University Of Michigan's "Who's More Oppressed? Olympics"
Loved this post by Suzy Lee Weiss at Minding The Campus (reprinted from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) about my alma mater, the University of Michigan, and their new sensitivity initiative, the "Inclusive Language Campaign":

In the liberal ghetto of Ann Arbor, several University of Michigan administrators recently gathered for a passionate brainstorm. The head of student affairs declared he was simply "going to die" if he heard about one more so-called micro-aggression on campus. When a colleague told him he was "acting crazy" for being so sensitive, he was shipped off to a mandatory session for freshmen where he learned about white privilege and determined that he would never say anything potentially controversial again. And with that, the Inclusive Language Campaign was born.

Under this new initiative, which is all the rage at Michigan and some other universities, the quoted words used in the above paragraph are considered offensive. In addition to posters plastered around campus urging us to "Stop. Think." before we speak, my peers and I have been encouraged to sign an ambiguously written Inclusive Language Campaign pledge. We're all being drafted as thought police, charged with regulating the speech of our peers.

Sounds like a joke, right? If so, it's one that my school, a public university, has reportedly spent $16,000 on. Apparently that's the budget necessary to explain that words such as "jewed" and "gyped" are offensive. My grandmother could have told you that for free, saving Michigan thousands on the morally obvious.

But this politically correct campaign is about something bigger and more insidious than putting a few words on the dare-not-speak list.

Operating under ILC's logic, I am hostile for offering a cupcake to a diabetic without knowing of his condition, racist for suggesting we "work the kinks out" on a group project and generally insensitive for having an opinion on any subject that I have not directly experienced.

I guess I can't write that paper on Homer this weekend: I wasn't there to witness the violence of the Trojan War.

She points out that some animals are more oppressable than others:

One of my good friends found that his "Landscapes of Home" freshman seminar is actually an opportunity for his teacher to castigate him for being white, heterosexual and from Georgia.

Her solution is right out of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- let's voluntarily decide to be nice to each other...but without duct-taping anybody's (really everybody's) mouth shut and without the Who's More Oppressed? Olympics.

Instead of pitting student groups against each other in a painful game of out-oppression -- who's had it worse, the black students or the transgender students? -- wouldn't it be better to drop the -isms and learn to simply be good to each other?

...College students readying themselves for the real world have to learn that some people are bigots, that some people will hurt their feelings inadvertently and that understanding doesn't come from bureaucratic student-life committees or advisory boards led by self-righteous RAs. It comes from environments where opinions are valued beyond their adherence to a so-called progressive agenda.

I would call it the Don't Be an Idiot Campaign -- if only that word were still allowed.

My previous post on this -- and my comment:

If you are hurt by a person saying a word, tell them. Maybe they'll pull back; maybe they won't. But there will maybe be a discussion about it, and that's good. This is how we advance thought -- or rather, how we used to before students became baby kittens.

I went to University of Michigan back in the 80s, back when students protested all over the place on campus -- and they weren't protesting against FREE SPEECH!

via Old R P M Daddy