In one-on-one sessions with an RA and mandatory dorm meetings, University of Delaware students are questioned about their social, sexual and racial identities and told to conform to a “university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism,” complains the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training†session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.â€
The goal is teach students “competencies” essential for citizenship.
These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,†“Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,†and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.â€
Students are supposed to demonstrate that they’ve become “change agents” by “displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an ‘oppressed’ social group, and taking action by advocating for a ’sustainable world’.â€
Some dissenters complain of brainwashing, reports Torch. One student, already resentful of being labeled an oppressor because he’s a white middle-class male, writes:
As a Christian, I believe that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and is a sin against God. As such, I cannot accept it as a legitimate lifestyle. While I accept homosexuals as people, I do not accept their choice as right, and subsequently I do not think that homosexual couples should be given marital rights. I accept that others do not hold the same views as me. But it is wrong that under the Residence Life curriculum and school mandated curriculum that I should made to feel guilty for my views. While I am open to discussion with others with differing views, it is not the school’s right to try to convince me to embrace the values that Residence Life has chosen. Essentially, if I do not change my views, I will be labeled by my RA as not embracing diversity, and not accepting of certain groups, and thus my RA will try all the harder to change me. This is not the school’s job, or right.
The program, called a “treatment” by the university, is mandatory for all students who live in a dorm.
In a letter to the university president, FIRE writes:
Somehow, the University of Delaware seems terrifyingly unaware that a state-sponsored institution of higher education in the United States does not have the legal right to engage in a program of systematic thought reform. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of conscience — the right to keep our innermost thoughts free from governmental intrusion. It also protects the right to be free from compelled speech.
Surveys show two-thirds of students say they’re more open to people of other races, religions, sexualities, etc. since going through the “treatment.” Of course, most people expand their horizons in college as they meet a mix of people. Students weren’t asked if they found the “treatment” intrusive, annoying, a waste of time and/or a violation of their rights.
Surveys show two-thirds of students say they’re more open to people of other races, religions, sexualities, etc. since going through the “treatment.â€
That only proves that brainwashing really works. I thought one was supposed to get an education in college not a re-education. The thought police have taken over the University of Delaware. This is beyond outrageous.
This is beyond outrageous.
Agreed. While I feel knowledgeable about extremist groups, I had previously been unaware of CWS (Confronting White Supremacy). To find a public college using materials from this group is quite alarming.
Everything about this program is incredibly disturbing – who the Nathan Hale gave the University of Delaware the right to dictate what a student is to believe. Higher education should educate, not indoctrinate, despite what some individuals with social sciences Ph.D’s may think.
Very disturbing. I’ve been reading a lot lately about the brainwashing at state-funded universities, so I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s mainly shocking that only one student is complaining.
There’s an underground movie called Indoctrinate U. that shows the same sort of twisted “re-education†courses that leftist regimes in Vietnam inflicted on South Vietnamese after 1975. Internment for free-thinkers has been a leftist idiosyncrasy since Lenin in the early twenties. Straight out of Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.†Down the road, perhaps we can hope for another Solzhenitsyn? Hopefully, not Anne Applebaum’s Gulag in an American setting!
My daughter is taking a course at FAU, a state university in Florida, where she is educated in political thinking in, of all courses, an ENGLISH class! [She is being taught “cosmopolitanism†by a Cuban female who is ESL and cannot spell or employ correct English grammar. Her spelling of the word “idea†on the blackboard came out as “ide†and her only qualification for the TA job seems to be her marriage to an FAU political perfesser. ]
The Thought Police are beginning to assert their mad conformist agendas in the universities—where they can punish recalcitrants and hold-outs with bad grades.
Absolutely appalling. I think a nice big Section 1983 federal civil rights suit might be the only tool blunt enough to wake these thugs up to the fact that what they’re doing is not OK. Since the potential damages would ultimately come out of the taxpayers’ pocket, that’d be a major incentive for the state legislature to do the job of oversight that the very existence of this nonsense evinces its long absence from.
The University of Delaware is being bald-faced about it, and the door decoration thing is unusually juvenile, but this isn’t really much different from the way orientation has been at least since I entered in 1991. (My college was private, but friends at state schools reported programs that weren’t much different.) We were told by a parade of gruesomely bouncy grad students and faculty that it’s okay to say yes to sex, that all kinds of sexuality are equally valid, and that stereotyping of any kind was a mortal sin (unless, of course, you’re defining white people as privileged or men as potential rapists). As Joanne says, I don’t think any of it had much of its intended effect. Teenagers have a sixth sense about when they’re being patronized. Living alongside a lot of different types of people and having bull sessions with them at 3 a.m. was what changed minds, to the extent that they were changed.
I imagine quite a few students come out of this vividly aware of “the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression” — systems like the one they’ve just been introduced to. How successful they will be in dismantling it remains to be seen.
> I imagine quite a few students come out of this vividly aware of “the benefits of dismantling systems of oppressionâ€
Har! Can you say “unintended consequences”?
Of course, it is an institution of learning. Perhaps this is a sophisticated new learning strategy: experiential learning?
Rather then just reading “The Gulag Archipelago”, enjoy a pale, gray imitation and discover that in some cases a sample is surfeit.
As David Beito once wrote about a similar “program,”
Forty years ago, state-supported bullies in China publicly humiliated dissenters by having them wear signs around their necks expressing shame for their “incorrect thoughts.” Although China remained Communist, the government eventually apologized to the victims.
I went to UD and had planned on sending my soon-to-be-college aged daughter there. Now …
How is it that university administrators — people whose very lives, or at least their careers, are devoted to managing institutions of HIGHER LEARNING — can end up thinking that this “treatment” is a good idea? Can you imagine what the committee meeting must have been like when they approved this? “Hey, here’s an idea — let’s set up our own definitions of acceptable social behavior and repeatedly run students through a program until they agree with us. That’ll make us that much better of a school! And let’s call it a “treatment” while we’re at it.” And everybody around the table nodded enthusiastically.
This makes me want to aim my academic career into administration just so I can try to prevent more “treatments” like this from taking hold.
While the U of Delaware thinks they are fostering diversity and understanding with this brainwashing, they will in fact find that this policy is CREATING racial tension and discontent. White students are bound to become resentful and suspicious of an institution that calls them racist (which is the same as labeling them morally inferior). A true racist is impossible to change. Their beliefs are too well ingrained. However, it is easy to make a racist, and I believe that the U of Delaware is well on their way to making many of them.
Also, how does the university expect minority students to conduct cordial relations with white students when the school is telling them that all of their white classmates are racists? This policy, I believe, will create an unofficial segregation on Delaware campuses, where white and minority students avoid each other out of discomfort on both sides.
I love Big Brother/Sister.