Posted on 11/10/2015 7:21:09 AM PST by shortstop
Everything changed on American college campuses yesterday. A chill wind blew through every president and chancellor’s office.
A reign of terror commenced.
With the announcement that the chancellor and president of the University of Missouri system had been forced out of office, a new national paradigm of collegiate power was established. Its impact on an already tottering system of higher education is uncertain but frightening.
What’s the background: Black students, fueled by the professional protesting at Ferguson, felt slighted. They cited an incident in which the student-body president claimed he was called a racial slur, a swastika was drawn in excrement on the side of a building, and the unsatisfying reaction of the college president when black activists surrounded and detained him and his car during a homecoming parade.
Protesting became constant, a squatters camp was established, and the escalating rhetoric of racial anger grew louder and louder.
And school officials didn’t kiss the angry black ass just the way it wanted to be kissed.
So the president’s neck became the target.
And yesterday it was offered up.
And a lesson was learned.
Namely, that if you shout long enough and angrily enough, you can get anything you want. Further, the precedent is set that college presidents can be toppled for non-specific accusations of racial insensitivity – with racial insensitivity determined by the subjective rantings of a small number of anarchist activists.
The very nature of minority activism in America today is escalating dissatisfaction. No matter what is changed, offered or delivered, there is only a growing demand for more. The grievance is based less in reality and more in greed and bigotry. Blood in the water doesn’t satisfy a shark, it only makes it hungrier.
And the victory yesterday over the University of Missouri system will only inspire in activists today a lust for similar victories on other campuses. The trail has been blazed, and many will now follow it.
The new standard for campus racial activism will include a hammer that hangs constantly over the head of the president. Should a college leader not seem zealous enough in placating the complaints of minority activists, things could go Mizzou.
Every college administrator in America must have realized that yesterday.
As a consequence, minority activists have gained an ever larger role in determining the direction of American higher education. Saying yes buys a college president a season of peace; saying no could cost her her job.
The “progressive†nature of activism requires a constant upping of the ante, a pushing of the bar higher and higher. There is a competition among activists as each situation or person feels the need to outdo and surpass the other. If one marches, they all march.
And yesterday any number of activists on any number of college campuses set their sights on the president’s scalp. That has become the new gold standard of activist power.
In light of that, it should be noted that the basic posture of almost all minority activists on college campuses is discontent. It is hard to find a campus on which some committee does not have some grievance against some policy or percentage. A search of college newspapers and websites shows story after story about minority students complaining of one slight or another. There are a lot of people feeling disrespected.
And they mostly complain that the administration isn’t taking them seriously enough.
Which is what happened at the University of Missouri – and could easily happen at dozens of American colleges.
In a way, the colleges asked for it.
A haven of discontent with society for a generation, with hatred sometimes the unstated theme of a syllabus, it is only natural that colleges should be burned by the spark they flamed and fanned. When you teach people to be angry, you can’t be surprised when they become angry at you.
But somewhere the basic mission of education is jeopardized. When colleges become expounders of a narrow and angry anarchy, when the tail of racial and political activism wags the dog of genuine education, the system collapses and the society is damaged.
We need colleges, we just don’t need them to be like this.
We don’t need groups of shouting activists holding the reins of power.
But yesterday, that is exactly what they were handed.
When someone does finally say “enough” and won’t stand for it anymore,
look for the gov’t to step in and squash that person or group.
And, really, that’s the point of it all - “agitate to the point of conflict, then increase govt power to address the conflict”.
As a bonus, you get to use the govt to punish political enemies.
The admins are reaping what they have sown. By their support of leftist causes of their faculties, they have put themselves in a no-win postion. The only way they can push back is to turn right and reject the liberal causes on their campus. The pendulum may actually swing to the right.
“That administrator resigned much too easily ... I’m guessing he just said “screw this, I don’t need it†“
Good move. Why spend your precious living years in an insane asylum?
When "Traditional America" forcefully pushes back, then the Fabian Socialists will unleash their "domestic forces with capabilities that equal the military".
The war on white man takes another big step forward.
Whitey does not deserve a job in todays USA
When young fools are empowered.
It seemed so fun and freeing to reject the old wisdom.
I Don’t blame him... sadly...his family would have been targets, he would have been a target, his friends would have been a target. These “protestors” are scum, cowardly and without their own thoughts. They will act with prejudice and without facts for the good of their skewed cause.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.The myrmidons grow increasingly brave. Shamefully squandering the opportunities given them. These actions are not the type that enhance a society.
Enjoy the decline.
It’s prolly worse than that. I suppose he went to the Board of Regents and they refused to support him, pretty much leaving him no choice but to resign.
Remember the `60s, Gov. Reagan and student whining, particularly Bezerkely?
From the horse’s ... uh, mouth.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_reagan.shtml
The Show Me state really stepped in it.
We should start making this point to all our Lib friends: the President of M.U. was undoubtedly a Leftist. But that did not save him, because he was a white, straight, male.
What a super wuss event. Come on Mizzou. The world is watching you. We are starved for competence. Show me how it is done.
The only way to stop this crap is to stop spending your White Privilege dollars on these sporting events.Why the hell subsidize people who have one thought on their mind and that is to make you miserable?
More like Mao's students. I'm surprised they didn't drag Wolfe out of his office and beat him. They'd certainly like to. And Chairman Barack would approve.
He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, Both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.
- Proverbs 17:15
Your point about manipulation is spot-on. It would be instructive to map out connections between the professional protesters in Ferguson and the movement that sprang up at Mizzou. The “lack” of minority students and staff at the university is nothing new, and I’d be willing to bet there have been racial incidents of the same type in the past. But the pot in Columbia didn’t boil over until Ferguson blew up and members of the protected class decided to dust off grievances from 1969.
Along with the Ferguson connection, you can also see the fine hand of the Mizzou faculty. They were opposed to Tim Wolfe from the start, because (a) he was not an academic; (b) did not have a PhD and (c) came from the corporate world. Rest assured, there were plenty of professors at Mizzou who lectured long and loud about Wolfe’s lack of qualifications, and when racial tensions erupted, they egged it on.
On Twitter yesterday, there was a post from Katherine Reed, a member of the journalism faculty at Missouri—the oldest j-school in America. She publicly shamed one of her colleagues for asking for “muscle” to remove a camera crew which was attempting to film the protest. Her colleague (another J-school professor) had no problem with campus thugs attempting to deny First Amendment rights to members of her own profession.
That little incident perfectly illustrates the rot and corruption of academia. It’s all about indoctrination and brain-washing the young skulls full of mush into becoming radicals. Any pretense at real education was abandoned years ago.
It’s like the ‘60’s all over again.
Silly me, I always thought the swastika was an anti-Jewish slur. When did blacks become offended by it?
Or is it another excuse to riot?
White privilege: white students get to pay higher tuition charges on average
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