If the Party says "2+2=5", then 2+2=5.
If people don't understand that, they don't deserve a Higher Education.
Posted on 03/20/2015 12:31:48 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A 19-year-old was banned from the discussion portion of a humanities class at Reed College after students complained that his opinions on sexual assault made them feel uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to keep quiet.
Reed College, a small liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon, attracts students who want to speak their mind.
But when Jeremiah True wouldn’t stop talking about his controversial opinions on sexual assault in his required freshman humanities course, his professor banned him from the discussion segment of the class for the remainder of the semester.
The 19-year-old told BuzzFeed News that his professor, Pancho Savery, warned him repeatedly that his views made his classmates uncomfortable before he told him in a March 14 email that he was no longer welcome to participate in the “conference” section of his Humanities 110 lecture-seminar class.
“Please know that this was a difficult decision for me to make and one that I have never made before; nevertheless, in light of the serious stress you have caused your classmates, I feel that I have no other choice,” Savery wrote in the email, obtained by BuzzFeed News.
True, whose Facebook page says he studies “How to Annoy People” at Reed, takes pride in challenging his classmates’ opinions.
“I know many people aren’t comfortable with taking the stances I do, but I’m not a sheep,” he said.
True said he sparred with classmates over discussion topics related to ancient Greece and Rome, such as the “patriarchal” belief that logic is more important than emotion and his analysis of Lucretia’s rape. But it was his questioning of the widely shared and often debated statistic that 1 in 5 women in college are sexually assaulted — it doesn’t serve “actual rape victims” to “overinflate” numbers, he said — and his rejection of the term “rape culture” that led to him being banned, he said.
“I am critical of the idea of a rape culture because it does not exist,” he wrote in a lengthy email to Savery explaining his perspectives that he has also posted online. “We live in a society that hates rape, but also hasn’t optimized the best way to handle rape. Changing the legal definition of rape is a slippery slope. If sexual assault becomes qualified as rape, what happens next? What else can we legally redefine to become rape? Why would we want to inflate the numbers of rape in our society?”
More than 90 colleges are currently under federal investigation for allegedly mishandling sexual violence cases. Sexual assault on campus has become a hot-button issue both in Washington, where the White House launched a task force and senators have introduced bipartisan legislation, and on campuses like Reed, which roughly 1,500 students attend. For activists nationwide, the crackdown on campus sexual assault is long overdue. But other politicians and commentators have accused schools under pressure of suppressing free speech and mistreating accused students.
Reed’s own policies have been the object of scrutiny for years. Despite its small size, Reed’s students reported the most sex crimes of all colleges and universities in the state of Oregon during 2010–2012 and ranked third in the number of reported assaults per 1,000 students in the country in 2012.
“Reed is a private institution that often drops the ball in its responses to sexual misconduct, but this is an excellent example of a professor taking initiative to take care of his students,” senior Rosie Dempsey told BuzzFeed News. “Of course, we are an institution that encourages dissent and active discussion, but there is a difference between stimulating discussion through opposition and making other students feel unsafe.”
Savery, who declined to comment to BuzzFeed News, wrote in his email to True that he had discussed whether to ban True from class with another professor before making his decision.
“There are several survivors of sexual assault in our conference, and you have made them extremely uncomfortable with what they see as not only your undermining incidents of rape, but of also placing too much emphasis on men being unfairly charged with rape,” Savery wrote to True. “The entire conference without exception, men as well as women, feel that your presence makes them uncomfortable enough that they would rather not be there if you are there, and they have said that things you have said in our conference have made them so upset that they have difficulty concentrating in other classes. I, as conference leader, have to do what is best for the well-being of the entire class, and I am therefore banning you from conference for the remainder of the semester.”
Savery said it was too late for True to transfer to another conference but that True could still get credit for the course by completing the last paper and the final exam, and that he was welcome to discuss the remainder of the semester’s readings with Savery in his office.
True told BuzzFeed News that he didn’t feel he had belittled or “incited violence” against any sexual assault survivors who may have been in class.
“I simply questioned the statistics,” he said. “I understand [Savery] has to take care of his students, but I have to take care of my education.”
At Reed, which asks students to govern themselves using an “honor principle” that applies to all aspects of student life, professors are allowed by faculty code to use their own discretion to dismiss a student from class for “serious misconduct” if they consult with the student’s adviser first. (True said Savery was his adviser.) Reed spokesperson Kevin Myers said this was the first “instructor dismissal” he had heard of in his eight years working for the college and that administrators were investigating whether True was removed for appropriate reasons.
“For over 100 years, Reed has been very committed to free speech and diverse viewpoints, and maintaining an environment in which people can live and learn and work and express themselves honorably,” Myers said.
Private colleges aren’t bound by the First Amendment. But Ari Cohn at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said the foundation was interested in investigating True’s case. “Banning a student from a course simply because he expressed views on a topic of classroom discussion that some disagree with or are made uncomfortable by is generally inappropriate,” Cohn said. “A college campus is precisely the place for students to grapple with ideas and develop critical thinking skills, often by challenging prevailing wisdom and subjecting their assumptions to rigorous testing.”
Clara, a freshman in the class True was banned from, told BuzzFeed News that at first, True’s “controversial” points were welcomed and prompted interesting discussions. (Her name has been changed.) Eventually, Clara said, True’s arguments went from productive to “increasingly harmful and offensive.” She said True upset students when he said that it was understandable that the Holocaust happened given that people are not often taught to question systems of oppression, and made other comments about race and class. But the turning point was when he refused to stop discussing his beliefs on rape, even though sexual assault survivors told him outside of class that it made them uncomfortable.
“That’s when he crossed the border from his right to have his own beliefs to harassment,” said Clara. She said that she never felt physically unsafe, but that she is a survivor of sexual assault and True’s comments made it hard for her to concentrate in class as well as other courses.
“In response to being respectfully asked to stop, he discussed [his views] more openly and more aggressively, and just disregarded people’s lived experiences,” she said. “He continued to argue with people who had expressed to him that they felt unsafe and uncomfortable. He said rape culture didn’t exist, but I feel like I live rape culture every day.”
Other students on campus said they were happy that Savery had made a decision that benefited the other students in his class.
“I’m really comforted by the administrative response,” said Kate Hilts, a junior. “It’s really nice to know that my school supports survivors and listens when they say they don’t feel safe. Rape culture is indisputable and [True’s] words and actions are deeply upsetting. They’ve retraumatized and triggered survivors, and that seems antithetical to Reed culture.”
True isn’t planning on quieting down anytime soon. On Wednesday, he emailed a lengthy diatribe to the college’s professors and launched a change.org petition that currently has more than 350 signatures.
“I just want to bring attention to the fact that this happens on colleges,” he said. “Right now, going to college is a terrifying experience if you are male.”
It looks like there may be more to this story. The student certainly seems a bit off.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/19/male-students-non-pc-views-on-rape-stati
I teach federal government at the local college.
Want students engaged and speak their mind, encourage independent thought and I always take the “other side” in any debate. . .just to get the students thinking.
That said, this term I have a student that clearly has an agenda. No matter the discussion, no matter the subject, no matter what we are examining, this guy will ALWAYS steer the discussion to his encounter with the police 14-yrs ago and his subsequent arrest.
Great, good info when were were discussing the Bill of Rights and how the constitution protects God given rights, but when we are discussing the FCC and Net Neutrality or the federal bureaucracy or the budget-making process, for example, he will jump in, say something tangentially relevant to the topic and then go on a rant about his arrest.
So, sometimes the instructor has to make a decision and sometimes the decision is to recommend the student just shut the heck up.
“they would rather not be there if you are there”
Then there’s your solution, Mr Professor.
“Private college” isn’t bound by 1A?
Do they charge tuition? Then they’re not private according to the new order. You know, the one that compels bakers and videographers to serve everyone regardless how they feel.
Frankly, telling the student to ‘just shut up’ should be done in a one-on-one with the student, perhaps giving him a time for just him to relate his experiences privately to the instructor, and then explaining that you (instructor) also have other obligations to the collective class that are made more difficult by the interruptions. Just a thought.
True said he sparred with classmates over discussion topics related to ancient Greece and Rome, such as the "patriarchal" belief that logic is more important than emotion and his analysis of Lucretia's rape. But it was his questioning of the widely shared and often debated statistic that 1 in 5 women in college are sexually assaulted -- it doesn't serve "actual rape victims" to "overinflate" numbers, he said -- and his rejection of the term "rape culture" that led to him being banned, he said.
He’s a denier. Make him drink the hemlock.
Ms. Lewinsky went to the other macaroni headed small liberal arts college in Portland (with me)....Lewis and Clark. Never confuse the two.....LC students had a football team. Reed students manufactured LSD.
But he will NOT stop, even interrupting other students.
Been forced to yank his leash. . .in class. It is working.
If the Party says "2+2=5", then 2+2=5.
If people don't understand that, they don't deserve a Higher Education.
— and as the foundation of their little phony worlds crumbled,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Re: Phony
I first read that word as, “ My Little Pony”. Indeed, the mush heads are still trotting around in their childhood make-believe worlds.
Interesting. Colleges are not bound by the 1st amendment. So therefore, colleges are not bound to follow constitutional law or any of the bill of rights. Following this logic, a college could enslave you, jail you without trial, search your home or person without warrant. Since colleges seem to have extra-legal powers and don’t have to follow the law, what is to stop a college from convicting and executing a student?
All too often many students have never been expected to behave responsibly or in an adult manner. I do. Most get it after a class or two, some, like this guy, do not.
After a few classes most all of my students know what is acceptable behavior and adapt and actually act and speak as a mature adult.
It is a matter of expectation.
“True said he sparred with classmates over discussion topics related to ancient Greece and Rome, such as the “patriarchal” belief that logic is more important than emotion “
Well, he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the feminization of Academe.
While I admire him and any other kid that would put their future on the line for what they believe (and what is true), I do have to wonder, being that he’s black, whether he would would be on our side in that Starbucks ‘conversation’ about race. I’ve been let down by way too many people on that, but privately and in the public sector.
For me, I prefer to define "rape" and "sexual assault" according to classical criteria.
If it was:
A) Sexual intercourse accomplished via violence or threat of bodily harm, orthen it rape. Otherwise it wasn't. And in the case of (B), if they were married, then I would consider consent to be implicit unless explicitly withdrawn.B) Sexual intercourse on an actually unconscious woman who was unaware that sex was happening (not just drunk, but completely unconscious).
If a girl accuses a guy of rape because "well, I had sex with him because I thought we were going to have a relationship, but then he didn't call", then SHE should be expelled, if not prosecuted.
Perhaps there is more to it, but there may be more to the context of his “bizzare” response.
My first thought was that this student was being inundated with a huge number of people asking him for interviews, delivering nasty emails and phone calls, etc.
Only seeing one side of this, the blog guy saying he asked for an interview with the student about his “disruptive behavior” in class, etc.
I would prefer to see the communication both ways before I say anything. Instead of saying “I would like to discuss your views on the rape culture on campus and your interactions with your professor” he says “I want to discuss your behavior in class”, and I could see where the guy being asked might take the wrong impression and shut him down, figuring he is another PC liberal trying to nail him to the tree for not swallowing the groupthink.
Sexual assault has mutated such that when two equally drunk, consenting people have sex, the man can be considered guilty of rape while the woman is innocent.
The charge of rape then depends on her deciding she feels she was raped, though they were equally impaired and willing.
Add in colleges prosecuting guys based on a woman changing her mind about an encounter months later or who had to negotiate where to hook up and cross half a block to meet up, and the “rape culture” is incredibly unfair to men.
She just has to feel like it, and the school prosecutes. If the police say there is no evidence, he may still get kicked out of school, removed from a residence hall, denied his diploma.
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