Tragic news this week, far worse than the Brussels attacks but of a similarly hateful thread: college students were crucially victimized when they were forced to read “Trump 2016” posts at various public campus sites. Yes, as The Daily Mail reported today, students at Emory University in Atlanta, GA awoke to declarations of support for presidential candidate, Donald Trump at various campus locations. Safe spaces have been violated. Tears of fear and pain were shed. Hands were held. Kumbayas may have been kumbaya’d.
As reported by the Daily Mail earlier today, Emory President, Jim Wagner, stepped in when students complained that their “safe space” was violated by the chalk-written slogan. Students protested they were suffering “genuine concern and pain” from the mention of the presidential frontrunner. President Wagner took further investigative action after a meeting with students which included counseling over the “hate speech”.
In an open open letter to the student body this week in response to the “Trump 2016” melee, President Wagner stated, “[Emory] heard a message about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own,” the letter stated. President Wagner has not yet clarified how writing “Trump 2016” specifically clashes with respect for others, or how officially condemning a differing opinion supports diversity.
Nonetheless, our children our suffering! Emory’s student newspaper reported that students were openly protesting the clearly hateful pro-Trump writings chanting, “You are not listening. We are in pain”! What has our world succumbed to when these soon-to-be-adults who have so successfully insulated themselves from any notion of dislikable confrontation are violated by yucky vegetables like global realities- or even basic reality?
I’m sure we all just want all these precious snowflakes to know that this article is a safe space. Nowhere in these lines will anybody accuse you of being totally detached from common sense, or that your free speech demands also means that you can’t shut down somebody else’s free speech just because it bursts your unicorn-blessed fantasy bubble.
Nowhere on this page will any mean old Trump bullies give you an intellectual wedgie by reminding you that your expectation of “tolerance” and “free expression” are solely dependent on America’s ability and willingness to defend it’s Constitution against people who would either destroy it externally with acts of terrorism or internally by inventing entirely fictional Constitutional values and then declaring that is what the Founding Fathers meant the whole time.
Finally, no one will accuse you that the pain and emotional retching you’ve endured this week frankly shouldn’t exist in the same universe as the justified pain, anger and heartache of the Brussels victims. Something,-you may be dimly aware- that happened because actual hateful terrorists acting out of an actual hateful religion continue to get a free pass to destroy society by your liberal principles.
