I am torn, while I think open discussion and dialog is an important part of college life,there has to be limits to it, because what one person sees as discussion can be someone being deliberately provocative or quite frankly, rather than try to stir discussion, is there to basically make people feel uncomfortable. I wonder if True would be quite as open if a student in discussion brought up issues with treatment of women in the AA community by AA males, and said something to the effect that of course he (true) would be defending rape, somehow I don’t think he would be upset if the professor ruled that out of bounds. What if some rich kid who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth went on and on about how the poor are poor because they are lazy, because their parents didn’t work hard and so forth, how would a kid who came from a family who struggled feel? That kid could argue that he was fomenting discussion, but is he, or is he using the ‘discussion platform’ to attack others? Should a kid be able to monopolize the conversation, should he be allowed to go off on his own agenda when others had moved on?
I also wonder about this kid, when he made a statement that sexual assault isn’t rape, shouldn’t be treated as rape, I really wonder about him as a person, reminds me a little too much of those with the Ray Rice case who made the argument he was justified in knocking his fiancee cold, because ‘she provoked it’. The fact that in the face of fellow students telling him that they found the way and what he was discussing to be uncomfortable, that he kept it up, says a lot about him and why the professor did what he did, and the fact that the professor talked to another one about it before acting says he didn’t just do this knee jerk. There is a difference between open discussion and an open forum to attack others, and by him continually harping on the ‘fact’ that many rape cases are revenge by the woman, or that sexual assault (such I presume as date rape, where a girl is knocked out by booze or whatever and the guy uses her sexually) isn’t rape, he is attacking the veracity of anyone who claims she was raped, and worse, he is doing it to people in the room who may have been a victim of rape and in effect saying they are liars or what happened to them ‘wasn’t rape, so get over it’. This isn’t debating a political view, the guy continued to make statements he knew made others feel badly, was told by them they were uncomfortable, and kept it up, and what it shows to me is someone lacking empathy for anyone else…and I would bet a lot of money that had the topic been something close to him, like issues of his race vis a vis the topic at hand, he would be complaining that the professor didn’t shut down those arguing their point as being racist and making him feel bad. Put it this way, if I am discussing something and someone says that it makes them uncomfortable, either in the way I am saying it or in the topic, I’ll take their feelings into consideration and either find a way to discuss the topic without making them feel badly or will quite honestly, unless it is a matter I feel so strongly about (which I doubt this kid did, by the way, he sounds more like a professional AH, who delights in making others angry or feeling bad, rather than having any kind of ideas himself). I am sure he will become a cause celebre of certain quarters crying PC and so forth, but the reality is to me he comes off as an arrogant jerk, not a crusader for truth but someone who simply loves creating a tsimmis, as long of course as he isn’t on the other hand of it.
