The Rolling Stone rape hoax, CNN’s stalking and threatening of a Reddit memester, and Washington Post’s wanton use of “far-right” but almost never “far-left.” Mainstream media bias is everywhere. Is there a similar trend for college papers?
Caleb Scargall, a student at St. Francis Xavier University, was a senior reporter for The Xaverian Weekly campus paper, but quit when his paper not only removed but also replaced his piece questioning gender studies and the ever-expanding number of gender identities with a piece entitled “gender identity: not a debate.”
Scargall’s original unpublished story, which he shared with Campus Unmasked, aimed to address gender identity “intellectually without political connotations.”
In the piece, the student asked “is discovering a new unique gender like discovering a new element? If the solution is to add that person’s personal identity to the list of genders then theoretically there is no limit to the amount of genders that can be “realized’ or invented. And if there is no limit, and people can be anything from an indeterminate and possibly infinite amount of genders, then the concept of gender itself means nothing.”
Scargall noted that the modern conception of gender sounded like a Freudian diagnosis and said that he has “yet to receive a rebuttal other than ‘educate yourself,’ which is the equivalent to ‘I know the answers, but I won’t tell you.'”
The unnamed editor whose piece replaced Scargall’s claims that “gender identity has nothing to do with your anatomy,” which suggests that individuals with penises are equally as likely as those with vaginas to feel masculine or feminine. The editor notes that “though it is true that a biology professor and a sociology professor would have very different takes on the topic, it is not really a debate in my opinion.”
She tells people who don’t want to say the “they” gender pronoun to “grow up.” But it’s not just “they,” it’s “aer,” “per,” “vis,” “xe,” “xir,” “hir”…where does it end?
“I have never worked for an institution with such a lack of integrity,” Scargall told Campus Unmasked. “The newspaper is supposed to be the beacon of free speech on campus but it has turned into a liberal propaganda machine. I was the only relatively conservative writer at the newspaper. I could not sit there and take that amount of disrespect so I quit.”
The student’s case is reminiscent to that of Andy Ngo, a Portland State University student who got fired from his student newspaper after tweeting out a video of a Muslim student confessing his religion murdered nonbelievers. You don’t have to lie, you don’t even have to be inflammatory, folks. The truth itself and even just questioning progressive orthodoxy is dangerous these days.
The Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences is happening in Vancouver this week and lucky attendees got to hear from University of British Columbia professor Joy Butler, who told CTV News that school dodgeball “is tantamount to legalized bullying.”
Joy’s study argues that “the hidden curriculum of dodgeball reinforces the five faces of oppression defined by [another scholar] as marginalization, powerlessness, and helplessness of those perceived as weaker individuals through the exercise of violence and dominance by those who are considered more powerful.”
Hmmm…I don’t know if you can call dodgeball violent, I don’t think many kiddos play with baseballs or anything too damaging. As for the dominance part, yeah, it IS an exercise in dominance. And it’s important we teach our kids that many things in life — dodgeball, getting a job, buying a house, etc. — does involve competition, does involve hierarchy, things despised by cultural Marxists or blokes like Joy’s co-author and fellow professor David Burns, who probably didn’t do too well on the court, if I had to speculate.
It’s likely the case with a lot of social justice “scholarship” that you have “academics” who are projecting their personal struggles out onto society at large.
You might be surprised to learn that “Becky,” an insult used to describe a basic white woman, has trickled into academia. Earlier this month, the Metro Toronto Convention Center held a symposium called “Critical Becky Studies: Critical Explorations of Gender, Race, and the Pedagogies of Whiteness,” reported Campus Reform.
What’s next? Critical cracker studies? Holistic honky analysis? Would this be acceptable for any other race? It also kind of poisons the well just a bit. Imagine purporting to give an objective presentation on Trump’s White House and the title is “Inside America’s Fascist Regime.”
Anyways, the description for “Critical Becky Studies” says “In the tradition of speculative fiction, parable, and counterstorytelling” — don’t think that’s a word — “within critical race theory, this session aims to problematize the characterization of ‘Becky,’ a term specific to white women who engage whiteness, often in gendered ways.”
If this Becky conference were about Starbucks or putting quotes from The Office in dating profiles, I’d be like OK, maybe there’s something to this. But it’s just more “intersectional” bollocks with a slightly more menacing angle. You see, progressives use their language very purposefully. If they’re talking about trans people, they make sure to get the pronouns right. Illegals? It’s undocumented immigrant or even just immigrant. Whatever’s the most respectful, normalizing term possible. But no such courtesy, in fact, just the opposite, for white women — who used to be the vanguard of feminism, by the way. Who will these rabid ideologues turn on next?
One of the biggest problems we have here on American campuses is that students often have to chip in to support groups about which they couldn’t care less. What usually happens then is the university or student government gets a pot worth six or even seven figures and they distribute those funds to various student groups. But that money often goes overwhelmingly to funding left-wing organizations, probably partly due to most student activists being left-wing and partly due to a biased student government or college administration.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s new policy looked to fix that by only requiring students to pay fees for stuff pertaining to academics, health, counseling, recreation, and athletics, with individual colleges — so not the government — individual colleges getting to decide if students cover the other fees. But the Canadian University Press, a nonprofit owned by dozens of Canadian student newspapers, was less than thrilled, saying:
“Most of our member papers rely on student fees to fund their work. Without access to this funding, Ontario student publications will not be able to operate. The jobs they provide to students will be gone.”
The jobs they provide students…I don’t know about you, but at my school, the University of Virginia, we didn’t get paid to do student journalism. Working for the student paper was just like any other extracurricular activity.
Anyway, the Canadian University Press continues, saying student journalists’ “important role of holding governing bodies, whether student unions or university administrations, to account will go unfulfilled.” The group also calls Ford’s policy a direct assault on freedom of the press and free speech.
OK so first of all, how can students expect you to provide truthful coverage of student government or administrators when it’s the student government that decides how much funding you get and the administrators that sometimes have to give their stamp of approval? Seems like a conflict of interest to me. You can still publish stuff if you’re not getting paid, so this isn’t an infringement on your free speech, and freedom of the press also doesn’t entitle you to other students’ money, sorry.
