Believe me, Emory University keeds, I sympathize with the sentiment - one of those, "I can understand it, but I don't condone it" type of situations - but this is just silly:
A flurry of chalk scrawls supporting Donald Trump on the Emory University campus sparked a demonstration by students who demanded and were granted a meeting with the president, saying the messages made them feel concerned and frightened. At least one of them said he got death threats after the protest.
Which may or may not have been connected to the chalk scrawls. The kiddies never do provide any proof that it was connected - how could they, since, as they themselves point out, the chalk scrawls are anonymous by design? - but the death threats, which are a serious matter, should be what rise to the level of contacting campus security.
The students viewed the messages as intimidation, and they voiced "genuine concern and pain" as a result, Emory President Jim Wagner wrote Tuesday, one day after meeting with forty to fifty student demonstrators.
The Atlanta university on Wednesday provided the Associated Press with a copy of Wagner's letter, in which he said students confronted by Trump's name in chalk "heard a message about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory's own."
I can see where they might feel that way. But might I make a couple of alternative suggestions? (1) If the kiddies are driven to spontaneous incontinence by chalk scrawls, try being a blogger who covers this stuff on a daily basis; Albert Nimziki isn't the only one with an "iron sphincter"; and (2) get a hose. Rinse away those squiggles down the nearest storm drain, unless local 'green" ordinances don't permit that option - although I tend to think an exception would be made in any Trump-related instance. Wouldn't that be easier than raising all this whiny, censurious ruckus? It's gotta be easier and quicker to hose down the chalk scrawls than it is for Trumplicans to scrawl them out, after all.
Here's another thought: Wouldn't the chalk scrawls be considered vandalism? Maybe not on sidewalks (although there I would think that the kiddies could derive the satisfaction of wiping their feet on them), but certainly on the sides of buildings. Might they try that gambit to get the offending scrawlers closed down? Of course, I have no doubt that these protesters regularly make chalk scrawls of their own, so that might create a conundrum, although #BlackLivesMatter and La Raza and whomever else don't seem to be capable of grasping even the concept of hypocrisy from what I've observed.
Mr. Wagner, like Pontius Pilate on Good Friday - how's that for timely irony? - simply wanted to make the problem go away:
Naturally Wagner sent out a letter after the meeting insisting that he felt their pain because that’s the rational way to deal with a fledgling campus protest movement. Humor it quickly and modestly and hope that it goes away satisfied. Resisting it will be treated as a challenge to the ultimate authority of leftist orthodoxy over campus life and that invites a test of strength. Wagner did the “right” thing, if rightness means snuffing a would-be crisis before it could get rolling. And yes, via Ace, it’s apparently true that he promised to take action against whoever was responsible for the chalkings — if, that is, the perpetrator was from off-campus.
Which seems likely given Trump's massive unpopularity among millennials.
Emory said in a statement to WaPo that students have the right to express their political views with chalkings, albeit only in certain parts of campus and so long as they don’t deface any property. If the person responsible isn’t a student then they can nab him for trespassing. It’s not the pro-Trump viewpoint that the university is concerned about — supposedly — in other words but the violation of time/place/manner rules regarding political expression. Good luck enforcing that against campus liberals who [What did I tell you?] feel moved to scratch out their love for Bernie Sanders or BLM whenever and wherever they’re moved to do so.
I couldn't say what Jim Wagner's views on Trump are. He's an academic administrator, so he's presumably a leftie, so you'd think he was anti-Trump, but there are so many people, including in my own personal acquaintance, whom I would have thought wouldn't have had to think for three seconds about opposing Trump, given what he is - a New York liberal conman - and I've been left in head-shaking incredulity repeatedly. Which, from a historical perspective, is usually the case in times of mass psychoses. As they say, it's always a little different when you experience it firsthand.
But Mr. Wagner is trying to "snuff out a potential crisis" in order to keep the asylum quiet. The problem is, academic asylums have become nurseries and day-care centers crammed to bursting with shrieking "adult" infants long on willfullness and emotion and short on maturity, knowledge, and self-restraint. Not unlike a lot of Trumplicans, come to think of it. Perhaps Mr. Wagner could arrange to put the chalk-scrawlers and death-threateners and whiny, censurious keeds in the biggest building on campus, lock all the doors, bar all the windows, and let 'em go at each other. Deploy enough wireless cameras, connect them to a satellite feed, and Emory University could put it on pay-per-view. I'd probably buy it, assuming I was caught up on all my Trump news posts.
And yes, if the kiddies are spooked by chalk scrawls, I'd be betting on the Trump SA going over, too.
UPDATE: Almost forgot the Thomas Jefferson quote:
"This institution [The University of Virginia] will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. for here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." [emphasis added]
That's pretty much my "job" description.
No comments:
Post a Comment