Here's To A Guy Who Made His Dorm Room A "Dangerous Space"
Brendan O'Neill writes at Spiked about the latest in speech-squashing on campus -- the "Safe Space Policy," which crushes everything from "'unsafe and unwelcoming' words to 'offensive behaviour', and demands from its quarry that they hold only 'non-judgemental and non-threatening discussions' and never tell off-colour jokes, play off-message pop songs":
But some students are taking a stand against the cult of safeness. Well, in America they are. At Columbia, the Ivy League, super-supposedly-liberal university in NYC, one student rebelled against a request that he, and every other student, hang a sign in their dorm-room windows declaring that their living quarters were 'safe spaces' in which 'homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny, racism, ableism, classism and so on' will not be permitted and everyone who enters will be expected to 'not be oppressive in [their] interactions'. Most students dutifully displayed the Safe Space sign, but one Adam Shapiro, a junior majoring in history, refused. In fact, he hung up a different sign, his own one, declaring his room an unsafe space.'People call them safe-space zones, but actually they're censorship zones, that's exactly what they are', Shapiro tells me. 'Students need to fight back and have dangerous spaces.' Towards the end of last year, Columbia -- home to some of the most PC, word-watching students in the modern West -- had at least one 'dangerous space': Shapiro's room. Instead of hanging up the sad 'safe space' sign shoved under his and every other students' dorm door, Shapiro wrote and displayed a sign headlined 'I do not want this to be a safe space'. His room, the sign said, is a place where all who enter will be expected 'not to allow identity to trump ideas [or] emotion to trump critical thinking'. 'Whether you're black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, bi, transgender, fully abled, disabled, religious, secular, rich, middle class or poor, I will judge your ideas based on their soundness and coherence, not based on who you are', his sign declared. Then there was the sign-off, in bold, a warning to anyone who thought they could pop into this student's room and arrogantly expect that certain things would not be thought, said, or argued out: 'This is a dangerous space.'
'I came to university because I wanted to be in a dangerous space in which controversial ideas could be explored', Shapiro tells me. But safe-space policies, he says, mitigate against such open-ended, free-wheeling and, yes, sometimes difficult thought-excavation by chilling what can be thought and discussed. 'The idea behind them seems noble: to be kinder to each other -- I'm all for that. But the underlying principle is that there are certain rules that you can't break and certain things that, if you say, the discussion will be closed.' Once a safe-space is created, he says, anyone can say to anyone else 'That's really offensive, and shut an idea down and not engage with it'. So what is presented as a morally upstanding stab at keeping students safe from harm is in fact more about cushioning them from controversy, from ideas. 'That isn't what I came to university for', Shapiro says.
Call it what one commenter on the piece does -- "The Rise of the Stepford Student."
Not only is this great; but, I love the fact that he is a history major.
I hope he goes on to become a history teacher because we could use more non-pc, non-revisionist historians. Ones who aren't going to worry about being politically correct when examining history.
charles at February 7, 2015 10:27 PM
What a maverick. He's dangerous.
Obligatory!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_BEJmY911s
Abersouth at February 8, 2015 12:34 AM
Good for Adam Shapiro! Talk about being willing to stand up for your beliefs.
Laurel Van Driest at February 8, 2015 7:34 AM
Shapiro gets it right. University is the best place to sort through ideas. You can't do it in the military. Corporate America won't stand for it. Public employees are barred from it.
You wonder why these otherwise intelligent young people have chosen to settle for mediocrity.
Canvasback at February 8, 2015 7:49 AM
Amy, I can't find a picture of that "safe space" sign. Can you get a photo of one?
Jerry at February 8, 2015 7:58 AM
I'm surprised they haven't brought him up on Title IX charges of creating a hostile and harassing environment and thrown him out of the dorms at a minimum, or just expelling him.
But, I'll bet you 100 quatloos that next year's dorm agreement stipulates that you will post such "safe space" signs. Or else.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 8, 2015 8:07 AM
Wow. A history major who understands history. He'll go far, and yet people will block him at every turn. . .
Keith Glass at February 8, 2015 8:07 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/02/08/heres_to_a_guy.html#comment-5838068">comment from JerryShapiro's note is here:
http://columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2014/10/29/making-dangerous-spaces-columbia
"Safer space" note is here:
http://columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2014/10/23/making-safer-spaces-columbia
(I like that Shapiro also did his in pink.)
Amy Alkon at February 8, 2015 8:15 AM
When I was in College making your dorm room a dangerous space meant that you had a hot plate or coffee maker.
This is awesome. The student has shown greater wisdom than the school.
This is just another form of "be accepting of others and their views...except if we don't like them"
The Former Banker at February 8, 2015 10:32 AM
Kudos to Shapiro but one student doesn't invalidate the "super-supposedly-liberal university" label. The fact that they passed these signs out and almost everyone put them up with no argument labels Columbia as super lefty.
Ben at February 8, 2015 1:26 PM
This is absolutely horrifying. Fascism in the name of pandering to super delicate identity sensibilities. It is impossible to utter a declarative sentence without potentially upsetting someone, so we are heading back to the Dark Ages, if this is allowed to continue.
This is not a Left-Right issue, however. The so-called Right has an ignoble history of trying to shut down free speech: from the Church in the Middle Ages; to the book burning crusades over centuries; to the loyalty oaths and witch-hunts of the Joseph McCarthy days, to anti-pornography fanaticism. Now the so-called Left is doing a similar thing. But classic liberals who champion free speech decry it, wherever it is coming from. It's self-righteous authoritarianism, and both sides love to practice it.
The bitter irony is that many humans apparently cannot deal with people having and expressing different opinions or ideas, so they try to stop it. And they are always self-righteous about it; they think they are doing noble work. There is always a different rationale for it, depending on the era, but it is always the same thing, calls for repression and punishment for those who want to say or write something which those in power don't want to hear. What is most unsettling about this current movement is that much of it is led by women. And men have been so intimidated by the relentless cries of patriarchy, sexism, rape culture, and all the rest of it, that they are afraid to even argue with them.
William at February 8, 2015 1:48 PM
And men have been so intimidated by the relentless cries of patriarchy, sexism, rape culture, and all the rest of it, that they are afraid to even argue with them.
Afraid to argue, or tired of arguing with unreasoning close minded bigots?
lujlp at February 9, 2015 1:14 PM
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