Posted on 05/01/2017 9:11:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The National Union of Students warned audience members at its conference that they must not clap or cheer during speeches because clapping and cheering make deaf people feel excluded.
According to an article in The Telegraph, attendees at last week’s conference were warned that clapping and cheering could have a “serious impact” on deaf participants, and they were instructed to use “jazz hands” to show their support instead.
“No whooping, it does have a serious impact on some delegates’ ability to access [the] conference,” Estelle Hart, an NUS elections-committee member and chairwoman of a Thursday session, told students.
According to The Telegraph, Hart had to remind people not to “whoop” at least one other time during the conference, and NUS Vice President for Welfare Shelly Asquith had to bring it up as well, claiming that the group has had “a number of requests that people stop whooping.” In fact, the whooping issue apparently became so serious that the Durham University student union used time at the conference to propose a motion that called for “reduced cheering or unnecessary loud noises on the conference floor, including whooping and clapping,” at all future NUS events on the grounds that “access needs of disabled students are disregarded/overlooked in terms of conference member behavior and NUS structures” and that this can be a threat to their “safety and wellbeing.” The motion added that there would be “consequences for those who ignore this requirement.”
Although the demonization of whooping and cheering is new for NUS, the demonization of clapping is not. As The Telegraph notes, attendees at a 2015 conference were instructed to use jazz hands instead of claps to show support on the grounds that clapping could “trigger anxiety.”
You know what triggers my anxiety? Having to read garbage like this. I mean, seriously. The NUS is the largest student union in Britain, and when they all get together for a conference, this is what they choose to talk about? All of the potential pitfalls of clapping?
Why don’t they focus on some of the more important issues? You know, like the potential pitfalls of jazz hands. After all, if clapping excludes deaf people, wouldn’t jazz hands exclude blind people? Terribly insensitive. The NUS really shouldn’t rest until people completely stop showing any visual or audible signs of approval whatsoever. Until people just sit still and silently at all times for fear of upsetting someone. Yes, that’s the world we should all want to live in. It doesn’t sound like a creepy, totalitarian Twilight Zone — no, not at all.
This story was previously covered in an article on Heat Street.
– Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.
Ban sign language because it excludes blind people.
If they stop clapping and cheering, won’t they be offending blind people?
But if you wave your hands instead of clapping and cheering, it excludes blind people!
How terrible! Those dirty bigots!
Oh for God’s sake. If there isn’t someone there to hand sign the speech, they shouldn’t be there anyway. If there is someone doing hand signs, they should be able to participate. I’d tell those Snowflakes to shove it.
I guess the middle finger will be OK.
Ban television and movies because they discriminate against blind people.
These people have too much free time on thieir hands (so to speak). Re-education camps will be needed so that young people can properly experience the joy of work and accomplishment.
No more art shows either.
Next on the agenda: outlawing “self pleasuring” because it discriminates against double amputees.
How does it exclude deaf people? Are deaf people not allowed to clap or cheer in Brittan?
Ban breathing because it excludes dead people.
Sounds like something straight out of a Monty Python skit.
LOL, in the not too far bureaucratic future, I can see a legally mandated platform with the person doing the signing, that will be in the upper right corner of the video scoreboard, to cue them when to clap and cheer.
Along with some kind of decibel meter indicator.
And a visual message to clap and cheer.
And special equipment to be handed out to anyone who identifies as deaf (stand up, all you guys out there) which will alert you via some kind of thing when clapping or cheering occurs.
Just watch.
When I tell people that the Americans with Disabilities Act is one of the most viciously misused and abused pieces of legislation, it is the fact that this satire in my post is not that far from being not satire.
Clapping can be both seen and heard. “Jaz hands” can only be seen and therefore clearly exclude the blind.
Here as well as in America young people have too much time on their hands with no skin in the games they object to. Time to bring back the draft? or some other form of national effort so they have some skin in the game and learn to respect their countries and help rather than hurt.
We should show our appreciation by farting, that way blind and deaf and dumb people can join in equally.
CC
(no more silly than the above proposal)
The irrationality of these ideas isn’t the point, whether the idiots propogating them realise it or not. The point is to slowly get people used to control of every aspect of their lives and freedom of expression.
In the past, people use to take up hobbies like stamp collecting, knitting, model boat building. Now the hobby seems to be to virtue signaling thru finding the most obscure thing one could construe as offensive.
Replace clapping with passing gas. After all, the deaf can listen to the fart and the blind can smell the fart.
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