The College Fix

It never stays in one place

Here’s one for the books: The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently renamed its “LGBT Center,” dubbing it instead the “Gender and Sexuality Campus Center.” The university did this, ostensibly, because the center is “a space…that doesn’t require labels or binaries.”

“As culture shifts we must shift,” one of the center’s officials remarked.

All of that may be true. And yet it is something of a doozy just how often the culture does indeed shift. Whether or not you’re much on board with the various campus progressive agendas, one cannot help but notice just how often they’re changing. It was not very long ago at all that a so-named “LGBT Center” was at the vanguard of liberal political activism; it was and is a strong signifier of how significantly our society has changed over the past few decades that sexual minority students not only have their own campus organizations but that they are usually promoted, touted and proudly displayed.

But progressive values never stand still for very long. What was once radical and inclusive quickly becomes a restrictive “binary” in need of change. All of this makes for very interesting and dynamic politics. But it also seems strangely meaningless, an exercise in weird self-criticism and debasement. It is likely the case, anyway, that within a few months or years, the “Gender and Sexuality Campus Center” will itself be far too restrictive a name: What about students who don’t have any gender at all, and/or who are asexual? Think about it.

In a way this mirrors the rather ruthless streak of modern campus progressive activism: It is never enough, there will always be some new outrage, some new demand, a new privilege to combat, a new protest to stage. The point is always to keep striving, to keep reaching higher, to always find the next big thing over which to be furiously angry.

Of course, by those standards, the renaming of a campus student center looks rather benign.  Yet one imagines that even the mere designation of “center” itself might be too restrictive one day. Don’t laugh; it could easily happen, and anyway laughing is considered a microagression on most campuses.

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