North Korea has reportedly banned sarcasm from everyday conversation – such as the phrase “This is all America’s fault” – because its Dear Leader thinks its impoverished, isolated residents are making fun of him.
The editors of the University of Oklahoma’s student newspaper wish that President David Boren – already a nationally renowned censor for his unilateral expulsion of students for their racist chants on a bus – were more like Kim Jong-Un.
They wrote an editorial on the school’s failure to comprehensively respond to the new hashtag campaign #yOUrbad, in which students share alleged experiences of “discrimination, prejudice, harassment and assault on campus”:
How committed is OU to diversity and inclusion if the university can only spit out 14 words when students are banding together to say that they’re not being heard, that the environment they have to learn in is hostile and unwelcoming to them? … How long until “diversity and inclusion” starts to mean something on this campus?
MORE: U. of Oregon adds ‘education’ to bias response team name
Read @President_Boren's statement in response to #yOUrbad: https://t.co/oy5yhVJkIo
— OU Daily (@OUDaily) September 7, 2016
The Oklahoma Daily editors seem to be upset that Boren didn’t expel the chanting students faster, saying he only “expelled” them (scare quotes) after they had already withdrawn, and they want faster unilateral action on a host of issues:
If OU is so inclusive and so aware of students’ needs, why should they have to turn to Twitter to share incidents of harassment and discrimination? Could it be because they haven’t been given the bias reporting system that was promised to be up and running in March? It’s September.
That’s right – the very students whose journalistic efforts rely on robust protections for free speech want the university to hurry up and turn OU into a police state.
They seem woefully ignorant of how bias reporting systems work in practice: The response team at the University of Oregon even showed up to The Daily Emerald‘s newsroom for not writing more stories about transgender students.
MORE: You need to write more transgender stories, says bias response team
When OU’s bias reporting system is up and running, the Daily‘s editors can’t feign surprise when Boren’s apparatchiks show up to lecture them on their coverage.
OU President David Boren makes extremely harmful and erasing statements without flinching. Gets awarded. #yOUrbad https://t.co/6ldGFlmqZK
— Indigenize OU (@IndigenizeOU) September 6, 2016
They aren’t the only public university students to show scorn for the basic speech rights they enjoy under longstanding American jurisprudence.
The University of Illinois student government is considering legislation (ominously named “Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan”) that would ask its administration to “create more substantial consequences” for official student groups that show “intolerance” or are not “culturally inclusive,” The Daily Illini reports (h/t Campus Reform)
Read the editorial and Daily Illini story.
MORE: ‘Rap battle’ leads U. of Oklahoma to censor live performances
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