Under FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), the University of Delaware president has canceled mandatory “treatment” sessions for dorm residents, which pressured students to discuss their sexual, racial, class and gender identities and acknowledge that all whites are oppressors. Especially middle-class white male heterosexuals. (See Brainwashing in Delaware.)
The initial response to FIRE from the vp of student life apparently didn’t persuade anyone that UD is all about critical thinking.
On Chronicle of Higher Education, a UD staffer and an RA spoke out:
I am so happy that FIRE blew open this case. I work in the student affairs office and the place went crazy when the letter from FIRE arrived. The truth is that they created a well intended program, but crossed the line in many ways. Yes until this week the program was mandatory and they have temporarily suspended the mandatory nature of it, but once the attention goes away especially with Parents Weekend arriving they want to look good. Boy can they lie.
— Marie Oct 31, 10:09 PM
I have been an RA for the past two years and have not been comfortable with this program. It has gotten out of hand and demanding of students. Yesterday I was approached to be an advocate of the program. Several of my RA friends have been asked to be available for talking with the press. When I declined I was taken aside and told that my future as an RA was in jeopardy as was future a student. I decided to stand-up for myself. I read the university response to FIRE and they seem to want to divert the attention away from the programs flaws and talk about how FIRE make U Del. students look. Well it was U Del. students that had the backbone and insight to bring this issue up to FIRE. Go Hens! FIRE believes in us.
— Bill Nov 1, 05:59 AM
Via Critical Mass.
Say Anything posts a comment from a former RA, who calls the program “belligerent” about “re-educating students into accepting university beliefs.”
Update: Colossus of Rhodey has lots of links, including a Wilmington News-Journal story on “uneasy” students, another quoting a former student, black and Muslim, who supports diversity training and an editorial saying the university abused its power.
That is very good news. It is not often that the forces of PC give in without a battle. However, given the egregious nature of this program it was impossible for the president of the university to defend it. Even so, without the opposition of FIRE, the University of Delaware would not have abandoned their reeducation program.
The fight is likely not over… those responsible for the program are atill there, and will likely reintroduce the program in some way, shape, or form.
What is odd is that the campus student newspaper nor any of the Delaware media reported on the story. The Philadelphia media covered it but not the Delaware local newspapers.
The speed with which this got shut down once outed seems to jibe with the “oh, crap, we’re caught” mode, rather than a general sense that some parts need to be modified, followed by a shutdown just to save trouble.
If anybody in the admin had been in any doubt, we’d have seen more energetic, if fallacious, defenses.
Nope. They knew what they were doing, they liked what they were doing, they knew they were screwed once the word got out.
There is no defense for this. And even UDel knew that.
superdestroyer: The local media has indeed covered it. Not well, mind you, but the last few days in the Wilmington News Journal there have been articles. I’ve been using ‘em for my own blog commentary on the matter (being that I’m a DE resident and UD grad — ‘87 and ‘01).
Today’s WNJ article features a black Muslim former UD student who laments the dismantling of the program.
On the face of it, these totalitarian fascists do seem to respond to negative publicity and purport to change course. The power of blogs? A case in point is the attempt by the Seattle Public Schools to institutionalize far-left ideology (See my blog post: http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2006/05/febrile-in-seattle.html ) But I doubt these responses to negative publicity are a result of a new-found appreciation for freedom of conscience. No, it’s a tactical move. The totalitarian impulses and urges are still in place. Vigilance is advised.
If history’s a guide then this should result in some number of other, similar programs being rebranded to appear less offensive. Similar to the phenomenon of affirmative action programs morphing into “top 4% of all high school graduates” programs when AA advocates lose at the polls.
Fortunately though, in schools where the left-wing grip on internal political power is weaker the programs will just be terminated.
I wonder how many other schools are attempting to impose Orwellian Groupthink on their incoming freshmen? Read below to find out about my freshman daughter at a Florida State University—she is entering Miami U. in January and can’t wait to escape the agitprop she is force-fed.
The origins of “political correctness†harken back to the early days of the USSR when Lenin instituted a program to direct the Soviet republics’ citizens to “correct political thinking.†This led to purges, forced confessions [which the RA one-on-one with the students eeriely reminds one of], and all the insane totalitarian how-to-do agendas that Arthur Koestler brilliantly exposed in “Darkness at Noon,†a book unfortunately blackballed as students are force-fed essays in English class on “cosmopolitanism†by Kwame Appiah. I know because my daughter has been subjected to a dialogue by an ESL Cuban TA at her state university who keeps sending her submissions on “cosmopolitanism†and “little loyalties” by an author named Nathan who wrote AnyU back for redaction until my daughter regurgitates the party line.
Mind you—-this is ENGLISH WRITING CLASS. On the other hand, her International Political Economics professer, a man of some erudition despite his liberal tendencies, actually engages in dialogue and discourse with her!
So the leftist agitpreppies are using English writing classes and dormitory RAs to infect the students with Leninist principles.
I wonder whether FIRE has some less direct method of putting pressure on schools to drop the political correctness indoctrination? Some way to organize alumni or lobby legislators or inform local/state media of the abuses and how to best uncover them, contact sympathetic student organizations?
Check out ‘Free speech and democratic citizenship,’ posted Nov. 1 on normblog.typepad.com. Norman Geras, the blogger, is emeritus professor of politics at England’s Manchester University, a declared Marxist and pro-Israel small-D democrat, and he doesn’t like Delaware’s program any more than the commenters here do.