<p>wow, okay. i'm an infrequent browser of this board, but this thread made me want to respond on the topic of "political correctness." i graduated from smith in may, and what i learned while i was there was NOT that "[political correctness is] the practice of never saying or doing anything that could be considered remotely offensive to any person or group." what i found instead is that people tend to express an aversion to political correctness when they want carte blanche to say inappropriate (e.g. racist, classist, homophobic) things. i think tolerance, respect, and integrity in language and behavior is what smith encourages, and if that makes you uncomfortable, all to the good! it means you're <i>learning</i>. </p>
<p>one thing i emerged from smith sick of was not political correctness, but intolerance in the guise of being well-meaning.</p>
<p>I've seen both sides, they both exist: people decrying "political correctness" as a shield for being obnoxious and people using political correctness to promote Orwellian groupthink.</p>
<p>i don't disagree, and i didn't say that "both sides" didn't exist. what i'm saying is, having been at this institution for four years, i see much more of the former than of the latter--and i think i'm in a pretty good position to make a fair assessment.</p>
<p>"ticklemepink, is that also what you were referring to when you said you were the only person who seemed to have a grip on reality? I would get very frustrated very quickly if I felt I had to watch everything I said for fear of offending someone."</p>
<p>Not quite. I just felt that the students were very, very idealistic in terms of their aspirations and goals. (Yet, I commend the Smith Democrats for accomplishing the goal of painting NH blue!!!). PC does contribute a bit as everyone wants to be SO supportive of each other.</p>
<p>PC is very strong at Smith. Ever since last October, I couldn't talk about politics at all. Just recently, I finally had a political discussion with my parents, real one. Not that I don't want to bash students and am moderate-liberal, I just felt like Smithies were not good at backing up their facts and not being in tune with the politics entirely. I watched my conservative friend get beaten everyday by liberals who threatened her to leave Smith and just felt sorry for the conservatives. Why should I be on the liberals' side on campus when they were harassing the conservatives? It just didn't seem fair, my political discussions weren't going anywhere, and I felt that I couldn't speak out some of my conservative views, so I quitted. </p>
<p>You can feel the PC once you hit the campus- the atmosphere is SO tolerant that you can feel that if you tell the lesbians in the corner to stop kissing or call a dark-skinned person at the table "black", or tell that punk girl to take off her lip ring, then the entire campus will turn on you! High tolerance is why the students love Smith- they have the freedom to express themselves but isn't it ironic to have the PC thing going on?</p>
<p>TickleMP - That was EXACTLY the sense my D felt when she visited! She felt an almost overwhelming sense of intolence toward views that were not mainstream Smith. Seems paradoxical and more than a little disturbing.</p>
<p>Shrug. My D's a fairly outspoken moderate, at least in the Smith context, and hasn't had run-in's as a rule, which made the one she did have stand out. One of her best friends is absolutely clueless on one particular social/political issue and says things that causes people to roll their eyes but it doesn't go much beyond that.</p>
<p>It's possible that my D has been helped by being a very moderate person in a very liberal environment all through high school. Her best friend is an evangelical Republican.</p>
<p>Thanks for weighing in, recent alumna. My problem is not with truly offensive situations, but with silly things - like one of my friends and I calling each other 'Judy Jewish' and 'Cathy Catholic.' What ticklemepink said about militant liberalism, to the exclusion of other viewpoints, really bothers me.</p>
<p>I'm going to be a student at Smith this fall and I have to admit to a slight apprehension about the "PC" atmosphere, mostly because I'm ignorant of a lot of things (aren't we all at times?) I wouldn't want
to say or do something to offend anyone but don't want to guard what I say all the time either. But the apprehension is only slight and more than offset by my excitement. I honestly don't think it will be a problem for me.</p>
<p>But my apprehension has made me think a lot about what is "PC" and what constitutes tolerance.</p>
<p>An example of being PC in some people's eyes is getting rid of sport team names such as the Indians and the Redskins. But most people seem to think that's taking political correctness to a silly extreme. Personally, it never bothered me that people went to Indian games with their faces covered in war paint and did the tomahawkchop. I didn't even think about it until someone pointed out that we would never tolerate the Washington Redskins being called the Washington N-word and people coming to games with their faces painted black and shaking spears. I can't bring myself to type the N-word let alone <em>ever</em> say it. Yet, many Native Americans find Redskin to be an equally derogatory term. Are they just such a small minority that nobody cares?</p>
<p>It's certainly ok to be intolerant of the expression of some beliefs. For instance, if one were to express the belief that they are a member of a supreme race and intend to spend their lives trying to find a way to eradicate the members of all other races, they would probably be met with a pretty strong expression of intolerance by most people, and rightly so. But in general, you would think that most liberally minded people would be extremely tolerant of others expressing their beliefs, even very conservative beliefs.</p>
<p>So why does it seem that a fair percentage of the Smith student body seems intolerant of the expression of conservative beliefs? You have to consider, I think, that many of the students are racial, religious, or cultural minorities, and a fairly large percentage of students are gay. </p>
<p>People do tend to be a bit intolerant if they hear, "You aren't ok, you're unnatural and immoral." "You're not entitled to the same rights as other American citizens," or even, "You're going to burn for eternity if you don't accept my religious beliefs." Often, I think those are some of the messages heard by many who are outside of the cultural and sexual societal "norms," correctly or not, from most social conservatives and from many evangelical Christians. I think most people are intolerant of intolerance, especially when it is directed at them. :-)</p>
<p>I'm obviously not a student or anything, but I can say something about what my d. felt when she finally decided to go to Smith. We visited Williams on several occasions (I'm an alum), and she was admitted with very substantial financial aid. But each time, she was stunned by its homogeneity. Not so much in skin colors, but in attitudes and dress and speech and... It was like she had fallen into an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. It seemed that everyone drank - a lot (we later found out that was confirmed by the college's own surveys); women spoke to her about their worries about putting on an extra 5 pounds. We took a tour of their environmental garden, a little patch, the tour guide wearing what we thought was a designer dress, and a very tasteful nosejewel (the only one we saw on the visit.) My d. thought she was going to go nuts!</p>
<p>When she visited Smith she saw the "women in black", and the women in "twin sets and pearls", and then discovered you couldn't stereotype either their belief systems (or their sexual orientation) by what they were wearing. There really were poor people! (lots of them - we later discovered 28% of students are on Pell Grants) not upper middle class kids masquerading as them. There were athletes who were engineering students, students with pink hair who were pre-med, students who kept strictly kosher, and students who stooped to pray toward Mecca five times a day, and they were all very public about it.</p>
<p>PC - you bet! They pretty much have to be in an attempt not to step on each other's toes. Now mind you, we are from a pretty liberal town, and she had attended Evergreen for a year before going to Smith. But, after visiting a bunch of other places, it was like a real breath of fresh air.</p>
<p>(She doesn't think of the place as particularly radical though - having spent the winter break and this summer in south India among folks organizing those who live on less than a dollar a day, she views Smith as much too rich for that.)</p>
<p>Mini, I owe you an e-mail or PM. Been thinking of you the past week as D has been talking about how Smith has affected her view of "class." Btw, I think getting together on your SoCal swing in T.O. is a distinct possibility.</p>