic, but carry on....

[t-rey]

I just had a thought on this subject. To play devil's advocate:

The rise in "safe space"/overly PC culture among college students has come in correlation with rising costs of schooling and little alleviation on those who are paying for their own education. With a whole generation putting themselves into such a financial burden to attend universities, it's not particularly surprising that there is less willingness to pay to be exposed to attitudes they've already discarded.

While I personally dislike the black and white idea that colleges are serving their students as customers, it seems logical that financial circumstances are leading students to be more frugal in the ideas for which they are paying increasing amounts (or accruing greater debt). One must regard the economics of those seeking higher education rather than taking the belittling attitude that they're simply looking a gift horse in the mouth. With all of the political rhetoric of making higher education more affordable, there are very little to no actual results apparent. Exposure to varying thoughts and ideals is undeniably a worthwhile pursuit as is the idea of higher education being provided at reasonable cost. However, when the practical life of the student fails to reflect the ideals that benefit them, why should we react so grotesquely that they don't accept the ideals which aren't so palatable. It's really no surprise that students feel more entitled to a comfortable environment when they're putting themselves in greater discomfort to get there. A comprehensive, open-minded education is of a abstract value while the actual dollar value of a degree is on the rise. In times of austerity, a younger generation is simply flexing it's muscles to prioritize what ideas are first on the fiscal chopping block.

In a haphazard analogy: It's rather rude to tell someone to eat their vegetables when they've just paid for the meal.

But that's just a thought. I don't agree with the "safe space" mindset, but it seems like a far more mature way to approach the issue than to dismiss students as "coddled."

EDIT: And yes, I realize the natural reaction to this argument would be to highlight the disparity between those who have less economic means and those who are driving the PC outrage craze. However, one can only see that rebuttal as anecdotal at best and even further as a rather non-academic reduction to a bipartisan culture war instead of just one perspective on a systemic issue.

That's a pretty solid argument. It's a huge burden to assume that amount of debt in the name of bettering yourself and maybe find a job in your career that might pay a decent wage. However, I've yet to meet an 18-19 year old kid that has it figured out enough that I'd trust their judgement over subjects are worth discarding vs. those that have merit and are worthy of the discomfort (and learning) that comes from discussions around them. Some of the best advice I've ever received is that we learn the most about ourselves when we are a little uncomfortable. That's held true for me all of my life - I've not always liked what I learned about myself, but I always learned.

Yep. And the thing I've noticed about the legitimately self-made people I've encountered - they don't often go on blathering about how they are self-made and why can't everyone else just pick themselves up out of their pity party and make a few million like they did.

I always figure (because I include myself in this number) that those people understand how much chance and good fortune goes into "making it." One of the biggest make-or-break moments for me was getting into a really good graduate program. I didn't have the credentials that others did--I came from a middling state school, no publications, blah blah, and most of my cohort were Ivy League-types. Someone who sat on the admissions committee told me a year or two into my stint there that she liked my writing sample because it was about murderous robots (Karel Capek's R.U.R.). So basically my entire future and fortune hinged on my fucking weird ideas about labor and robots, and that one person advocated for me.

Note that I am not a millionaire. But still, we all roll the dice, and thinking that you're hot shit because you rolled snake eyes (or whatever is good in dice--I don't fucking know) speaks to the smallness of a mind, I think.

Yep. Luck is something that people don't like to acknowledge when it's working in their favor. But it's definitely bad luck when we fuck up and fail though...

[popvulture]

I've really appreciated reading this thread. I had an extremely frustrating taste of this come up last night after I, a very liberal person, posted something on Facebook that apparently wasn't liberal enough. I don't even want to talk about it, but rather to just say thanks for the dialog here. It's been helpful.

[wsas3]

^^^This makes sense to me, but keep in mind that every generation has said that about the succeeding generation pretty much since the dawn of time. You may be more right than people have been in the past, but there's still a "kids these days" mentality that might betray more about the speaker than the people being spoken of.

I work with "young" people all day long. I'm a professor, and I don't just drop that in here to say "I know what I'm talking about" or anything--I don't. But I do have lots of data.

I think that the anger we feel toward millennials--or whomever it is we're talking about--has more to do with their privilege than it does with their politics. When you're young, you don't have the perspective to separate the two. You just see the world as you see it, and there's nothing more important than your own convictions. It's not so much that their politics are bad (or incoherent), or that they're even off base--it's that they can't imagine something different. And, wrapped up in that inability, they're offended at the mere thought that something else might be valid, or even articulated. They are more "of a mind" than most generations, I think, in that they seem to share many ideas and ideals.

I teach on race pretty frequently. At my first job (I've taught at five colleges and universities now--large sample size), students generally came from really poor neighborhoods. There were probably four or five white students in a class of twenty-five or thirty. We got a lot of good work done--even the white students who I feared would become uncomfortable. And, I mean, I fucking encourage discomfort. We usually debunk the harmful mythology of the black penis in the first week or two (and that's all I'll say about that for now).

At my second job, students came from exurban or even suburban backgrounds. Mostly white, mostly children of doctors, dentists, lawyers, pharmacists, &c--they were well-to-do. I had complaints about my teaching for doing the same stuff I'd used to great effect elsewhere. More importantly, those students didn't acknowledge that race was something worth talking about. They thought that I was contributing to the problem by even bringing it up. They consistently said things like "I don't see color," which is a problematic attitude in that it discounts the kinds of things that people of color have done to distinguish themselves. Of course you don't see it--you live in a white neighborhood. And you go to a white school. And your dad's law firm doesn't hire anyone who's not white. But when I ask after these things...guess what? Students get offended. The goal isn't sameness, or whitewashing, in other words--it's equality.

To put it simply: the people who are driving us crazy with this shit are the same people who will graduate and manage hedge funds; they'll be running for office in thirty years, and they'll get elected. They will be the leaders of tomorrow. They'll ask me for recommendations so that they can get better jobs with a Business degree than I will ever sniff with a PhD (not that I particularly want those jobs, but you get the idea).

Trying to show them (or convince them) that there's a world of difference that does not accept their comfortable and privileged existence is met with derision--it upsets the apple cart. Speaking truth to power--even when that power is younger than you--has consequences, and that's what we're seeing here. Our displeasure at this phenomenon doesn't matter. It's a power play by people who already have all the power.

The students and young people who don't belong to the privileged class tacitly understand all of this, and they don't participate. They're not millennials; they don't have access to smartphones; they aren't privileged in any sense of the word. They're like us old folks (and I'm fucking 29 years old--a dinosaur to them), so offendedness is a real part of their lives. They don't have access to the fake offendedness of their more privileged generational peers, as they're actually getting stomped IRL. Sample absence excuses:

School 1: My brother got caught in a shootout, I'm in the ER with him, I can't make it today.
School 2: I went to the opening showing of Harry Potter 7, and didn't feel like coming in today.

I am paraphrasing, but I am not making this shit up.

Rant ending...offendedness signifies privilege. The people in Ferguson didn't get offended. They mobilized. And that's the difference.

Came in here to write something like that, but you did it better than I could've

[Faldoe]

We've got some smart peeps here.

If I may add a thought or two...

I don't think "safe spaces" have a place in public. And I personally really dislike the term and usage of "trigger warning." I think that if something "triggers" you then you have some deep-seated psychological issues that need to be worked out, whether they're PTSD, childhood truama, or whatever. The place for that is with some sort of therapist, not a school, and if you're going to go to therapy for some particular issue, isn't the therapist going to want to talk about that issue, and not avoid it so as not to "trigger" you? ( I can just imagine more privileged kids going to therapy for stuff that really isn't a big deal, and having the therapists basically tell them that they need to grow up...) Fears can ONLY be solved through confrontation. THAT being said, if someone is really so "triggered" by issues of, say, sexuality, then they shouldn't be taking a course on it. To say that you want to learn about an issue and then cherry pick which parts of it you actually want to discuss is totally self-defeating. If the most vocal whiners really are the more privileged ones, then all that's doing is confirming for them that they can get whatever they want if they persist enough. If the aim of a school, ANY school, is to teach younger generations about the world, there cannot be any editing. Regardless of the students' backgrounds, the world is the way the world is and presenting an edited version of it will seriously fuck up how those younger generations will react to it. Truth is the best teacher. Unedited truth.

I don't know much about the inner politics of colleges, but in my opinion they'd be better off by basically saying "these are the courses, this is how we do things on this campus, and if you don't like it, you can go to another one." But, of course, that would involve these campuses not being for-profit organizations. When the goal is largely to make money, then quality is going to suffer to pander to the "customers."

In Daniel Dennett's book, I think it's called The End of Faith, he talks about ideas we disagree with as "trampolines." I didn't even need him to explain what he meant before it clicked. Case in point: I'm a very spiritual person, reading and enjoying a book called The End of Faith.

So while I respect people's desire to have a space where they're not constantly rehashing the same tired debates, I do think that safe spaces are on a slippery one-way slope to becoming echo chambers. Echo chambers are my personal nightmare.

Sam Harris wrote The End of faith. Was it in that book that he talks about the trampoline idea, or was it actually Dennett, in one of his books? I'm just curious.

Social media is creating more and more echo chambers because it's so easy to ban people or delete comments that someone disagrees with. Add that element to campuses, and look at what we have...... Social media has started to rob people of life-long careers, ruin peoples' lives and reputations, and to me that's unacceptable. Don't even get me started on the deluge of misinformed, quotes-taken-out-of-context memes all over the internet.

All that being said, I wouldn't wish any censorship on any of it. Just more actual education. If you encounter (in person or online) some of this stuff we're talking about, the only way to make it better is to try and inform people. I mean, seriously, how much time do some of these social justice warrior types spend ranting about something they didn't take 15 seconds to google? If someone says something that sounds like it could be BS, of misinformed, even if their intentions seem good, then maybe it's time to say "hey, let's google that real quick. I want to know more about that."

I'm getting off topic, but carry on....

I do think there is legitimacy to having a safe space, say at a college, if a group of young women who are victims of sexual assault want to gather to discuss their experiences. I think they have every right to ask that, say, men not be present. I think it would be a dick move for any guy to insist on wanting to be a part of that setting, knowing that the women have requested it be solely for them (victims and other women).

A safe space for a black student gathering could get weird, if white students wanted a similar, white student gathering. The former would be deemed acceptable, or might be, whereas the latter is not. Thats a tricky one in terms of what to permit.

Social media, especially Twitter, definitely contributes to flame wars, ad hominem attacks and out of context quote which can get retweeted over and over again and it does impact people's reputations and jobs.

I think "The Left" is experiencing a lot of this. And for a political/ideological group that is supposedly supposed to be about open dialogue/critique and reflection, there is a lot of ideological dogma afoot.

I was debating somethings earlier with a friend regarding BLM movement. Though there is such a wealth of information and ideas since the civil rights movement, it seems like a lot of the younger people aren't thinking about what they read, thinking about howa given sociological or critical-race theory/social justice, set of ideas works, but they just amass a certain bunch of theories which are composed into a narrative that the individual and group repeats and repeats.

This isn't to say the cause(s) with which they are concerned with aren't real or without merit, but that these theories they amass become the lenses through with which they see all interactions with people and thus reinforce beliefs about people - based on class, gender, race - white privilege, etc. Like the Maslow quote "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails." SJW aren't the only people that do this - religious people can, and do, do that, but a lot of folks on the Left seem to be doing this and are not realizing it or open to the possibility that they are doing it.

[popvulture]

religious people can, and do, do that, but a lot of folks on the Left seem to be doing this and are not realizing it or open to the possibility that they are doing it.

This is precisely related to what I'd been recently wondering about, or at least I think that's what you meant...

My frustration dealt with the "if you're not with us, you're against us" stance that I've seen a lot of my friends take when it comes to our pretty much universally liberal outlooks. I questioned the legitimacy of essentially censoring or even punishing people whose beliefs don't fall in line with the liberal/change agenda (read: Republicans, "family values" folks, et al), and was met with a "you're on the wrong side of history" kind of response. It was extremely hurtful and offensive to get that kind of reaction over what I thought was more just being careful and trying to maintain humanity/rationality. The last thing I ever want to do is to become just as tyrannical as what I was initially against, just from the opposite direction... it's extremely easy to do.

[rustywire]

So glad I'm not in school or a kid atm.
It was nice being able to get away with having the slightest bit of fun, once upon a time.