The College Fix

As The College Fix’s David Hookstead noted in his April 17 piece on David Horowitz’s appearance at the University of North Carolina, a “#NotSafeUNC” hashtag movement has sprung up — because it seems Mr. Horowitz’s words have the amazing power to make people feel at risk.

One of the originators of the hashtag campaign, Nicole Fauster, said that the movement “was created for students of any marginalized identity.”

“It came out of a desire to create a platform for students to be able to explain and share their own situations and experiences and incidents that have happened to them on campus that have made feel unsafe,” Fauster said.

But of course.

But wait — it gets even “better,” as The Daily Tar Heel reports:

Andrew Wood, the chairman of the Student Safety and Security Committee of Student Congress, was also active on #NotSafeUNC. In response to the statement released by the College Republicans, Wood said he believed campus safety can always be improved.

“I don’t believe the campus is as safe as it possibly could be, and I think it’s a little bit ignorant to think that every student is just as safe as another student — to ignore, race, gender, ethnicity and various other minority statuses that you could identify with as being a risk to your safety,” he said.

“I think it’s wrong to ignore that.”

He said the committee wants to try to amend the definition of safety in the Student Code to include perceived safety in the coming year.

Yep, we’re now at a point where college students require a definition of “perceived safety.”

Frank Pray, chairman of the College Republicans, was being quite charitable when he said that such sentiments are “a little disingenuous,” especially when it comes to a speaker (Horowitz) who lectures at colleges “fairly regularly.”

“I think that being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being unsafe,” Pray said.

But, echoing the doltish “I believe in free speech as long as it’s not hate speech” mantra, Andrew Brennen, senior adviser to Student Body President Houston Summers, said “I love intellectual diversity, but I do not think that intellectual diversity should be used as a means to target students on campus.”

Read the full article.

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