Posted on 03/22/2015 7:08:24 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
KATHERINE BYRON, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims, free from anything that might prompt memories of trauma.
So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”
Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.
The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sounds more like kindergarten than college.
Unless attendance at the debate was mandatory, why didn’t students who expected it to upset them simply not attend? I don’t seek out events or media that I expect to cause emotional distress. I have other options for my time and attention.
Namby-pamby, creepy CHICKIFICATION.
Infantile ad absurdum.
Training young honkies to be dominated by Asians, who.rarely go in for this nonsense.
The little dears shouldn’t have to hear about anything upsetting. Go to Disneyland.
“Victim” — some people eagerly take on the label because of the many advantages that come with it.
Compared to these people Pajama Boy is a real he-man.
What was upsetting to them was that the debate was being held. Not that they were in the audience.
I hope this Moron Factory being passed off as a university doesn’t get taxpayer funding?
Pretty good article for NYT.
I’m all for this kind of coddling. It will ease things when they are herded into the showers...
This is ludicrous.
I’ll bet every one of those engaging in this childish behavior calls herself a feminist.
If any one of those “feminists” had a brain in her head, she would realize that by demonstrating that women are too childish and incapable of facing the adult world, she is making the strongest argument against granting equal rights to women that she could possibly make.
Instead of proving that women are strong and capable without a man (which seems to have been the foundational premise of feminism), they are proving that they are as dependent on a strong protector as any woman in the 1950s—they’ve just transferred that role to society at large, instead of their boyfriend or husband.
Not true.
Their ABC children are as likely to take it up as American young people of European descent. Personal experience in a large (1000 person) American Chinese community.
Young highly intelligent kids hear about it from their older siblings at elite colleges.
Seriously ?
Thought this was satire but apparently not and parents are paying $50,000+ a year for their children infants to attend these places.
There had to be a committee to decide to do this. Funds were allocated. Time on task made available. Vouchers provided.
Wow.
The default these days.
Room, board, and required fees: $11,994. Total cost: $59,428
Room, board, and required fees: $11,994. Total cost: $59,428
If you've got it, flaunt it.
If you haven't got it, borrow it and flaunt it.
I now know why employers value me.
I am the last graduate generation that is worth a damn.
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