Posted on 04/18/2014 8:54:12 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
A group of seven multiracial Washington and Lee University (W&L) students are demanding the school remove all Confederate flags from campus and "acknowledge" General Robert E. Lee's "dishonorable side."
According to the Roanoke Times, "seven multiracial students, calling themselves 'The Committee,'" have also demanded the school "acknowledge and apologize for participating in chattel slavery." They want recognition of "Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the undergraduate campus" and an end to "neo-Confederates" marching across campus "to the Lee Chapel on Lee-Jackson Day."
The students say they will "engage in civil disobedience" if their demands are not met by September 1st.
They added: "The time has come for us, as students, to ask that the university hold itself responsible for its past and present dishonorable conduct and for the racist and dishonorable conduct of Robert E. Lee."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Lee freed his slaves long before there was a Confederacy and long before many Union officers did.
These “students” need to read a history book. Lee freed his slaves before the Civil War. He actually was asked by Lincoln to be the general for the Union, but he was loyal to VA. He was an honorable man.
... have absolutely no idea what constitutes honor or dishonor.
Everything about whiny liberal behavior is devoid of honor.
Next you’ll hear students dismay that there are Blacks at Tuskegee or Mormans at Bringham Youn.
We need a “White Appreciation Day.” Yeah, we know our history isn’t perfect but you’ve got a long list of things to thank us for ... that cell phone? Was it developed in Africa? What about your TV or computer? Were air conditioners and heaters developed in Mexico? What about electricity? Was it the Africans that first built automobiles? Planes?
They don’t want a “White Appreciation Day” because it would prove overly embarrassing because whites have contributed so much.
I am sick of everything being about RACE.
It's spooky when I read my own thoughts in real time from someone else's keyboard.
Maybe. Student discipline at W&L is a little unusual. There are no disciplinary rules on campus regarding student behavior, except one rule which was installed, ironically, by Lee: that all students must behave as "gentlemen" (the undergrad side was still all-men up until 20 years ago or so, and the policy has never changed).
Anyway, the administration of the school holds no authority to discipline students. Instead, all discipline is vested in the students themselves. If a student believes another student has behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion, a committee is formed and the student is put on trial, during which time he is represented by counsel--often a law student. The trials are public and classes are cancelled so that the entire school may attend. Again ironically, the trials are held in Lee Chapel.
If he is found guilty, he is expelled. There is no other penalty. Most often, a student confronted with such a charge will withdraw from the University so as to avoid an expulsion on their permanent record.
NAPAs?
Funniest post of the day. Not the Denzel and Spike part.
The part where “they’d paid their tuition”.
Whenever particular political figures came into favour in the Soviet Union, they had cities, mountains and buildings named for them.
When they fell out of favour (and their corpses on the ground), their names were expunged as if they had never been, and the cycle repeated itself with the next round of favourites turned pariahs.
Will this be the fate of Washington and Lee (both dead white male Christian slaveholders, and therefore anathema to academe as a whole), and so many other places?
Will it become Obama and Milk, perhaps, to honour the current favourites of the day? And when they fall from grace with the progressive elites, will their names too be expunged and new favourites so honoured?
“...apologize for participating in chattel slavery...”
Oh that old-fashioned slavery was bad with people owning people but the good new slavery of governments owning people is A-OK as long as we slaves get some sort of free dental-health plan.
I suppose they’ll want to rename Lee Chapel on campus, along perhaps with the disinterment of the General himself and the horse he rode in on.
W&L is a private institution. Expulsion would be appropriate for these lil’ illiterate blow-hards.
If they have no love for America’s greatest general — why go to W&L in the first place?
There’s a shrine to RELee in its own chapel there.
Is there a word of history anywhere from that time period which has a negative thing to say about Robert E Lee? I have read a few books about the war and that time period, and it appears that everyone alive at that time, north or south, regarded Gen Lee as the ideal man.
Political correctness is not popular in Rockbridge Co. It will be interesting to see how the community responds.
Well, he once owned a Confederate flag. I mean, it’s something... ;-)
If I were an undergraduate on the campus, I know at least one student who would be making the required accusation. I have been on the W & L campus, and frankly felt inspired by the sense of true natural nobility of Lee's character, which pervades the buildings & grounds.
It is a disgusting achievement of those on the hard core Left, that they have created a sub-culture, where this sort of behavior (that of the 7 miscreants) seems acceptable. Robert E. Lee was always seen as a true role model, in the Southern Ohio culture, in which I grew up; and this sort of agitation is as offensive to me, as I am sure it is to you.
That will be a sad time. But neccessary. And many innocents will have to be on the receiving end.
Hope I didn’t put any “code words” in this post.
I confess, I don’t know the whole story about the college, but I do know that after the war, Robert E. Lee had virtually nothing. His Virginia home was confiscated by the Union and made into Arlington Cemetary.
Then our of the blue he’s asked to be president of Washington College.
“The solitude did not last long (for Lee). The trustees of Washington College in Lexington, then looking for a new president, decided that Lee was the perfect choice. He had been superintendent of West Point earlier in his military career, and more importantly, he had a very recognizable name in 1865. The college, mired in financial difficulties, needed a prominent person to help raise funds. At first Lee hesitated, but on the advice of friends and family he eventually accepted the position. He wrote to the trustees that he believed, “it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony.”
I would think if I am attending or have attended Washington and Lee college, I would be very very very proud of its heritage. Therefore, it will be interesting to see what kind of backlash occurs here.
Read the article and as a follow up the 7 losers are law school students. It was RE Lee who added a law school when he was president of the university. This is like taking a Rhodes Scholarship to study across the pond then complaining about what a horrible person Cecil Rhodes is. If you think RE Lee is such a horrible person then don’t attend a law school he created.
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