College Journalist Bigots Pounded on Twitter

We blogged about this: the editorial board of a trendy, tony, expensive leftist college demanded that speakers they don’t like be forbidden to speak, and that “hostility” should greet those who express unapproved views.

But outside a campus newsroom, where a larger group of Americans gets a voice (as on Twitter), views like this don’t go over well.

You’ll have to click on the blank white space in the embedded Tweet below to see responses (or click here).

Editorial: "Our Wellesley community will not stand for hate speech, and will call it out when possible": https://t.co/vJBHC658jB

— The Wellesley News (@Wellesley_News) April 14, 2017

Update

We left a critical comment in response to the original Wellesley News editorial. We said (first quoting the article, and then responding):

>>> Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so. <<<

I see. People who disagree with your leftist, politically correct intolerant views need to be punished. So ironic that people who talk about “hate speech” always turn out to be the real haters.

After four days, our comment has not been approved. And neither has any other.

So we wrote the editor of the Wellesley News, and asked the following:

Why aren’t you approving comments on your editorial saying that politically incorrect views should be censored at your college?

Is it that you got really pounded, and are trying to conceal that fact?

The e-mail quickly bounced with the following error message:

<editor thewellesleynews.com=""> :
Remote host 181.224.137.93 does not like recipient editor@thewellesleynews.com Remote host said: 550-Sorry. Mailbox full. You tried to send mail to editor@thewellesleynews.com 550-Unfortunately the mail box of this user is full. Try to contact the owner.

It is fair enough that the editors of the Wellesley News are getting pounded, although we hope most of the messages are reasonably civil (as the responses on Twitter [see above] are). But if the little leftist snowflakes are learning that the issue of free speech looks different outside their narrow campus environment, that’s a lesson they need to learn.

College Journalist Bigots: The Wellesley News

One interesting thing about the rise of political correctness on college campuses is that student journalists, people whom one might suppose would support free speech, have overwhelmingly lined up in favor of suppressing opinions the left does not like.

A particularly egregious example appears in the Wellesley News, the student paper of that very expensive, very elitist northeastern institution.

Many members of our community, including students, alumnae and faculty, have criticized the Wellesley community for becoming an environment where free speech is not allowed or is a violated right. Many outside sources have painted us as a bunch of hot house flowers who cannot exist in the real world. However, we fundamentally disagree with that characterization, and we disagree with the idea that free speech is infringed upon at Wellesley. Rather, our Wellesley community will not stand for hate speech, and will call it out when possible.

Of course, what speech is “hate speech” is a matter of opinion. In a free society, anybody has a right to their opinion as to what is “hate speech.” We think the speech of Black Lives Matter is hate speech. But in a free society, nobody has the right to decide that certain opinions need to be shut up.

Wellesley students are generally correct in their attempts to differentiate what is viable discourse from what is just hate speech. Wellesley is certainly not a place for racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia or any other type of discriminatory speech. Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech. The founding fathers put free speech in the Constitution as a way to protect the disenfranchised and to protect individual citizens from the power of the government. The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed, not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable, no matter how hateful and damaging.

Translation: people we agree with should be protected by the Constitution, but not people we disagree with.

This being said, the tone surrounding the current discourse is becoming increasingly hostile. Wellesley College is an institution whose aim is to educate. Students who come to Wellesley hail from a variety of diverse backgrounds. With this diversity comes previously-held biases that are in part the products of home environments. Wellesley forces us to both recognize and grow from these beliefs, as is the mark of a good college education.

So the “home environment” is bad, but the Wellesley environment is good. And just who decided that? People completely assimilated into the Wellesley environment.

However, as students, it is important to recognize that this process does not occur without bumps along the way. It is inevitable that there will be moments in this growth process where mistakes will happen and controversial statements will be said. However, we argue that these questionable claims should be mitigated by education as opposed to personal attacks.

Sounds nice, but just read on.

We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society.

Yes, it’s “society” that is prejudiced, and Wellesley is a model of enlightenment.

Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley in a productive way. It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control. While it is expected that these lessons will be difficult and often personal, holding difficult conversations for the sake of educating is very different from shaming on the basis of ignorance.

Note the utter contempt for anybody whose opinions might differ from those of these student journalists.

This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.

Yes, we have the right to shame and bully people who don’t agree with us.

If people continue to support racist politicians or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others, then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions.

Yes, we have to punish people who try to bring “racist” speakers to campus. And we leftists get to decide who is a racist.

It is important to note that our preference for education over beration regards students who may have not been given the chance to learn. Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so. Paid professional lecturers and politicians are among those who should know better.

We at The Wellesley News, are not interested in any type of tone policing. The emotional labor required to educate people is immense and is additional weight that is put on those who are already forced to defend their human rights. There is no denying that problematic opinions need to be addressed in order to stop Wellesley from becoming a place where hate speech and casual discrimination is okay. However, as a community we need to make an effort to have this dialogue in a constructive and educational way in order to build our community up. Talk-back, protest videos and personal correspondences are also ways to have a constructive dialogue. Let us first bridge the gap between students in our community before we resort to personal attacks. Our student body is not only smart, it is also kind. Let us demonstrate that through productive dialogue.

But “productive dialogue” has to exclude anything that we consider “racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia or any other type of discriminatory speech.” That is, pretty much any political opinion we disagree with, we intend to try to shut that up.

That people like this will soon be dominating the mainstream media is a scary prospect indeed.

Fake News: Marquette Tribune Recycles Discredited Rumor about Scott Walker and Marquette

From a story on Marquette Wire, on a speech by Governor Scott Walker on the Marquette campus:

Walker was once a student activist himself, and attended Marquette University for a time in the late 80s. There are disagreements as to why the future governor left the university shy of graduation, but one thing is clear: his time here was spent climbing the ranks of MUSG and building a political platform for himself.

What the story refers to is a claim, by leftists, that Walker was expelled from Marquette because of fraud in a student government election.

This, in fact, was debunked long ago. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel investigated the claims, made by partisan Democrats, that Walker “either dropped out or was forced out” of Marquette because of some scandal. Marquette, citing student privacy laws, refused to comment without Walker’s permission. Walker gave that permission to Marquette, and the paper reported:

“Gov. Scott Walker was a student at Marquette from fall of 1986 until spring 1990 and was a senior in good standing when he voluntarily withdrew from Marquette,” the university said in a statement.

That means that no conduct issues, academic or otherwise, blocked Walker from continuing in school at the time of his departure, MU spokesman Brian Dorrington told us in early December 2013.

When we asked Dorrington whether any conduct issues were on Walker’s earlier school record, he said Walker would have to permit release of that information. Walker did so in response to our request.

“Governor Walker was in good standing each term while he was enrolled at Marquette University and when he left Marquette University,” Associate Vice Provost Anne Deahl said in a letter. “Governor Walker was not expelled or suspended from the university at any time.”

Thus the implication that Walker might have been expelled or forced out of Marquette because of some scandal is bogus, and the claim was debunked back in 2013.

The Marquette Tribune has thus engaged in irresponsible journalism, probably as the result of a liberal bias.

Will they issue a correction? We shall see. The default position of the mainstream media (the folks Tribune staff are in training to join) is to stonewall.

Marquette Tribune: No Right of Conscience for Pharmacists

An editorial in the April 14 Tribune addresses the issue of laws that force pharmacists to supply “emergency contraception.” A recent court ruling in Illinois found that such laws violate the rights of pharmacists. But the Tribune did not agree.

Plan B, commonly known as the morning-after pill, is an emergency contraceptive that provides women with the option to prevent unwanted pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex. It is readily available to women in pharmacies across the country.

According to NBC Chicago, an Illinois judge recently sided with two pharmacists claiming that prescribing Plan B violates the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which protects health care providers from being forced to perform duties that conflict with their beliefs.

However, this freedom violates the rights of consumers who rely on pharmacies to provide them with emergency contraceptives if needed. Plan B, unlike the abortion pill, prevents ovulation or fertilization, not implantation, which would terminate a pregnancy.

The six-year-old state law requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions without making moral judgments is now abolished, granting pharmacies the right to choose whether to stock them or not.

Regardless of religious beliefs, pharmacists have an obligation to their clients to fill their prescriptions.

Simply put, it is not the pharmacist’s choice. Imposing personal moral judgments on another individual’s life choices in the medical field is unprofessional and intrusive.

Pharmacists should not be granted so much power. The power of choice should belong to the individual making the decision. Consumers should not have the burden of worrying whether their prescription will be honored due to someone else’s beliefs.

Encouragingly, the state attorney general’s office plans to file an appeal in the near future. But, the moral argument still stands. An individual’s own beliefs cannot be imposed on others, especially concerning one’s medical choices. Personal beliefs must be kept in the background in professional settings, not interfering with decisions of others.[emphasis added]

That’s a stunning statement.

It’s typical of liberals that they preen and prance and talk about the evil of imposing one’s moral beliefs on others, all the while imposing their moral beliefs on others!

When liberals talk about “choice,” they are always talking about people making choices they think are acceptable. Like the choice to have irresponsible sex with no consequences or the choice to have an abortion. Liberals don’t believe people should have a choice to own a gun, or drive an SUV.

The Tribune doesn’t believe medical personnel should have any choice to avoid dispensing medicines they think are immoral. The editorial doesn’t address this issue, but the exact same logic would say that doctors and nurses should be forced to perform abortions, or drummed out of the medical profession.

If the morning after pill is legal, women have a right to buy it from any willing seller. They don’t have the right to coerce an unwilling seller to provide it.

Consider, for example, Supreme Court decision Lawrence v Texas. It ruled that people have a Constitutional right to have homosexual sex. That’s bad constitutional law (although we wouldn’t vote, in a state legislature, to outlaw any consensual sexual activity among consenting adults). But suppose you can’t find a willing partner? You have to do without. It would be a very odd idea that your right to have homosexual sex means that somebody has to be coerced into having sex with you.

One expects young journalists to be liberals. Conservatives tend to self-select out of the profession, knowing that it will be hostile territory.

But a supposed Catholic university should have at least some fledgling journalists with a bit of respect for Catholic moral teaching, and tolerance for people whose consciences are formed by that Catholic teaching.

But Marquette isn’t really a Catholic university. Given the choice of siding with pharmacists whose consciences are formed by Catholic teaching, or young women who have engaged in slutty sexual behavior, the Tribune has sided with the latter.

Irony of Ironies

Via Stupidist.com, the ultimate irony.

A columnist for a student newspaper assigned to write a piece on plagiarism, plagarized it.

Why Won’t Catholic Outreach Talk to the Media?

When The Warrior did a quite favorable feature on Catholic student organizations on the Marquette campus, one organization was conspicuously missing: Catholic Outreach.

Since Catholic Outreach is a project of the University Ministry, this was a rather glaring omission.

But the reason for the omission was explained in a column by Mike Rudzinski, Warrior editor.

It seems we weren’t the only student-run organization asking the question [who are we?]. This issue, we focus on Catholic leaders on campus who ask the tough questions: “who are you Marquette, and what is your true mission?” Go Roman Week sought out the soul of Marquette as a Catholic, Jesuit institution.

The answer to our paper’s own identity search came while investigating this week’s feature story. Catholic Outreach, a university sponsored Catholic organization, wanted to be included in the story but was unable to do so without university approval. University Ministry needed to review our questions and approve the article before it could be published.

This contradicts our journalistic code of ethics. As students, as Americans, as human beings we all have the right to speak freely without censorship. As an independent publication and voice of the student body, The Warrior refuses to be censored, and so should you.

We quickly established that what Rudzinski says about attempted censorship is accurate -- or at least, it correctly reflects what The Warrior was told when it tried to do an interview.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, we yesterday phoned Ann Mulgrew, the University Ministry staffer who oversees Catholic Outreach. She said she was unaware of this situation, and would get back to us.

We also attempted to reach three officers of the organization: Riad el-Azem, Aaron Morey and Rebecca Baehrend.

Two of the three failed to respond to our multiple e-mail and voice mail messages. The third talked briefly, giving evasive and apparently disingenuous answers before terminating the interview.

We called Ann Mulgrew back today, and she was extremely huffy, objecting to the fact that we had tried to reach the officers of the group. Some, she said, had contacted her to “complain.” Apparently, in her view, journalists should accept the “authoritative” view of events that she hands out, and not try to develop independent sources.

In other words, she inadvertently reinforced the impression that the whole Warrior affair gave.

She then refused to talk further. It seemed to us that she was using a contrived grievance to evade answering embarrassing questions about University Ministry policies.

This raises some serious questions about the University Ministry, and about the bureaucratic culture there.

• Why are they so fearful about letting students speak? They, after all, constituted Catholic Outreach and chose the officers. Why don’t they trust their own student officers?
• Why are the student officers so fearful of the University Ministry? Why do they consent to be censored?
• Why the mania on the part of University Ministry to control information? They claim to want to prevent “inaccurate” information from getting out. But in the minds of bureaucrats obsessed with control, “inaccurate” is likely to equal “information that reflects badly on us.”

The truth, of course, is that if you let people speak freely, some will say inaccurate things, some will say dumb things and some things will be misreported.

Apparently in a couple of past instances, Catholic Outreach officers have gone a bit too far and said things that the University Ministry thought to be out of line.

That’s the risk anybody operating in the public arena takes. Why does the University Ministry think different rules apply to them?

The University Ministry is, at least nominally, a Christian operation. So it ought to be known for speaking truthfully and speaking boldly. Instead, it seems to be a haven for risk-averse bureaucrats.

And the ethos has infected the students in the organization’s orbit.

New Blog Roll Entry: Taking a Sharp Right

From UWM student and frequent writer for Frontpage Milwaukee Rebecca Kontowicz, a blog called Taking a Sharp Right.

Two recent posts of great interest:

• An account of how homosexual city workers in Oakland, California, got official city recognition and used the city e-mail system to promote “National Coming Out Day,” among other things. When a Christian group of city employees put up fliers opposing “all views which seek to redefine the natural family and marriage” a lesbian worker claimed this was discriminatory, and that she felt “excluded” and “targeted.” A court sided with the lesbian, although the Supreme Court may take this up, and hopefully overturn the decision. It is apparently alright to target and exclude Christians, but don’t you dare say anything that homosexuals object to!
  
  What we have here, quite simply, is an attempt by liberals to define as “discriminatory” the expression of any political opinion of which they disapprove.
  
  
• A new Federal policy calls for the removal of religious books from Federal prisons. Not all books, but the number available is now strictly limited. The policy is apparently aimed at radical Islamic texts that might incite violence on the part of inmates. Kontowicz approves of the policy, which we think is very shortsighted.

This is clearly a blog to watch.