theunitofcaring:

response to Colleges Need Speech Codes Because Their Students Are Still Children

When I was fifteen my high school banned bake sales to fight obesity. I and my friends thought this was stupid and disrespectful of high school students, who were mature enough to make healthy decisions for themselves and who benefitted from the space to make those informed choices now rather than, once we were adults, be responsible for our own groceries while having been shielded our whole lives from the temptation of a cupcake. We did some reading and found that banning bake sales did not improve student health. It was also devastating to high school student groups, who depended on bake sales for revenue. We scraped together hundreds of petition signatures, we wrote up a clumsy summary supporting our claims that it wouldn’t improve health outcomes, and we spoke to the Board of Education, who listened but didn’t change anything.

So we started holding ‘napkin sales’, in which we’d sell napkins for $1 and give away free cupcakes and donuts with purchase of a napkin. 

I learned more from our failed campaign to overturn the bake-sale ban than I learned from all of the rest of high school.

This is the first of my many objections to Eric Posner’s appalling new article  defending bans on free speech on college campuses. Why? Because students, who are emotionally still children, don’t need open and free debate - they start out knowing nothing, and they really just need to be informed by people who know better. Lest you think I’m strawmanning:

They think universities are treating students like children. And they are right. But they have also not considered that the justification for these policies may lie hidden in plain sight: that students are children. Not in terms of age, but in terms of maturity. Even in college, they must be protected like children while being prepared to be adults.

“Protected”, here, means “forbidden from voicing opinions that I deem to be hateful”. If you’re wondering how it protects anyone to face academic sanctions unless you hide or lie about your beliefs, don’t read on, the article never returns to that. It also takes a while to return to the ‘students are too immature to have rights’ argument, instead throwing out various other justifications for banning free speech and repeatedly, aggressively conflating ‘hearing opposing views’ and ‘being a victim of violence’.

Once again lest you think I’m strawmanning: 

If students want to learn biology and art history in an environment where they needn’t worry about being offended or raped, why shouldn’t they?

BECAUSE THOSE TWO THINGS ARE NOT REMOTELY EQUIVALENT AND BASICALLY NONE OF THE SAME CONSIDERATIONS APPLY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Read More