The university is not trying to ban words (they would have a hard time, given that they are a public university and could run into 1st amendment issues, since they are a state run institution, not private), they are trying an information campaign to let kids know some expressions may be hurtful to others or otherwise can be problematic (for example, saying “I felt raped after taking that test” can be construed as trivializing rape).
@vladenschlutte. what you are missing out with saying ‘gay doesn’t mean stupid’ or 'gypped doesn’t mean to rip off or cheat is ignoring the context of how they are used. The use of the word ‘gay’ that they object to is in common usage, sadly, when people say something is ‘gay’, they mean it is stupid or idiotic, and its roots are in that somehow being gay as a person is stupid. The term “Gypped” has roots from the word gypsy, and comes from the stereotype that Gypsies are a bunch of thieves and con artists. The term “welshed” as in “welshed on a bet” comes from the idea that similarly people from Wales are untrustworthy, and the word “Jewed” used to be commonly used, even when I was growing up, to mean someone had cheated you out of something or nickle and dimed you to death (which came out of the horrible stereotypes that Jews as a group were cheap and so forth)…and they are offensive, because in that use they refer to negative connnotations of a group of people, whether gay, jews, Roma or welsh.
The problem with these guidelines is like many efforts at correcting speech, they seem to throw context or intent out the window. If someone talks about a friend who spent the night partying and having a good time, and says they ‘went crazy’ it is not meant as a deragatory thing, and crazy has uses that have nothing to do with people with mental illness, the term ‘crazy time’ usually is a positive (it is like the term “bad” meaning good…). If I mention a friend, and say he is gay, it isn’t negative if I am simply acknowledging who he is, yet someone could hear me say that and go off the deep end. Context is important, and that is what often happens with things like this, they throw out an entire word or phrase forgetting there is context, that for example, the word ‘gay’ can be simply an attribute of who someone is, or a perjorative; whereas the term ‘gypped’ has no positive aspects to it, nor does welshed or when you say “someone jewed me when I bought that car”, it is a negative, period. Part of the problem is there are people wishing to find issues where there is none, I had some granola head chide me once when I mentioned the roads were covered in black ice, which is a standard term meaning you can’t see it because the road surface is black, but they claimed it was racist. In engineering and tech fields, the term ‘master/slave’ is common, it indicates one system or process is controlled by another, but I have had people claim it was racist, when it simply described how the system operates (you hit the clutch pedal on a car with a hydraulic clutch, the master cylinder pressurizes the hydraulic fluid, which causes the slave cylinder to actuate from the pressure).
I don’t think this is being pc, I think they are trying to get around to kids that language has power to it, and that they may not even be aware of what they are saying is hurtful. Kids who use the term “gypped” may not even be aware of what it is from; young people, who quite frankly are a heck of a lot more positive about gay folks, use the term ‘gay’ to mean ‘stupid’ without even thinking about it, the same person who uses that to mean stupid also will often be the same person who is angry at those opposing same sex marriage or demonizing gays as being bullies and worse…the purpose of a campaign like this is to make people aware of what they say, and as long as it doesn’t turn into taking words, like gay, that have positive aspects,and saying never use them at all, but makes them aware of the context they are using it, then that is fine, words like ‘gypped’, "jewed’, "welshed’ and the like are ugly and have no positive contexts.