Marquette’s Bizarre “Harassment” Training Getting National Attention

We broke the story here, and it’s been picked up by some national websites:  a Marquette online “training” program that supposedly warms employees about harassing behavior, but in fact tells them not to say anything that anybody, no matter how hypersensitive, might object to.

This was picked up by Campus Reform.

Another article appeared on the website Minding the Campus.

The latter article was noted and discussed at National Review Online.

Some of the comments on Minding the Campus are choice.  One commenter, for example notes that the course cautions people “Be alert to nonverbal clues indicating a colleague might not welcome certain conduct.”  He or she then notes:

At the same time, according to California, it is supposedly impossible for me to tell whether my sexual partner is okay with what we are doing based on nonverbal cues.

Okay, academia.

Another poster notes that one of the “harassing” images is a screen saver of a man who is shirtless, but fully clothed from the waist down.  He responds:

What if I have a crucifix with a shirtless Jesus? Is that offensive at Jesuit Marquette, too? Better investigate the chapel on campus!

This kind of ridicule is fully deserved by Marquette. But given the insular culture of the Marquette bureaucracy — and especially the part that specializes in “diversity” and “inclusion” — the University can be expected to blow this off and continue to do such silly things.

[Update]

Also noticing this fiasco is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is the premier organization in the nation protecting free expression on college campuses.