Conservative Students at Wisconsin Are Happy

Dominant Narrative: Conservative students on liberal campuses are ostracized and marginalized and it isn't fair and there should be balance.

Data: Conservative students at UW Madison are doing fine.

Politically conservative students instead were more likely to report feeling safe, respected and like they belong than students holding other political views.

Conservative students also were more likely than liberal students to say they feel comfortable approaching faculty members with their concerns, according to a report on the 2016 Campus Climate Survey released last Wednesday.


And conservative students said they felt less likely than liberal or moderate students to be expected to represent their point of view in class, but felt more positive about doing it than the others.

Good! They should feel comfortable. But the dominant narrative must go. 

Mandatory First-Year Classes and Orientations: Flags and Guns vs Kindness

In my latest Pacific Standard essay, I talk about the ways that some right-wing schools enforce indoctrination and homogeneity, even as our free speech on campus discourse focuses on left-wing schools.

In response to National Football League players protesting state violence against African Americans, the College of the Ozarks, a small, Christian liberal arts institution in Missouri, is ordering its students to pick up a gun. The 93 percent white school now makes all first-year students take a Patriotic Education Fitness class. According to the Miami Herald, the course includes, "lessons on American politics, the military, and flag norms." Through their studies, "students will learn rifle marksmanship, map reading, land navigation, and rope knotting. Students also must be able to run a mile and will engage in other physical education activities." It's unclear how such activities will foster the college's mission of making students more "Christ-like."

This course is pure indoctrination. In fact, schools such as the College of the Ozarks explicitly demand homogeneity and fealty to religious and nationalistic ideologies. They punish divergence, and they aren't alone. There's a whole class of schools, some wealthy and influential, that demand obedience and conformity. And we are in a national moment when far too many influential voices are characterizing liberal arts institutions as hotbeds of politically correct intolerance. It's true that many schools do push students to think about diversity, but the "Patriotic Education Fitness Class" ought to give us a little perspective.

I, of course, had mandatory orientations at Wesleyan as an undergrad. I write:

As an undergraduate, I went to Wesleyan University. It was lampooned in the 1990s, when I attended, as PCU. There was no single core class that everyone took, per se, but I've never forgotten the early mandatory orientations. We were pushed to talk about diversity. Within a few days, new friends came out to me as queer. I learned about what we now call affirmative consent. We had long discussions about culture and power. In many ways, my ongoing work of self-improvement that still pushes me today began during those opening weeks. I'm told that these efforts continue. Last August, Vanessa Grigoriadis, a fellow Wesleyan alum from the '90s, returned to campus to find out what students are saying now; she subsequently wrote a reassuring report in the New York Times about the way today's "'P.C.' students" have an "overwhelming urge to be kind to each other." It doesn't mean they always get it right, but the driving force is to pay attention to vulnerabilities and then do no harm. If this is the scourge of political correctness on campus, sign me up.

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING!

Black Lives Matter Pin = Jail. Speech Threats Still Top Down

Ever since "political correctness" jumped into mainstream public discourse as first a threat against higher education, then against free speech everywhere, and - with Trump's campaign - a threat against the very security of our nation, I've been making one argument: Power matters.

• Mostly, it's not a problem when marginalized people ask for others to use less pejorative language.
• Mostly, it's not a problem when people ask to be warned before confronted with traumatic or upsetting words and images.
• When it is problematic, or even just annoying, it only becomes a speech issue when coupled with a power dynamic that enforces language edicts.
• Such power is most likely to reside among conservative (political and cultural) forces in our society.

Example: Professor Melissa Click at Mizzou was way out of line confronting a reporter. But power resides in the conservative legislature that attacked her and got her fired.

Example: The Dixie Chicks get blacklisted for saying they are ashamed of President Bush, but conservative country folks (or rockers like Ted Nugent) seem to be doing fine, no matter how much obscenity they fling at Obama.

Example: An Ohio Attorney was jailed for contempt for wearing a "Black Lives Matter" pin to court.

Attorney Andrea Burton was defending a client in court this past Friday, when JudgeRobert Milich of the Youngstown Municipal Court noticed her wearing a Black Lives Matter pin the size of a nickel. He asked her to remove the pin but she refused, resulting in Milich instructing the bailiffs to take Burton into custody for contempt.According to a news report from WKNB First News, Burton was forced to leave her client behind.

That's what censorship looks like - the power of the state being used to limit freedom of speech.