As another college term culminates in the latest release of art critics, philosophers, sociologists and gender-study experts into the congested framework of a workforce starved for engineers, programmers and skilled laborers, the plight of the modern US college campus experience is apparent through timeless and caustic digital signatures.
In a testament to the troubling dynamics of institutional walls that exist as both a refuge and prison in protecting staff and students from the real world, while sustaining a delusional wonderland of enlightenment, balance has yielded entirely to a single and tiresome point of view.
Students at the University of Binghamton, part of the state of New York public university system (SUNY), generated headlines last year for offering a controversial an optional program in the apparent sea of political correctness. The decision of the college to allow the workshop which contained the phrase, “Stop White People”, as the title for the program’s material, went viral and spurred debate as to the role of forced diversity on the student population. Of course, school officials claimed that the polarizing and insensitive label was a necessary vehicle for progress and should be viewed as a “metaphor” for the transgressions in society in promoting dialogue and understanding, and the program was allowed to persist. With the unsatisfactory response to the public and detractors, the university blatantly and egregiously forfeited any fleeting credibility and failed on all levels of exercising accountability. And things continue to spiral out of control.
A recent browsing session of the university’s website uncovered the following rhetoric. This list of resources is available on the dean of students “support” page-
So much for promoting a diverse viewpoint. Students should test the tolerable environment promoted throughout campus culture by replacing a few words here and there. Imagine the uproar with the hypothetical link- “Advice for Black Individuals Following a Shooting of a White Individual”. You can if you try, but do you want to?
