Isabella Chow was the only UC Berkeley student senator not to vote “yes” on a resolution condemning Trump’s proposal to change Title IX so that gender is the same as biological sex, according to Campus Reform.
She didn’t vote against the resolution, but simply abstained from voting, saying “I cannot vote for this bill without compromising my values and my responsibility to the community that elected me to represent them. As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right and true.”
Now Isabella said she opposed discrimination and harassment and, provided that’s true, this seems to be a case of actions speak louder than words because think about it: what exactly is the proposed Title IX change going to do? Cut down bureaucracy. The government typically only keeps track of people’s immutable characteristics or things that can be objectively determined, like race, age, income, etc. Biological sex is one of those; you’re either a man or a woman. Asking the government to account for self-determined gender identity is kind of like asking it to account for personality: it’s messy and open to interpretation.
But back to Berkeley. Isabella’s own party, the Student Action group at UC Berkeley, wasn’t too pleased with the student’s choice to sit that vote out. It said “as a party, we are committed to ensuring that the rights and dignity of the Queer and Trans community on this campus are guaranteed. As a party, we are committed to establishing and defending access to reproductive health services….That is why we, as a party have resolved to part ways with ASUC Senator Isabella Chow.”
There have been calls for Isabella to resign from student government. The student senator refused and tried to submit an op-ed to the campus paper to explain her point of view. But The Daily Californian said her piece “utilized rhetoric that is homophobic and transphobic by the Daily Cal’s standards.” When Isabella asked how she could modify it, the paper said that “the submission as a whole doesn’t meet the newspaper’s editorial standards.”
You know, standards like providing a platform only to progressive orthodoxy.
Remember the good old days of Easter egg hunting? It personally always felt like a Halloween knock off to me because there was less candy and more effort required to get the candy. But at least, at least there weren’t really any downsides, though I don’t know if I can say the same about an Easter egg hunt at the University of California, Berkeley.
Parents apparently had to sign a waiver warning of risks spanning from “minor injuries, such as scratches, bruises and sprains” to “major injuries such as eye injury or loss of sight, joint or back injuries, heart attacks, and concussions,” all the way to “catastrophic injuries including paralysis and death,” according to Reason.
OK, so let’s take this piece by piece. Scratches and bruises, fair enough — I can see how you might get those. Loss of sight…I don’t know, I know candy has side effects like sugar spikes and what not but that sounds maybe a little extreme. A concussion. I’m not sure if two five-year-olds can generate the speed necessary for a head-on collision that results in a loss of consciousness. And as for paralysis and death, well maybe if there are trees on the Easter Egg course and maybeif one of those trees gets hit lightning and, God forbid, falls on a little kid. But one Berkeley business professor who brought his kids to the egg hunt didn’t even mention trees.
Mr. Robert Strand said “Goodness gracious…on[c]e you signed, you got the tickets and then you walk over to these three different roped-off areas for kids of different ages and literally it was a flat grass surface where they would just place the eggs.”
Apparently the waiting line to hand in the waivers was up to 30 minutes long. Now look, I understand the desire to avoid lawsuits but this kind of unhinged paranoia is just absurd. And to tie back into issues of indoctrination and political violence we usually cover here on Campus Unmasked, this obsessive mindset is exactly what animates the lectures from professors who think Trump is a monster and the activists who vandalize signs supporting a conservative judge.
This need to dominate the discourse, this need to squelch dissent, whether it’s in the classroom, on social media, or what have you, it’s not healthy, fam.
A conservative — who, disclaimer, works for the parent company of my other organization, Campus Reform — got punched in the face at UC Berkeley by someone upset that he was recruiting for Turning Point USA.
The Turning Point group was recruiting with signs that apparently said “hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims” and “this is MAGA country” and police haven’t yet identified the assailant.
Yuvi Panda, who works in UC Berkeley’s data science education program, took to Twitter, saying “OH MY GOD THE MAGA PEOPLE ON UC BERKELEY CAMPUS YESTERDAY GOT PUNCHED IN THE FACE BY SOMEONE THIS MAKES ME FEEL EMOTIONALLY SO MUCH BETTER. Thank you, random stranger for not letting it go unchallenged. Hope you aren’t in too much trouble. Fuck you, Turning Point USA.”
What does it say about you that it makes you feel better seeing someone get punched, just because you dislike their worldview? Remember that Turning Point is literally a group that supports limited government and free markets. That’s not exactly the most edgy ideology.
But to be fair to UC Berkeley, the school spokesman said they “sent a message to the entire campus community with a picture of the suspect and a strong request that those with information come forward to report what they know. We very much want to identify the suspects and bring those responsible to justice.”
Remember, though, that Berkeley is the same place where former Diablo Valley College ethics professor Eric Clanton smacked a Trump supporter on the head with a bike lock and got all felony charges dropped. As Tyrion Lannister says, “if you want justice, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
But Antifa isn’t the only form of left-wing lunacy at UC Berkeley. One professor wants the school to stop using student evaluations because white male professors score higher, according to Campus Reform.
UC Berkeley history professor Brian DeLay tweeted “Over the next few weeks, students will get the chance to evaluate their professors and TAs. They’re going to get it wrong. They’ll be harder on women and people of color than on white men. Tenured white male faculty, in particular, should help their students understand this.”
Brian pointed to a study purporting to show that students rate white male professors higher than professors of other races and genders. The professor says “I’ve often gotten valuable feedback in student evals, feedback that has improved my teaching. We have a lot to learn from our students, obviously. But given the well-documented shortcomings of [student evaluations of teaching], we shouldn’t be using them for hiring, tenure, or promotion decisions.”
Now there are a few concerns here. One: correlation is not causation and students could be rating white male professors higher for factors unrelated to their genitalia and melanin level. Two: it kind of undermines your whole racism/sexism thesis when male professors are getting higher ratings despite there being more females than males enrolled in higher education. And three: aren’t professors supposed to be the ones preventing the wrongthink with things like implicit bias tests? It’s like, “hey, let’s stop student evaluations that prove to us what a bad job we’re doing at doing a bad job!”
Here’s the thing: students are the most important stakeholders at a school. Professors will be more inclined to ram left-wing talking points down students’ throats if they know these same students can’t hold them accountable. Plus, if students suffer from implicit bias, wouldn’t it stand to reason that faculty members would, too? Seems like they aren’t thinking things through at Berkeley.
