College campuses are a hotbed of debate. Colleges are supposedly a free forum for ideas. Well, apparently ideas that do not hurt someone's feelings. On most college campuses, the growth of political correctness has become rampant. Lack of communication skills and moral boundaries has brought of the imaginary need for safe spaces. Most of these hostilities are directed at those who believe in conservative values or ideas that go against popular liberal ideology. This became extremely apparent at an event held by the University of Massachusetts Amherst College Republicans called The Triggering.
The Triggering was an event to discuss political correctness, social justice, microaggressions, and feminism.Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Hoff Summers, and Steven Crowder were invited to speak at the event. Yiannopoulos is an editor at Breitbart and is an outspoken critic of Gamergate and Third Wave Feminism. Summers is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute as well as hosting the Factual Feminist video series. Crowder is known for his vlog Louder with Crowder which offers a conservative, comedic view of various topics. It is clear why they were invited to speak as such an event. They know how to navigate social media and interact with people of our generation on a level we can connect with.
As anyone familiar with how college campuses, especially those in highly liberal areas, can guess, there were quite a bit of students who were not too happy with these people being invited to campus to spread "hate speech." Now Yiannopolous and Crowder are both very abrasive when it comes to expressing their views, but Summers is known for eloquently and logically conveying her viewpoint, yet she was also labelled with spreading "hate speech." Simply the ideas she had, in the protesters' eyes, were hateful simply because they were not in agreement with their own. Perhaps the new definition of "hate speech" should be "speech that I hate."
Another video recorded by a student attending the event showed one particular woman that was completely upset by the event. Though some of her ranting seems incoherent, one can infer she is shouting about "hate speech" and that the speakers are not wanted on campus. At one point, she even tries to rally the crowd into chanting "Keep your hate speech out of this campus." That attempt failed miserably. The biggest thing for me is when she cried for Summers to stop talking to them like they are children to which Summers promptly responded "I will when you stop acting like a child." To be truly honest, this protester was acting exactly like a child. She screamed when something she didn't like happened, she would flail her arms when she shouted, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. Those are the actions of a whining child, not a mature college student. The sad thing is how her actions were supported and deemed appropriate by her fellow protesters. If I was even sitting next to her, I'd be embarrassed.
Protesting like this has become commonplace on many college campuses. It shows a lack of maturity, understanding, and ability to communicate. The previously mentioned protester said what she was doing was free speech, but then tried to shut down the speakers whose ideas she didn't agree with. These protesters obviously did not come to listen then engage in a thoughtful debate, they came to do nothing else but try and raise hell. This behavior is extremely inappropriate for someone who has entered an institution of higher learning. They should hold themselves to a higher standard rather than fall into the throes of hysteria.
Stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. When did that stop becoming applicable?
