Runswimyoga - was your son’s high school a religious one by any chance? It seems odd to me that a public HS - in NJ no less - would be inviting speakers about “converting” gays.
@NickFlynn, exactly my point. Everything reported in the press over the last few years is dismissed out of hand as “cherry picking” but @runswimyoga talks about roving bands of violent homophobic jocks and Westbrook baptist videos in a single high school, or @cobrat discusses some of his many high school friends with experiences germane to the issue, and those experiences settle the matter and prove the rightness of your cause.
Sorry, but at some point your “side” needs to acknowledge that there are actual on the ground issues on campuses that do not involve roving bands of republicans lynching block people or beating up gays. the notion that it is minority groups whose speech is being chilled on campus is completely contrary to virtually every piece of evidence available. You can’t just ignore that because it doesn’t comfortably fit your ideology.
And @prospect1, really? You don’t see the point? Hard to believe.
@Pizzagirl That the kicker- It was a public High School in NJ!
The speaker was titled "Issues of Tolerance " none the less
Every group, every faculty member gets to decide for themselves.
I wouldn’t blame you or your son one bit.
Is this your actual experience on college campuses? I probably spend weeks each year on college campuses - probably more than most of the parents in this forum. At a guess, the pro-gay speakers easily outnumber any speaker who’s even the least bit anti-gay by 20 to 1.
I support voluntary trigger warnings where clearly appropriate. I think the vast majority of faculty would be empathetic to an individual student’s concerns as well.
I don’t really like the term “safe spaces” (it sounds infantilizing to me). But if a group of people want to create a group where they can talk, share, and provide mutual support for each other, then I will support their right to do so without disruption 100% (as long as they comply with the law).
- physically assaulted in a locker room
- entire sports team starts bullying you on social media.
These situations are so against rules and norms of modern education, that there are lots of recourses available to punish the aggressors. Furthermore, how would TW or SS have prevented either?
- teacher just shows a 45 min Westboro Baptist Church video spewing God hates ****
- Your school brings in a speaker who tells students that while skin color can’t be changed, being gay can be through conversion therapy…
If this happened in the classroom, without context or intellectual discussion, teacher should/would be fired. Also the traumatized student could walk out at the first inkling.
All these examples are reprehensible. I don’t think they happen often at modern (non-religious) colleges. And it is still unclear to me how TW or SS would prevent the harm.
@bluebayou #838: Well, both, really.
@pickpocket
Thank god NJ has anti-bullying laws in K-12 schools. We did utilize them to the full letter of the law. There are many states that don’t have them.
TW/SS would not have prevented them from happening but they make school easier to handle after they happen… also they make it easier in general when you are a minority in that school - to deal with stress and fallout from having to take a minority position. Hateful rhetoric doesn’t hurt people who aren’t the minority in the same way it hurts the minority being the recipient of the rhetoric.
The teacher wasn’t fired nor reprimanded. The teacher is the head of the teachers union.
again I point you to recent studies where its still common for this kind of harassment to happen in schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/health/gay-lesbian-teenagers-violence.html
"The first nationwide study to ask high school students about their sexuality found that gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers were at far greater risk for depression, bullying and many types of violence than their straight peers.
“I found the numbers heartbreaking,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes a division that administered the survey.
The survey documents what smaller studies have suggested for years, but it is significant because it is the first time the federal government’s biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the gold standard of adolescent health data collection, looked at sexual identity. The survey found that about 8 percent of the high school population described themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, which would be about 1.3 million students.
These adolescents were three times more likely than straight students to have been raped. They skipped school far more often because they did not feel safe; at least a third had been bullied on school property. And they were twice as likely as heterosexual students to have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property."
Lets hope this doesn’t happen in college… fingers crossed
Surprising such a situation didn’t make the papers. WBC is hardly a group that anyone is sympathetic to.
Thank you for the follow up @runswimyoga. I understand where you’re coming from. Infuriating that such a teacher is still employed.
@al2simon and @ohiodad51 - I misread al2’s post…completely…that’s why I deleted my comment. No, I really don’t see the point of “protecting” any protesting group on campus over any other protesting group. College has always been about young adults finding their voices. Let 'em protest…let 'em speak out…let all viewpoints be heard, is my philosophy.
Speech that rises to the level of hate crimes, assaultive speech, abusive speech…there are legal mechanisms in place to protect victims in such cases.
@runswimyoga, I can’t imagine how I would handle it if my son were treated in that manner. Perhaps my perspective would indeed be different. I am “privileged” that none of my kids has been attacked in that way, and so perhaps it’s not fair for me to weigh in on this, not having walked in those shoes. My instinct, however, remains that bullies, criminal harassment, and the like must be faced in the world and we must learn to handle this without crutches, whatever our particular target attributes are.
@Ohiodad51 #846
Maybe the fact that bullying of LGBTQ teens is an extremely well documented phenomenon that impacts a large percentage of kids, while campuses that have been bullied into intellectual deserts by roving bands of Social Justice Warriors is something that exists entirely in the fictional kingdom of Wingnutia?
Maybe that might explain the disparity in coverage? I’m thinking it does.
Anyone here in favor of bullying of LGBTQ kids? Anyone? Bueller?
Anyone here in favor of providing some extra support for LGBTQ students on campus to make their lives a little easier?
The firestorm at Wesleyan didn’t involve the administration of the college at all. When a collection of SOME black students and their allies (I don’t think they ever amounted to more than a couple hundred people) demanded that the student newspaper be defunded in retaliation for an anti-BML op-ed, the president issued a strong statement that, among other things, argued against the notion that there was a “right to be comfortable” with intellectual ideas. Attempting to make news where there wasn’t any, The Establishment news media next pounced on the besieged student government’s bumbling attempts to defuse the situation - which may still be ongoing. Meanwhile, the original op-ed writer has been writing steadily and has even improved his skills over the space of the past year.
Sure. Doesn’t pretty much every elite school have LGBQT clubs, meeting spaces, social events? Remind me again who has said that such things shouldn’t happen?
@Pizzagirl The Dean of Chicago… said he doesn’t support intellectual safe spaces … which is what LGBTQ clubs are … The term safe spaces is coined and a national program for colleges… the principles for lgbtq safe spaces are the same as the principle for intellectual safe spaces
@Pizzagirl #856
You enjoy moving the goal posts, don’t you?
Explain to me why a Dean of Students would claim that safe spaces are inhibiting free and open debate on his campus. Same for trigger warnings?
LQBTQ clubs are not intellectual safe spaces, and not one person who wasn’t trying to belittle the letter ever said or thought that Chicago was going to shut down such places.
@NickFlynn again, arguing “my anecdotal examples are real, yours are hogwash” is not terribly persuasive or productive.
Do either of you even in your darkest moments ever permit the tiniest wisp of an idea that just maybe perhaps not every person who doesn’t 100% agree with you is neither an idiot nor a bigot?
@Ohiodad51 LGBTQ safe spaces are absolutely intellectual safe spaces - the school signs and advertises that LGBTQ students will not receive negative feedback to coming out or being gay.
From U Chicago lgbt safe space
https://lgbtq.uchicago.edu/page/safe-space
“The Office of LGBTQ Student Life Safe Space program fosters an inclusive environment that challenges oppression and provides support for LGBTQ students. Safe Space educates the University of Chicago community on the challenges that many LGBTQ students experience through trainings and supports LGBTQ students by developing an ally network and creating welcoming physical spaces for the UChicago LGBTQ community.”
“Surveys indicate that LGBTQ students who do not feel safe are likely to skip class, or even days of classes, out of fear for personal safety. Students who can identify a supportive community member are more likely to feel a sense of belonging at their school than those who cannot. The Safe Space program increases the visible presence of student and adult allies who can help to shape the University’s culture that is accepting of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, or any other difference. This is particularly important for closeted students (those students who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity) as it gives them an opportunity to identify individuals they may safely reach out to in the coming out process, knowing that they will not be turned away or receive an negative reaction.”
Where did I say that anyone who doesn’t agree with me is a bigot???
I would have assumed the LGBTQ+ support group at a university to be an intellectual, as well as physical safe space. since I also would have assumed individuals would have an expectation of being shielded from anti-gay rhetoric while participating in activities with the group. Maybe I don’t understand the concept of intellectual safe space?
In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space originally were terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating a safe place for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. The term safe space has been extended to refer to a space for individuals who are marginalized to come together to communicate regarding their experiences with marginalization, typically on a university campus.[2] It has been criticized for being contrary to freedom of speech.
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