Right to decide?

[M Holmes]

JLoehr4299 at AOL.COM writes:

> In a message dated 11/18/2003 12:22:22 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
> fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK writes:
> A good story of someone standing up for their rights:
>
> http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/frederick/frederick1.html
> I thought this kind of shit only happened in Other Countries, not The Land of
> the Free!

I have something of a politically incorrect interest in political
correctness in education.  In the US, the lunatics have taken over the
asylum and they're charging fees to share the experience (attr: some
peever wag).  Some campuses have set up "free speech zones" which amount
to a bandstand where you can say what you like.  Elsewhere on campus, if
you say anything that offends anyone (particularly anyone on the left on
anything to do with gay black disabled cognitively challenged folks)
you'll be hauled up before a reeducation committee before you can say
First Amendment. Classes in "Herstory" have been scheduled where
"conservative-thinking" students have been advised not to apply. Staff
who've supported Israel have been disciplined because they offended
Palestinian-supporting students. Conservative student clubs have been
either banned, had their magazines burned on campus, or have been
prevented from inviting speakers. What Mr. O'Rourke called "the
Perpetually Indignant" are now making an academic career out of finding
things to be offended about and having the offender hauled over the
coals on pain of being expelled for refusal. It's got so bad that
Congressional Bills are now being threatened to bring about "diversity"
in education by selective appointment of conservative academics.

Schools are faring barely better.  Students are being piss tested at
random where the students and their parents are being too lax in
tackling administrations.  Students are searched without warrant (in one
case public searches to check the girls were wearing approved underwear
to a school dance). Several students who've written fiction involving
violence have been suspended. Meanwhile the adults have banned
themselves from having on school grounds, the handguns with which they
could protect their charges from threat. I know of a couple of cases in
which staff who illegally had handguns in their cars managed to prevent
massacres.

Basically it's barking over there and there are folks who'd have it the
same way over here.

FoFP