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Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"?
The Nation has up a sobering article from its upcoming issue about how colleges and universities are being turned into homeland security campuses, in the name of preventing homegrown radicalization. Quoting: "From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
I think I'm more troubled by the "designated free speech areas" that are springing up on campuses everywhere.
Not because people can (sort of) speak freely there, but colleges are banning free speech everywhere else.
Queue the "Loose Change" music while you read that.
Can't say I'm a great fan of TWAT, but even so:
Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
The Weathermen were a "peace and justice organization".
Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles.
Dear me, police armed with non lethal weapons? They have guns in a gun owning society? We're all doomed, I say, doomed.
Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out
Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism.
Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory
I'm shocked by this one, frankly (even more so than I was by the tasers). A government department wants to sponsor research within it's remit?
Privatize, privatize, privatize.
a) this has fuck all to do with repression of academia, just a left wing fear of the private sector
b) giving contracts to private sector companies is not privatisation.
The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances
Protip: Orwell wasn't warning about the right in 1984. If the average reader of the Nation got their way, only the targets would change. Any kulaks here?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Please do not feed the troll.
Fearmongering is considered a traditional tool of the Right, but the Left appears to have become its new master. Frankly, I'm tired of it from both sides.
... after we survived the radical 60s and proved to the world that free speech and tolerance of dissent works, the very generation that watched freedom of dissent work to fizzle out radicalism has come into the positions of power and are now acting as if it didn't work. Fear is truly the mind killer.
Patriot - A fan of expanding government power and spending while not wanting to pay higher taxes.
"From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' -- as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name -- have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
Tonight... on 24! Jack Bauer delivers the glorious CTU smackdown to some girly man professors with their sights set on terrorizing the Heartland! Watch the Godless professors soil their undies as Bauer delivers a peer reviewed parcel of whoopass!
Presented in high definition Tyranovision!
I was teaching at Wichita State before the Free Speech Zones. They had to implement them because Women's Studies majors were interrupting class by blowing an air horn to announce "Take Back the Night"-type events. So, the left-wing administrators had to find a way to kept the far-left-wing advocates from interrupting class and came up with the zoning scheme as the solution.
If the right is truly repressing speech on campus via federal reg's, it's double-plus bad ungood; however, I contend there's far more internal repression of speech, and hence of thought, from the left on campus and has been for decades. (Why? Because they believe that true diversity will be achieved once everyone agrees with them.) So, if we want free speech on campus, let's make sure all of the sources of repression are dealt with.
A lot of colleges have agendas when it comes to allowing conservative students hold events and speak out, Which is ironic considering who is pushing this down our throats. Of course new-liberal types want to shut up consrvative speakers because they "know they are right". I say let both groups speak and if you don't like who is speaking you don't have to listen.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
the very generation that watched freedom of dissent work to fizzle out radicalism has come into the positions of power and are now acting as if it didn't work. Fear is truly the mind killer.
Or... a whole generation of people isn't a monobloc that thinks alike. There were Young Republican types on those campuses as well.
Is there any evidence of this ever being a problem such that this is worth spending any money on?
Timothy McVeigh is the only example of home-grown terrorism I know about, and I don't recall him causing trouble at any institution of higher learning.
And to prove the opposite point, that government is over-reaching, we can cite, e.g. Kent State.
No wonder the Ron Paul rally I attended was overwhelmingly 20 & 30-somethings.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I work on a University campus, so I know what's really going on. It's simple: too many people abused their "right" to free speech by making it impossible to hold classes, being rowdy and loud in the halls, preventing people from passing into buildings, etc. In essence, depriving the students of the very thing they paid for. End result? The university isn't about having "free speech all the time", it's where people pay for an education. So the Universities had to strike a balance, and they had to do something so that those who wanted to protest can do so, but WITHOUT DISRUPTING CLASSES.
You don't have the "right" to stand up and have a bitch-fest in a class you're signed up for, either - if you disrupt class, the professor has the right to order you out and call security if you don't leave. You don't have the "right" to prevent people from reaching classes either, and we had fuckwits from Code Pinko blockading the classrooms of engineering profs who had military service records and have some military research grants.
And that even includes the fuckwad professors who hold chemistry class bitching about Bush and why everyone should be antiwar, too. You want to protest them? Take it up w/ the Dean, in the student newspaper, in the courts, or on your own time - not in the class.
students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."
I don't care what you're doing - whether it's an anti-abortion flyer, a pro-abortion flyer, an antiwar flyer, a pro-war flyer, or an advertising for your frat/sorostitute group's drinking party. If you're trying to force it into people's hands, or putting it on their cars (which is what WE get all the time where I work)... no. If someone actively takes it from you? Fine. But you don't have the right to force crap into my hands and you don't have the right to fuck with my vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that's the bullcrap they are really referring to.
I also love this little gem:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups, blatant racial supremacist organizations (MEChA and La Raza, motto "For the race, everything, for other races, nothing"), or international terrorist/genocide groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
I mean, really. We had a table of morons set up who were boldly collecting money that they admitted they'd be sending to Hezbollah. They should all have been deported for violating their visas - half of them had already dropped this semester's classes anyways, like they do every semester.
This is the beginning of the end. First, they own your money. Then they monitor your correspondence. Then they call you crazy if you call them on what they are doing. Then ignorance is called strength. And then universal surveillance is called freedom. So how's is Britney Spears doing today? Anyone caught the game?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Think. It's like in chess. First you strategically position your pieces. Then, when the timing's right. You strike.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. On ever more campuses, closed-circuit security cameras can track people's every move, often from hidden or undisclosed locations, sometimes even into classrooms.
I helped get this established on our campus. Why did we do it? It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7. We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out.
Yeah. Because enforcing the law is a problem... how?
The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.
When every one that gets in displaces a legal citizen, legal resident, legal visa-holder who had the RIGHT to apply... yeah. I applaud such efforts.
The main watchdog for campus rights abuses is FIRE.
Speech codes and anti-harassment "respect" policies are the most common culprits when it comes to violating individual rights at colleges.
Two issues out of the article -
1. Police departments on campus getting more firearms, including semiautomatic rifles and pistols.
This is just dumb, for several reasons.
A. Students may not see it that way, but the reason that campus police have guns is to protect the students. Criminals love to target students. Better armed criminals argues for better armed campus police. Happy peaceful unarmed campus police equals soft target. And there are always some nuts out there. Campus police may seem intimidating to students, and part of their job is to keep students from rioting and burning campuses down during periodic fits of dissention, but their primary job is to go get the people who come from outside to prey on students.
B. 99% of police in the US now use semi-automatic pistols - they're just a better choice for officers than revolvers.
C. Semi-automatic rifles are, in many situations, less likely to hurt bystanders than shotguns, the more common shoulder arm police use. Police also have had some long-range issues (snipers, mass murders, etc) which rifles are needed to counter.
2. Blackwater as an example in the privatization
Blackwater has for a long long time been a police and security training company. They also got into private security in Iraq, yes, but what they do in the US is nearly entirely provide tactical and skills training to police officers. Do you want more professional, better trained police? Most people do... Doctors and Paramedics need continuing training, so should Police. Some departments are big enough to do most of their own training, but most aren't. Training is good.
While many of the things addressed in the article, especially about trying to shift the social environments of many colleges are troubling, in the end I don't think universities are going to be very easily overcome as centers of free speech and dissent. The really simplified reason behind this in my opinion is this: smart engaged people who's world view comes from 'the left' tend to make great teachers, and great teachers have profound impacts on their students opinion and thought processes. Smart engaged people who's world view comes from the right tend to make great leaders. Since the end of WWII, where the Montgomery GI bill opened education to the masses, we've seen two social trends:
First in the 1960s, the teachers had the first shot at a huge proportion of the population who hadn't been able to go to college, or spend much of their time formulating ideological positions. Then in the 1980s, the right produced a number of charismatic leaders, exemplified by Reagan and Gingrich, who focused their ideological positions through the media in a very compelling manner. The problem with the cult of leadership is that is has problems clearly conveying its ideas since it is based on personality and media control rather than pedagogy and individual interaction, the message drifts as the charismatic pull it in different directions for their own benefit. This the the stage we're at now.
As the media message either fractures or continues to diverge from the reality most people experience, they'll go back to the sources of information that are personally tangible: the teachers. This type of broad social cycle won't easily be broken by increasing surveillance, etc, because the lag times to acceptance are on the same scale as the social oscillations and surveillance doesn't work very well in communities that it isn't implicitly accepted in.
It seems they are battening down all the hatches, going totally overboard as far as "Homeland Security" is concerned. The question is what for? Is it paranoia for its own sake or is something going to happen in the near future that they are preparing for?
if thinks like students getting tased for trying for trying use the right for free Speech or because they are black / Muslim or any other thing that some rent a cop campus security keep happening. How long before some one gets shot?
Students and universities are under attack. Those who do nothing or collaborate are unpatriotic and expose the country to fascist danger. Fight back!
"Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out
Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism."
Not all foreign-born students are illegal immigrants.
fat twat, skinny twat, thin twat, thick twat, black twat, white twat, long twat, short twat, wrinkly twat,
The question which naturally follows from this is, which national governments are not oppressive, paternalistic and deceitful?
Yes, it's a little known fact that all the suicide bombers in the world have all had Philosophy degrees. Grow up man, terrorists come from anywhere, the world isn't as black and white as you seem to think.
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"Criminals love to target students". Huh? In most cases of attacks on students these have been a result of students attack their own co-students.
". Semi-automatic rifles are, in many situations, less likely to hurt bystanders than shotguns." and in many/most cases the shotgun is superior because it is less likely to cause unintended damage. A rifle bullet can travel many miles and can also go through walls etc. Not a good thing in a situation where there are a lot of innocents around.
Blackwater is pretty handy for the forces "visiting" Iraq mainly because they are above the law and don't get hobbled by pesky military laws like US soldiers do.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Finally we have proof that (all) Government(s) fear the education of the populace. As if there was any doubt before.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I've worked for several colleges, and most had Free-Speech Zones where student organizations, community members where allowed to setup tables, pass out leaflets, etc. The other instututions that didn't have these, had a general understanding of "where" was appropriate to have peaceful protest, or speakers.
In all cases, these areas were central to the campus and often in areas where students tended to gather normally. I never observed police try to interfere with the students or speakers and only interfered outside these areas when they were breaking the law (e.g. using chalk on unviersity buildings walls where the rain wouldn't wash it off), harassing bystanders going to class, or were being loud as to interupt others right to peace. (e.g. interupting classes.)
Unfortunately in my experience, the only situations I observed censorship in higher ed were in the classrooms, where students were penalized in their academic work for arguing alternative theories (e.g. in the social sciences) that were not the prefered theories or ideologies of the professors. I found it was a lot easier to grit my teeth and agree in class and on paper with the professors than argue any alternative viewpoint.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
What I love about American culture (I was born and raised in the southeast) is the inability to try and comprehend why otherwise reasonable people engage in ultra-violent activities en masse. Sure, there are some sociopaths, but when your average citizen starts to follow sociopaths, there's likely a reasonable explanation. I think it's more likely that they live in perpetual poverty and are subject to random acts of violence directly by US forces or those who are backed by the US, rather than they "hate freedom."
You think Hezbollah and Hamas are evil organizations, and I'll assume because they kill people and advocate violence towards their enemies. Is that any different from statements from the Pentagon? We threaten "the use of force" and they threaten "death to American infidels," but is there, in fact, any difference in those statements? We are far more dishonest than terrorist groups because we pretend that we don't kill people, when in fact, we're responsible for more civilian death than any terrorist group that has ever existed.
This was all perfectly realized recently on the news. I laughed out loud when I saw the video about Iranians "harassing" the US Navy. When you look at the video, you have five off-the-shelf speedboats versus multi-thousand ton US warships. I really can't believe the Pentagon are taking themselves seriously anymore.
And the fact that "communist fronts" are even on your radar is really a testament to how narrow political discussion in the US has become. When "bullcrap" is having a flier forced in your hands, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is perfectly acceptable, grotesque doesn't begin to describe how ugly we must look to the outside world.
colleges are banning free speech everywhere else.
Registered speech is not free, so there is no free speech on campuses that have such areas. They call the police on anyone who does not register, regardless of where they want to talk to people. When you follow their rules, you get added to their blacklist. Perfect fuckdom.
It's also, paradoxally, used to advertise on public space. The given excuse for registration, in part, is to eliminate commercial speech. Yet large companies and the military are allowed use of university facilities that no student organization could hope for.
Welcome to the new student's paradise. It looks more like some kind of communist/fascist cock up every day. Keep your mouth shut, eat crappy fast food and support the Bush Forces. No party for you, say the wrong thing and you will be reported.
This is not how it begins, this is how it ends. Universities are the last bastion of free speech and thought in any country. The press is already monitored and dissiplined. Workplaces have been fucked for a long time. Communications have been tapped. Charges don't have to be filed for you to be put in jail and tortured. Dissidence will now be tracked and thwarted from the get-go. That's what's called a Police State.
We really need to bring democracy to the USA through regime change. The fascists have shown their hand and need to be removed before dissent is impossible.
"I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups"
Err, so fucking what, what the hell is wrong with having people involved in socialist organisations?
They may well be idiots, but it's a perfectly valid political viewpoint.
It seems they are battening down all the hatches, going totally overboard as far as "Homeland Security" is concerned.
They think they can get away with it.
But only if the government agrees with what you have to say.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There were moderately credible going around the campus that I'm on (26K+ students) that all student phone calls were monitored by a single FBI agent. What a horrible job, he must have done something to get placed there, we could just that Simpsons scene of homeland security agents intently listening to students calling there parents complaining about how horrible college was :)
We also found a new prank: using the phones in random rooms to yell "terrorist buzz words" into.
Isn't it fascinating though, to see rightwingers wail and clamor about universities as left-wing commie hotbeds, and yet it never occurs to them that all these well-educated people and young people interested in becoming well-educated might just have LEARNED something that made them so?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Monday was Martin Luther King Day. Proving that the 20-something Geek has no sense of history whatsoever.
Nor did I imply you were any of these things, and did not mean to phrase my post offensively, sorry.
Rather, I remarked about the peculiarity of the situation.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
1. Purchase Critical Thinking textbook
2. Memorize Critical Thinking textbook
3. Reproduce responses from Critical Thinking textbook's sample exam in closed-book text
4. Receive Critical Thinking credits.
Universities are there to teach you to produce an obedient workforce and keep you from questioning authority--the exact antithesis to their ostensible goals. Universities today exist for the students no more than newspapers do for the readers.
This "Repress U" DHS stuff is just another bit of evidence that supports this argument.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
If they're undocumented, how do you know they are foreign-born?
Racial profiling? Always popular - ask any American of Asian heritage how many times strangers have asked where they are from, and still don't clue-in when the answer is "Chicago" or "Oakland". There's a reason some people get real touchy about racial profiling -- they get this shit constantly even when they are fourth-generation Americans. Racial profiling always turns out to be white racism - there is no USA race.
Accents? Okay, say you do "your papers please" on everyone with a foreign-sounding accent. Why do you want to track these people now? You just report undocumented students to Immigration, job done.
Sorry, but I don't get this one. Maybe someone could fill in? Right now it sounds like an outfit without the authority to actually check papers wants some sort of rubber stamp to make them into official vigilante finger-pointers? I don't get it.
This seems to be a generational dupe.
This has been tried before with bad results. It will be invaluable data for sociologists if this is different from then.
I expect the data to be different enough to be a major flag here.
We were far more militant then,(1960's-1970's....We had Balls back then!) compared to the 'politically correct' scenario that is accepted nowadays.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
A friend of mine who disagrees with a lot of my opinions described this situation very simply. He said, "If either of us were less intelligent we wouldn't be friends but enemies".
by Aaron Russo
Ron Paul 2008
When air-strikes are predicted to kill less than 30 civilians, they are permitted without need for approval. When air-strikes are predicted to kill more, all you need is permission.
What kind of message does this send to the rest of the world? In essence, when it doubt, we kill civilians. When not in doubt, we kill civilians. How did we manage to find ourselves across the world, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, who have never lifted a finger against our nation?
This is a question no one seems to be asking, or rather, one government leaders are pretending not to hear.
2. What a waste of time for you to reference those quotes of his, then try to call him a conservative (as if that were a bad word), and then not use it to no means in your argument? Believe it or not, Universities are traditionally considered bastions OF free thought and speech - these are the tools of learning. Oh come now! You're making up definitions! The Compact Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition:
noun (pl. universities) a high-level educational institution in which students study for degrees and academic research is done.
First, a public or private university is a business. If business is being disrupted, that means other customers (students) aren't able to obtain their paid services.
Second, this whole thing about universities being a bastion for free thought and speech is some sort of whack job revisionist expectation that has only existed in the western nations in the last 50 years or so.
Please, your hopeless romanticism is only making you look like an ass.
In other words, prevent unorthodox crimethink and implement thinkpol to catch those who might be a "threat".
Teach students to recognize and report facecrime. If you're not a friend of BB, you're probably an agent of Eastasia (or was it Eurasia?).
Unfortunately, most college-age chidren think of themselves as adults, immune to influence and manipulation (adults aren't immune either). I certainly did when I was younger (and was dead wrong). This is the age at which our young shrug off what they've been taught at home and re-forge themselves in an image of their own design.
My school was once a bastion of hippie ideology. After the anti-nuclear protests last year, the administration made it a crime to camp out on our campus.
Spoken like a true narc.
I always point out that organizing is the antithesis of anarchy [...]
No it's not. Anarchy is not chaos; it's a lack of rule. Chaos is just a natural result.
There's nothing about being an anarchist that prevents you from listening to someone else's advice. The key difference between an anarchist and, say, someone who believes in electing a leader is the expectation that once a leader is chosen that everyone *must* listen to them. An anarchist is free to nod his head at the advice and then go off and do his own thing.
Sure, people might complain at him and he may or may not be made to feel guilty, but there's no binding law making him do what he's told or providing for remedies for him not doing so. That's anarchy -- the lack of legal / community-imposed consequences for your actions; it's not some boneheaded, punk-rock poser obsession with telling everyone, "F--- off," who might tell you what would be a good idea to do.
Apparently, when you were a kid, you had a very juvenile view of the concept, and adulthood doesn't seem to have cured you of it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I mean, think about it - we have to limit radical ideas. Otherwise, one day somebody is going to figure out how to unify gravity with all the other forces. Remember that debacle with Charles Darwin and his radical extremist ideas about evolution! Do we want that kind of things to happen again? If we don't stop this kind of thing before it starts and throw out the baby with the bathwater, we'll soon see our young taking drugs, listening to rhythmic music and having fun!
... but a casual inspection suggests that they come from some "anywhere"s a whole lot more than they come from others (ditto "anyone"s). I suppose next time the breaking news bulletin says that 15 were killed in a suicide bombing it is entirely possible that the perpretrator was a 65 year-old female Buddhist from Toledo but, you know, I'm not going to bet my rent money on it.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
What would you call a government that believed in free market economics but was a theocracy? (See the American Dominionist movement.) It's totally possible to have violent social and political oppression in pro-capitalist societies. Look at South Korea under General Park Chung-hee.
By your own oversimplified political quiz, economic freedoms are the province of the right, but social freedoms are the province of the left and not the right as you strangely suggest. (Try answering A to the first 5 questions and D to the last five if you don't believe me!)
Also, it's worth noting that the fascist movements in Europe started as "third way" alternatives to democracy and communism and almost all rose to power with the aid of significant industry collaboration (as a bulwark against leftist proletariat movements). You need to read more about 1930s Spanish, Italian, and German history -- with especial emphasis on the allies of the fascist movements -- before condemning the idea as ridiculous. They stand in stark contrast to the totalitarian left movements within the same countries.
Lastly, and a crony-capitalist system can't be described as leftist either because there's no concept of distributive justice or social equality, nor is there any lip-service paid to it like in corrupt communist countries that gave inner party members privileges over the masses.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It's branding. It is marketing. Watch movies about terrorism from before 2001. Absolutely NONE of them used the word "terror" in this way. Did 9/11 change everything? Can it change a word?...
What a Freudian slip!
our free speech zones sometimes change into free scream zones for reasons we're still investigating.
laejoh
Miskatonic University
Arkham
If you realise that Second Life's economy isn't the only economy that's a pyramid scheme benefitting above all the Guys at the top of the pyramid, and combine that with John Perkins story about how the super rich manage to rape the poorest people on the world, you get a little worried, so you begin to follow the money.
Then, in a hunch, you decide to follow Hitler's money and discover a clear and credible link between the Nazi's and Al-Qaida. A few more steps and reality makes your worst nightmares look like a walk in the park.
-- Multatuli --
You can fool some people all of the time and all people some of the time, but you can't fool all people all of the time.
How can you make anything more than a sham of 'free speech' when groups representing the largest demographic on campus have a deserved reputation for excluding people based on details like ethnicity, skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, and gender?
Having the acceptability one's ethnicity, sexuality or gender debated while trying to learn is itself extremely disruptive.
To maximize participation on campus and in society, good justifications are required for excluding people from campus and from debate: An ideology of arbitrary exclusivity is necessarily one of them.
It doesn't matter whether you identify this ethic with labels such as "liberal" to make it appear 'partisan'; That ethic is a core part of a pluralistic society, and an obtuse refusal to accept it is no more and no less part of the cryptofascist reflex being exercised among the "fair and balanced" set today.
Because schools are a 'gun-free' zone'. Who should be armed? The people who won't show up for 10 minutes? Or the people who are on the scene?
This is fucking crazy. Seriously man, arming students to fight crime makes Tom Cruise look sane.
First: we have a few dozen deaths per year from school shootings in a nation of 300 million people. The chances of you dying in a Columbine or Virginia Tech incident are astronomically small. If you're worried about your safety, you'd be better off wearing a crash helmet and a flame proof suit when you step into a car.
Second: innocent people are mistakenly shot to death by cops on a regular basis. Cops that have gear, training, and excellent communication networks. Now, you think regular citizens will do a better job because they're "on the scene" just by putting a gun into their hands? Citizens with no gear, training, or radio networks?
Take Virginia Tech for example. Say word had gotten out that the shooter was an Asian looking kid with a blue backpack. How many Asian looking students with backpacks are going to be at a university with over 25,000 students? Anyone from a Filipino to a Cherokee risks getting shot at. And what if these students are also packing and start shooting back?
This is hardly a far fetched scenario; I think arming students is a fantastically horrible idea, but my first reaction to hearing about Seung-Hui was to hope that someone would put the SOB in the ground ASAP. And I'm not a gun nut, and I've never been to Virginia Tech.
Arming students might prevent a few crimes, but it will also end up with innocent people getting shot. Or petty criminals getting executed by get-your-gun-off wackos, like that jackass in Texas who decided to kill two burglars robbing a neighbors house.
The basic problem with this concept is that there's no legal or community-imposed consequences for Joe Tyrant forcing others to obey at gunpoint either. That's why anarchism doesn't work: an anarchist society either gets conquered/massacred or abandons anarchy to fight back as soon as the first psycho comes around, so it could only work on a world composed of perfect people.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Anarchy is juvenile, and anyone who believes in it is juvenile. There's probably more evidence to support the existence of ghosts and telepathy than there is to support the idea that anarchy works or has any chance of working.
Fire up the draft.
But that's not going to happen anytime soon.
What?
You have trouble with irony, I see.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem isn't all of the pretend stuff you just made but but the people like you who demonize everything they can't comprehend. You don't even know what a liberal, leftist, socialist, democrat, libertarian nor independent means anymore because you have demonized it so much that you hate it and create these aboritions of crap that doesn't happen.
When i went to school, the people you so demonize were the least of the problems. It was all the snobs, stuck up and rich people who felt they deserved to own everything who ruined it for those that may have to struggle and work a little bit more to get where they want to be. It was those students who were borne into a dynasty who mainly go to school as a right of passage to do what their family does best - tear down others that they want to demonize.
I can't believe a school would hire someone with so much hatred as yourself.
I went from 1976-1979. We could say anything about anything to anybody. You can't smoke on campus, we could smoke in the classroom! Well, except for printmaking class, what with all the explosive vapors, but we could smoke anywhere else. If you lit up a joint they'd have asked you (politely) to put it out.
I went to SIU-E, we had the Mississippi River Festival, with top name rock, jazz, country, and classical shows nightly, outdoors. It was close enough to our on-campus apartment that you could hear the music standing on the balcony! I seldom actually went in the concert; that would have cost three bucks and you couldn't take alcohol in (although drugs were ok). There were always mountains of abandoned beer outside the gate (since alcohol was forbidden) so we'd sit outside the fence and drink beer and smoke pot and listen to the concerts.
There were no "hate speech" laws. The first amendment had yet to be repealed.
There were no incurable STDs. Girls would come up and ask YOU "wanna fuck?" as often as "wanna smoke a doob?"!
You would go to a party, and your professors would be there smoking dope with you. Now you kids might as well be going to Git Mo U.
I guess I picked a good year to be born (1952)!
Please don't take this as a flame, but you kids are gutless pansies. Your generation needs to grow a pair and burn some campuses down, riot, run roughshod, regain what we had that you never knew. Your corporate masters have your leash on tight and you should incinerate a few corporate HQs while you're at it.
Students of the US, revolt now, or hold a funeral for your dead rights. Where are the campus protests? Is every on eof you beef waiting for the slaughter? If I was in college now I'd be ashamed of my generation.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
YES. Very useful training for working in the real world.
There are many pointy headed bosses in the world.
You may become one of them.....
Seems to me that the prevention stage is intended to limit the radicalization of opposing groups, not the elimination of the opposing groups. Sure, you can say that this is a 1st step towards that, but then I'll throw Gun control up in your faces. It's the 2nd amendment, but most here have no problems infringing upon that right.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
A lot of other posters have a lot of good and accurate reasons for so doing. Next time do your research before spouting off on your anti-FDR right wing claptrap. Abysmally stupid people like you are what's brought the country down this abysmally ugly road. If you want to do something good for America, please shut the fuck up.
Put down the mirror, please, and step away from the debate. You're obviously not ready to converse without resort to ad hominem arguments or strawmen.
Thanks for playing!
I went to Georgia Tech, and we had free speech zones while I was there - and while I'm not necessarily a fan of them, I can see the necessity, especially since the group that used them the most was some kind of right wing christian hate group, who would constantly parade around with giant signs that said 'God Hates Fags', and have some speaker on a bullhorn spouting nonsense.
I can understand people not wanting that kind of protest everywhere, it was pretty disruptive.
America already denies human rights but people still care about free speech? Anyways, here in germany free speech means that you cannot be prosecuted for anything you say, *UNLESS* it goes against our constitution. Which includes human rights, so any form of racism is forbidden, and a democratic goverment, and so on. We do have our own problems with that from time to time, like a wannabe-nazi party which we cannot shut down because they dont openly attack the constitution. The even get govermental support, like any political party (because we want fair elections), even though they are always on the edge of being banned. This might sound a bit perverted, but i think it is a great system because it sets very clear rules. There is simply no way around our constition, so this slow decline of personal freedom that happens in america is impossible here. But as we had to learn this lesson from our history, maybe the americans have to make their own experiences first ...
They were leading chants of it at the May Day rallies last year. And they were DEFINITELY local La Raza and MEChA leaders doing it from the stage.
Umm...Am I reading slashdot?
Ahh...I know...it's still pretty early and the usual crowd is still asleep. I guess your post will be modded down to troll by the afternoon.
But until then, Hear Hear!
I read the article and I agree. I think it is a good idea to do all those things.
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
I'm sure the left- (and right-) wing feminists would not object to such a rule. Though some gay rights activists may
If I wanted to just learn from the professor in a classroom, then why don't we just simply call it High School v.2?
Yes, I do just want to learn from the professor. That's why I pay enormous amounts of money to be there. The pay off is that after a graduate I hope someone will pay me enormous amounts of money to work for them.
I don't give a shit about campus radicals, their causes, the bitching and moaning. If they block my class, they are stealing from me. I should be able to charge them a pro-rated amount for every minute of class that is missed due to their infantile actions.
Best thing that could happen is that these "activists" have their tuition or scholarships forfeited for disrupting and DENYING other students what they paid for. And don't even think of saying it's just an inconvenience. If I went to your home and stole just a little bit of your money or vandalized just some parts of it in the name of saving the whales you'd think that is OK?
I paid to be there DAMMIT and they have no right what-so-ever to prevent me from receiving what I paid for.
Your post is complete batshit insanity, thank you for titling it appropriately.
Well, if today's trustafarians are stupid enough to do what the Kent State protesters did, it's only a matter of time:
The dispersal process began late in the morning with a police official, riding in a Guard Jeep, approaching the students to read them an order to disperse or face arrest. The protesters pelted the Jeep with rocks, forcing it to retreat. One Guardsman was injured in the attack.
Just before noon, the Guard returned and again ordered the crowd to disperse. When they refused, the Guard used tear gas. Because of wind, the tear gas had little effect in dispersing the crowd, and some began a second rock attack with chants of "Pigs off campus!" The students threw the tear gas canisters back at the National Guardsmen. The only protection the soldiers had were their steel helmets. They had no body armor or face shields, although they had put on gas masks upon first using tear gas.
So says Wikipedia. Pelting armed men with rocks (let alone police, guardsmen, law enforcement in general) is begging for a Darwin Award. The only shame is that some of the students who were hit by the guards return fire were innocent bystanders.
"If you say "You can say anything you want, but you can't say it where people can hear you" then that's not really freedom of speech."
Yeah, that's exactly wrong.
If you can say anything you want, that's freedom of speech.
The government has no right or responsibility to make sure you get heard, and YOU have no right to be heard, only to speak.
So, having demonstrated your inability to grasp the nuances of this discussion, fuck off now.
Because while you're perfectly within your rights to say what you like, I'm within mine to ignore yor moron ass because your points fail totally and your argument is moronic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
From Wikepedia
Nope. There sure are a lot of you who do fit that descrption though...
Caveat Utilitor
...that the only thing the current bunch of thugs learned from their Nixon days was how to do better on the coverup. I believe I was mistaken; they also seem to be getting better at trying to limit dissent.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Slashdot has a number of readers who hoard mod points and then mark "flamebait", "offtopic", "overrated" for anything they don't agree with.
The more political the discussion, the more likely they'll show up - especially if you disagree with people who are rabid lefties. Nothing irritates a lefty more than someone disagreeing with them - after all, it's not "diversity" if anyone disagrees with the lefties.
The existence of the Bill of Rights created the impression in people that if the government isn't explicitly banned from doing something, the government can do it.
Both ideas have merits. If there were no Bill of Rights, people would run totally roughshod over rights. At the same time, people lost sight of the need for explicit permission in Constitution for government activity.
I believe the final blow was FDR's court packing scheme. The Supreme Court kept ruling New Deal initiatives unconstitutional but backed down some after FDR's threat.
So, according to the explicit permission view, everything from Social Security to the Department of Education would go away. Unless a bunch of amendments were passed. That isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Fascinating. The generation that sprouted angry mobs from colleges all over the US during the 60's are making sure no other generation has that opportunity. Go Baby Boom generation! As usual your biggest concern is YOU no matter the cost. IMHO history should remember them as the most selfish and worthless PoFS generation in human history. Anything good coming out of their existence was pure accident.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
socialist organizations
Stop it, you're killing me!
As for influence, yeah, those unions sure do carry a lot of clout these days!
Pathetic.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I enjoyed the first part of this article until I began to think of why someone would write it. The whole idea is to get an angry reaction. Once I realized that I was able to pick it apart a bit. Some of the information is very informative however some is simply misleading. Such as
"ICE, of course, has done its part to keep the homeland security campus purified of those not born in the homeland. The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate."
I feel very sorry for colleges letting ILLEGAL immigrants not make it into college. Maybe if the ILLEGAL immigrants went to college the world would be fluffy. I am sorry the ILLEGAL immigrants get deported when they are found, and the state does not say ohh its ok, you are breaking a law but your going to college so its all better now.
"The record so far is impressive: DHS has doled out 439 federal fellowships and scholarships since 2003, providing full tuition to students who fit "within the homeland security research enterprise."
First 439 scholarships is not impressive, what in the world is going on, I would expect it to be 10000 scholorships in 5 years, that would be adequate for government. If a toilet seat costs $50,000 in the whitehouse I don't see why we can't have less toilet seats and more graduates.
Two hundred twenty-seven schools now offer degree or certificate programs in "homeland security," a curriculum that encompasses more than 1,800 courses.
First are these military schools or private schools? Humm I can't imigine why at all a goverment school might have a certificate in homeland security? Wierd how that works. Second the 1,800 courses number is just a made up number. I'm assuming the writer took the amount of schools times how many classes it takes to graduate with a degree and there our 1,800 courses comes from. This is a fun way to scew statistics, a good example to. Make a big number and people go ohh my word! thats big! its a big number! ack, government + big numbers + toilet seats + the presidents hind end - education = EVIL!. -Mal
But that's part of the point of free speech: I don't HAVE to like you, and I don't HAVE to include you; indeed, if I wish to express a sentiment that you are subhuman, this is my right. With free speech, YOU can do the same, if you wish.
And so long as we aren't exhorting others to *do actual harm*, whatever we say should be protected free speech, NO MATTER HOW REPUGNANT. Claiming that you are harmed by words is specious.
But what's happening today is that someone who says something repugnant (by whatever are the current standards of political correctness) is immediately decried as an Evil Racist or the like -- while blithely ignoring the fact that FREE SPEECH is what lets YOU label this person an Evil Racist in the first place.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That sounded like a bullshit claim. I've shot .22lr and even it could go through drywall.
;-)
Maybe he's thinking a 5.56mm compressed air pellet gun or something.
You left out that the Democratic party was formed around a group of conservatives who did not want a change to the status quo...ie, slavery and states rights. The Republican Party of the 1860s was very liberal, fighting for the rights of all people, poor, colored, etc. They were in favor of federal control and felt that the government should help the common man.
What you left out was that the two parties essentially switched place in the 40s and 50s. The Democrats began sliding toward the left, becoming more liberal. This caused a groundswell of conservatives to bolt from the party, forming the Dixiecrats. These people began to fill the ranks of the Republicans as that party drifted to the right. The result was that by the 1980s, the Republican Party was the party of limited federal government (states rights) and business before the common man (slavery?). Democrats took up the torch of liberalism (change...being liberal is about introducing change into the system!!!!!!) and pushed for more social reforms which increased the government.
Something strange is happening now...its the switch all over again, except that people aren't really seeing it. The Neo-Cons are essentially the extreme right heading out on their own again. The Republican party had attracted a large number of middle to lower class people based on the platform of religion and guns (two areas that hold great sway for them) while the Democrats have begun to attract more "conservative" types who want less government and a balanced budget!!! This is a switch happening before our eyes. The real question then become which party will become which. I think that this is why the candidates that are running are so diverse. There is no one overriding issue like there was last time (civil rights) to really divide the parties.
The point is that the current administration is the Dixiecrats, they will support big business is that business treats them with the honor befitting the ruling class, the plantation owners if you will, and they will gladly tell the masses that they are really looking out for them.
Case in point: In the 8 years in office, has Bush done anything to lessen gun control? All they have done is let a bill sunset...no successful attempts to allow more lax laws. How about religion? They talk about it all the time, but when congress and the president were of the same party, they didn't radically change everything and require prayer in schools, 10 commandments everywhere etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not with everybody else. I'm just trying to figure out where my vote will go and it doesn't look pretty right now.
Pro-gun, socially conscience, and against intrusive governments....Huh?
that is the most offensive thing I've read all day. thousands of people starved to death or died in the depression. every program the government started under FDR involved people WORKing to earn some money because the capitalist asses had no job on offer. So people had work, because FDR made it available. Try learning some fucking history instead of being fed right-wing fascist ideology all fucking day you god damned moron.
That's why they fear it so much. Now that the generation that came up in the 1960's is in power, they want to make damn sure that a different group of radicals and dissidents doesn't come along and agitate for change the way they did. Nobody wants to let go of the reigns of power once they have them in hand. If ever you wanted proof that power corrupts - this should be it.
Yes, you're right, because obviously communists are more intelligent and better educated than non-communists. That's why the universities are "full of commies", right? First off, it's usually just a few departments in the university that *may* have a far left wing bend to them. I don't think most universities even come close to being "hotbeds of communism." Secondly, you're completely neglecting the fact that most university educated people don't go on to become professional academics, but rather go on to better paying and higher prestige positions in government or private industry. So, in a way, you could say that these 'commie' professors you're talking about are just societies left overs who couldn't find anywhere else to go. I would hardly hold up such people as role models if I were you.
Now go back and view the individual post breakdowns and see how many downmods the trolls tried to apply to same.
Or better yet: really crack down on the supply of illegal alcohol.
"Obviously, you don't know anything"
I know every time I prove you're aliar, you rush to post something openly vulgar and sexual to avoid admitting you're a liar.
"I'm working up a good load of semen..."
I'm sure you are, this discussion with me is by far the closest you've ever been to actual sex, and I'm easily the most attractive person you've ever interacted with.
Seriously though, what you're actually doing is avoiding the issue because you're wrong and you know it. That's why the vulgarity, you have no point and no intellect to form one, so you head straight to that which you know best, lying about sex. Seeing as lying about it is as close as you've ever been, I can understand why you'd obsess over something that is beyond your ability to obtain.
That said, how pathetic are you that your oh so predictable response to being proven wrong is to go straight to vulgarity? Are you really so stupid that you can't defend your point?
Yes, actually, you are that stupid.
And I do own you.
And no, you're not getting aroused, or jizzing, or any of that other 3rd grade drivel. You're bawling because you got STFU and have no response other than the same tired, trite, unoriginal and easily dismissed pre-school sex banter.
How does it feel to know I'm your better in every way and be completely unable to do anything about it? Does it make you want to respond with more vulgarity, since you're so predictable?
Of course it does. You're my bitch, you dance when I say so. Like you will now.
I am jerking, jerking, JERKING!
chorus: jerkit man jerkit man jerkit man
Thinking of your lovely face and I'm stroking my cock, trying to get the juice out, for you.
Uhh Uhh. bada bada bruummmp! uhh uhh oh yea HOOOOOOOO
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"I am dancing, dancing, DANCING! Just like you said I would."
Fixed your post.
And more sex garbage, also just like I said you'd do. God you're even more pathetic than you pretend to be.
How does it feel to know that you're too stupid to reply, so you go straight to moronic sex posts?
How does it feel to know that every time you do that, you state unequivocally that you're inferior to me in every way?
How does it feel to know I outsmart you, out think you, and out debate you, and you run to sex EVERY TIME knowing you can't win?
How does it feel knowing you're a waste of space that no one will miss when you invariably kill yourself for being a loser?
"Thinking of your lovely face and I'm stroking my cock, trying to get the juice out, for you."
Sorry, I think you have me confused with your mom.
Owned you again. It's easy.
Also like your mom.
God damn it's fun making you do exactly what I want, like you will now.
I love that I hold your strings and you're too stupid to realize I've played you.
Keep "jacking off" little fella, all it does is prove that you know your argument failed.
So, now I'd like you to reply again, I enjoy watching you admit you're a moron.
What? You think I don't enjoy being your bitch? I'm your slut, DADDY!
And I love how you play me. It's real nice on the underside of my cock.
For the cumshot, I'm rolling onto my back, with my ass in the air and my feet over my head. I can give myself my own facial that way, and imagine it's you showing me who's the boss. Ummmmmmmm.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Nice that you found time to admit that all the things I've said about you are true.
Perhaps if you spent less time pretending you're engaging in sex as a way to avoid admitting you got destroyed by me, you'd actually HAVE some real sex.
As it is, you're still dancing for me, and you can't stop.
You'll always reply, because you're life is that empty and meaningless.
Prove me right. Reply again.
If I thought you were worth two shits, I'd argue with you. Instead...
You're right DADDY! I love it when your wife shoves her huge cock into my ass! I can feel it, unlike when you fuck me.
Oh yea, I'm jerking off thinking of you, and I'm eating the cum. Why waste a tissue?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"Prove me right. Reply again"
Told you.
"If I thought you were worth two shits, I'd argue with you. Instead..."
NO, you wouldn't liar. You never do. You immediately go to sexual nonsense as soon as you have to "argue". And it's funny that you think you made a point here, while being too stupid to realize you are arguing with me, you're just losing.
And being my bitch.
I just came in my own mouth!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Keep dancing bitch.
I haven't given you permission to stop yet.
The only question here is "are you a moron?" I'm a moron, that is known. So, that cannot be the question. But, is someone who argues with a moron themselves a moron? I'm sure you can answer that.
Oopsie! I just spit the cum in my mouth right into your asshole.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!