Want to Tell a Joke at College? Don’t Even Think About It. [VIDEO]

Want to Tell a Joke at College? Don’t Even Think About It. [VIDEO]

Want to Tell a Joke at College? Don’t Even Think About It. [VIDEO]

There was a time when college campuses were seen as the ultimate bastions of free speech — places populated by young adults away from home for the first time, testing the limits of thought and propriety.

Those days are gone.

Today campus “bias teams” are ready to pounce like Donald Sutherland in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on the usually unwitting victims of political correctness.

invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978

You can’t even tell a joke anymore on many college and university campuses.

Any remark, joke, or gesture that just might be interpreted as “offensive” could be reported to campus thought police groups commonly known as the “Bias Response Team,” or perhaps the “Bias Assessment and Response Team,” or “Bias Incidence and Response Team.” Whatever they’re called, they’re frighteningly Orwellian in their desire to quash the speech of anyone they deem to have made “offensive” remarks or comments. Even professors and staff are not exempt; at the University of California at Santa Cruz a student claimed that “a faculty member made inappropriate jokes of grading like a ‘Nazi’ and continually addressed the class as ‘guys.’”

The University of Colorado, for example, asks people to report “offensive” comments at its website — and the “offender” doesn’t even have to be a student or affiliated with the university. Here is a screenshot of how U of C encourages reporting of these crimes against humanity.

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Click to enlarge.

The University of Oregon has a handy-dandy pdf at its website which lists a compilation of all the incidents in which some fragile crybabies reported being butthurt by a fellow student.

These Red Guard wannabes have so infected the hallowed halls of higher education that even comedians — most notably Jerry Seinfeld — are refusing to play college campuses anymore. In an interview last year, Seinfeld told a reporter, “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’” They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Seinfeld is not alone.

Thankfully, not all students are infected by the bias bug.

My son-in-law is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He and my daughter were high school sweethearts whose relationship survived the distance between their respective schools and the rigors of a service academy. Often she would share with me reports from USNA in his letters to her.

She told me that during ‘plebe summer’ her boyfriend’s roommates spared no expense in mocking his Latino background. Words like ‘wetback’ were directed at him, even though his background is not Mexican. I winced at what I thought were bad manners, but found that the remarks were merely young males bonding during what was a most challenging time in their 18-year-old lives.

He survived the lampoons of his friends, as well as Annapolis, and upon graduation that band of brothers became each other’s groomsmen at their weddings, and even godfathers to eventual children.

What would’ve been the result if the very incorrect humor exhibited by these midshipmen — not to mention the constant hazing by upperclassmen — was curtailed by a thought police brigade at Annapolis? Would they have turned out to be the tough and resilient officers that USNA produces? I think not.

Students at liberal arts colleges and universities certainly do not undergo the rigors of a service academy, nor should it be required that they do so. However, these institutions should expect their students to act like the young adults they supposedly are, and that means to stop enabling the kindergarten level crybaby and tattle-tale antics of their special snowflake students through inane groups like “Bias Report Teams.”

Written by

Kim is a pint-sized patriot who packs some big contradictions. She is a Baby Boomer who never became a hippie, an active Republican who first registered as a Democrat (okay, it was to help a sorority sister's father in his run for sheriff), and a devout Lutheran who practices yoga. Growing up in small-town Indiana, now living in the Kansas City metro, Kim is a conservative Midwestern gal whose heart is also in the Seattle area, where her eldest daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live. Kim is a working speech pathologist who left school system employment behind to subcontract to an agency, and has never looked back. She describes her conservatism as falling in the mold of Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles. Don't know what they are? Google them!

4 Comments
  • J walter says:

    I think we need to close down a few colleges.

  • Stacy0311 says:

    Different times, but my nickname at college (not a service academy but Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M) derived from my habit of addressing classmates. I would’ve been labeled sexist.
    I was tagged as “Bitch” as in “Quit being such a little bitch.”
    Still have my class shirt with that name on the back in big letters

  • GWB says:

    He and my daughter were high school sweethearts whose relationship survived the distance between their respective schools and the rigors of a service academy.

    They deserve great kudos just for achieving that. 🙂

    Students at liberal arts colleges and universities certainly do not undergo the rigors of a service academy, nor should it be required that they do so.

    It certainly would be nice if some measure of rigor was required, though! Maybe a little intellectual rigor once in a while?

    • Kim Quade says:

      I think the relationships that survived USNA were nicknamed “the 2% Club,” meaning only 2% lasted.
      They’ll be celebrating their 11th anniversary next month, and are still very devoted to each other.
      As for academic rigors — my youngest graduated from a rather elite art institute, where western philosophy was required core curriculum during the freshman year. At an art school. Wonders never cease.

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