The College Fix

UPDATED

This is beyond ‘beyond parody’

In what may be perhaps the most outrageously stupid campus dust-up of the year—a high standard, to be sure—campus activists at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University convinced the school to considering sanctioning a student group, called “Love Saxa,” for promoting “hatred and intolerance.” What exactly was it the student group was promoting—racism? Sexism? Religious bigotry? Etho-nationalism?

None of these things. Rather, the group was outspoken in favor of the Catholic definition of marriage, i.e. that it is a permanent and exclusive union between a man and a woman.

It is hard to imagine a more perfect and dismaying summation of the deep and unrelenting problems of the modern American academy: a religious institution may bring the hammer down on its students for espousing the tenets of that very religion. This type of absurdist proposal, which under other circumstances might have been seen only in The Onion, would be almost funny if it was not so profoundly alarming. If Catholic students at a Catholic university cannot advocate two-thousand-year-old Catholic doctrine without getting in trouble for it, what exactly does that say about our country’s higher education system? What does it say about the people who run it, and the activists who seem to have established a permanent foothold in it?

Love Saxa will attend a hearing next week to determine if they would be subject to sanctions on these ridiculous charges. The College Fix attempted to one of the students involved in the group, yet we were told that “the school has requested that [they] hold off on talking to media.” That is, in a way, unsurprising—if I were the guy at Georgetown overseeing this embarrassing charade, I’d want the students to keep their mouths shut, as well. Yet it is still an apt commentary on this whole pathetic affair: Georgetown officials are apparently embarrassed enough over this low-grade persecution to want to cover it up, but not ashamed enough to simply drop the case altogether.

It is not clear, as of press time, if Love Saxa has been subject to any sanctions at all. What is clear, however, is that the case made it this far to begin with. That is a tragedy in and of itself, no matter the outcome. A school like Georgetown, that has lost the mandates of its own specific character in so profound a way, is a troubling testament to the kind of trouble we’re in, and how far we have to go to get out of it.

UPDATED: This editorial originally claimed that Love Saxa’s hearing was this week; it is next week. We regret the error.

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