Two days ago I posted a story about students at Atlanta’s Emory University being offended to the point of rage and “unsafeness” at seeing pro-Trump slogans chalked on campus. This was based on reports from The New York Post, the Washington Post, and Emory’s own student newspaper, The Wheel.
According to Snopes.com, some of the elements of the story were false. The most prominent one that they highlight, which I did not report, was that the students requested or were offered counseling. Snopes also says the demonstration was more a counter-Trump political demonstration than the students’ cry of pain from having seen the dreaded T-word.
Nevertheless, there has been no retraction of one student’s demand that he felt “unsafe,” or of the University President’s claim that he was trying to ensure a “safe community,” or of other direct quotes that a student “didn’t deserve to feel afraid” at his school” or “feared for their lives.” Further, there has been no retraction of the statement by the President of Emory’s Young Democrats:
“A lot of people felt targeted by that …
“It’s the latest in a series of events that made students feel unwelcome. What Emory is, and what it represents — this is a pretty elite, southern institution… it can be very easy for students to feel not welcome.”
By and large, Snopes is making its big noise about the “counseling” request, which may well be false. But that was only a very small part of the story, most of which Snopes completely ignores.
As always, I’ll try to issue corrections when they’re appropriate. At this point, I have no idea what needs to be corrected about what I wrote.
What I do know is that those who claim that the Snopes correction totally invalidates the view that many students behave as Special Snowflakes are engaged in wishful thinking. Nor are all of us ignorant of how college students behave, for I see this kind of behavior on my own campus on a regular basis.
Finally, it’s ridiculous to dismiss those who fear the increasing identity politics of American campuses as mere “assholes.” As Christopher Hitchens once said, when someone starts calling you names, you know that you’ve won, for they don’t have anything left.
In fact, these ludicrous student behaviors—often so bizarre that they resemble parodies from The Onion—have been amply reported at many universities, and these reports have not been retracted. (I’m not of course claiming that every UK or American college student is afflicted with Special Snowflake Syndrome [SSS], only that the behavior is spreading and is worrisome.)
You’ve seen the videos and read the students’ demands from Yale, Missouri, the University of Oklahoma, Brandeis, Western Washington University, MIT, the University of Arizona, and so on and so on and so on. Judge for yourself. It’s self-serving and obtuse to use a single instance of misreporting to dismiss the metastasizing of SSS and its fatal effects on free discourse. And its reprehensible to call those who worry about this trend “assholes.”
