Tuesday, February 16, 2016

University tells students to report ‘incidents of discomfort’ to campus police

The University of Portland has launched a “Speak Up” webpage that encourages students to report “incidents of discomfort” to its Public Safety department.

“We ask members of our community to SPEAK UP and report alleged incidents of discrimination and incidents of discomfort regarding observed or experienced interactions of intolerance,” the university states on the webpage.

The Misery

23 comments:

  1. Such a bad idea! Wait until conservative/Christian/male/white students report "incidents of discomfort" due to discussions on campus about feminism, sexual assault, LGBT rights, white privilege and racism, politics and religion in the Middle East, etc...

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    1. Your intolerance of this idea is making me uncomfortable!

      Mommy! Jimmy won't stop looking at me!

      Don't make me stop this car.

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    2. I don't like getting into political banter here, but I love how even when liberals are the problem, conservatives are the problem. Let's maintain a level of intellectual honesty and admit to ourselves that conservatives did not cause this fucking mess and that, despite their many flaws, do not typically subscribe to victim culture and so would NOT be problem students here.

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    3. Very liberal students, faculty, administrators at a very liberal university in a very liberal city create a system based on values expressed by very liberal third wave feminists. Watch out for those fuckin conservatives, though. Can't trust them! Give me a break, man.

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    4. "This fucking mess" isn't caused by liberals, either, except in the sense that they (broadly speaking) are trying to actually highlight issues that do actually hurt real people in real ways.

      And the whole "conservatives aren't victim culture" thing is ahistorical claptrap: conservativism started as victim culture, the idea that change was threatening to society because 'those people' might have some of the economic and political power 'we' have been shepherding so successfully (for our own interests). Contemporary American conservativism is based heavily on Christians (who are an overwhelming majority, with massive cultural capital) believing that a slightly less imbalanced social environment means a crisis of apocalyptic proportions, with a side dish of capitalists who have decided that the whole 'society is not just a mass of individuals' thing is for suckers, because they got theirs and don't want to share.

      As victim cultures go, it makes feminists look like pikers: it's a long con.

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    5. Swing and a miss. That's not what victim culture is. We can trace the ways that humans have responded to confrontation and aggression back centuries. Up until the mid-1800's we had honor culture which involved confronting every perceived offense. Now we have dignity culture which entails ignoring little offenses, confronting your aggressor over larger offenses, and calling the authorities over insurmountable aggression.

      Victim culture entails NOT confronting your aggressor and merely appealing to third parties for support and going to the authorities. It is a uniquely radical liberal approach to perceived aggression that exists almost exclusively within liberal arts colleges. For now, at least. Victimhood is not enshrined in either of the other two cultures. Nobody in dignity or honor cultures is RACING to string off all the ways they're a victim and oppressed. You can debate the merits of victim culture, but you cannot argue that it is a conservative institution while maintaining any semblance of intellectual integrity.

      I sympathize with you about Christian political nonsense, but that honestly has nothing to do with honor/dignity/victim culture. Fortunately the winds are very much blowing against them.

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    6. As a prolific homosexual, I have every reason to resent the Christian structure in this country. But that's neither hither nor thither. Victim/honor/dignity culture is about how an INDIVIDUAL responds to perceived aggression.

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    7. Eventually, you may learn to apply your definitions consistently.

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    8. Where did I deviate from what I had said before?

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    9. There are undoubtedly multiple definitions out there of "victim culture." All I know is that, to paraphrase Rebecca West, on the (relatively few) occasions somebody has accused me of trying to portray myself as a victim, I have been expressing sentiments that pointed out privilege and/or power structures which my interlocutor would have preferred to ignore.

      Mind you, I'm generally a "sticks and stones"/"more speech is the remedy for objectionable speech" sort (with a bit of mellowing to account for how much words can hurt when people are already badly beaten down by the structures those words represent), so I think this idea is ridiculous, counterproductive, etc., etc.

      Unless, of course, U of P has a Public Safety department with problematic habits, and the idea is to keep them so busy taking complaints in the station that they have no time to, say, go out and harass students who don't look like they "belong" on campus (mind you, I know nothing about the U of P Public Safety department, and recognize that all campuses need competent Public Safety officers, preferably ones with as much training in defusing dangerous situations verbally, dealing with mental illness, etc., etc. as in wielding various kinds of weaponry when the situation truly calls for it. That said, I'd still leave the parsing/analysis of speech up to someone else, or just let the students hash it out themselves, with strict instructions not to come to blows in the process.)

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  2. Ho. Lee. Crap. Orwell is centrifuging in his grave right now.

    The Gog

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  3. My name is Grumpy Sergeant. Sorry if this posts anonomously.

    I once was "reported" in a similar way a few years ago (at a different college) for comments I made as a student in an online course on Africa. We were asked the question, "What are the biggest problems facing Africa today?" One of the issues I mentioned was Islamist terrorism in several countries and said what was happening in Mali as an example and the destruction of Islanic world heritage sites there by forces doing it in the name of Islam. Anyway, I was reported for being a racist [sic] because the complainer (complaintant?) felt I was critical of Islam.

    I found out about the complaint after the class and only because another instructor told me about it informally. I learned the actual course instructor thought the complaint had merit because I am white and therefore could not adequately understand the problems Africans face. Never mind that I actually worked in Africa when I was in the military. (The instructor told the investigators I probably was white based on my name, even though we have never met in person.)

    I'm just glad that all the discussions were still available (including a comment by the complaintant on some other discussion topic that "America is the devil.")

    It all came to nothing (in my case) but I reflect on how a similar "complaint" could end a professor's career.

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    1. Please pardon my typos.

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    2. The assumption that you didn't know what you were talking about on account of the instructor's supposition about your race is pretty terrible. Why should we try to educate ourselves about what is happening in the world when our ideas and interpretations can be blithely dismissed with reference to one's cultural background?

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  4. Where's the actual interactive snitch page? The misery link goes to The College Fix ("Your Daily Dose of Right-Minded News and Commentary") and that has links to a student editorial on microaggressions and a PDF of the 45-page Department of Public Safety Crime & Fire Report for 2014.

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    1. Good question. Things sometimes come out badly garbled after being run through the right-wing media machine (okay, sometimes the left-wing one, too; wings tend to be hard on good journalism).

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    2. what, like this?

      http://www.up.edu/inclusion/default.aspx?cid=13407&pid=8619&gd=yes

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  5. Ahh, Conan the Grammarian--who was recently celebrating the special snowflake treatment s/he got recently--is now worried about liberals making special pleas. Swing and a miss.

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    1. Hey, look, Conan! You've got an anonymous coward who hates you! Now you really belong to College Misery.

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    2. Chiltepin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mi0r0LpXo

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    3. Right, because Conan the Grammarian is his given name.

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    4. Anon, yer a douche. By which I mean you wash away natural protections from our mucous membranes, leaving us open to infection.

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  6. "Incidents of Intolerance" - you mean like the cafeteria cheaping out by getting mild cheddar with its much higher lactose content compared to aged cheddar?

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