The Campus “Hate Crime” that Wasn’t a Hate Crime

From Townhall.com:

On Monday, Townhall’s news editor, Katie Pavlich, went to the University of Delaware to give a speech about the Second Amendment. University of Delaware’s student group–Students for the Second Amendment–had invited Pavlich to speak about the issue, which was open to the public at the cost of three dollars. Yet, Pavlich criticized the Black Lives Matter (BLM) for their atrocious “pigs in a blanket” chant - and the overall movement - as one that promotes violence against police officers. Well, surprise; that didn’t bode over well with some folks on the left and a protest was organized during her visit to U-Del.

There was a heavy security presence at the event, and it ended without any major incidents. Yet, reports of nooses being hung in some trees on campus one day after Pavlich gave her speech got everyone freaking out about hate crimes. There was only one problem: these weren’t nooses, thus no hate crime:

University of Delaware police say what was originally believed to be “nooses” hanging from a tree on campus were actually leftover lantern decorations.

Officials say a hate crime investigation ended when it was determined the items were paper lantern decorations leftover from an event that was held on campus on September 16.

The items that were left in the tree were part of a decoration from a paper lantern that was used during an event held on The Green that was a UD-sanctioned event,” University of Delaware Police Chief Patrick Ogden said Wednesday morning.

It was determined that the paper lantern decorations were removed from the tree, but the strings were never taken down, leading to them being mistaken for nooses.

OK, so it was all over then, right?

Well . . . no.

The issue should have ended right then and there, but nope–not a chance. We need to meet and discuss this non-hate crime for reasons that escape logic. On Wednesday, the acting president of the University of Delaware, Nancy Targett, encouraged students to meet her at The Green for a dialogue about what happened.

Can we at least agree that we should be happy that these aren’t nooses? Could we come to that consensus? Of course, if such an incident had occurred, it does deserve the wrath of disgust and anger over what is a blatantly racist act. This incident didn’t carry any of that–and having some un-serious discussion about events that are the figments of some people’s imagination isn’t helping anyone, it’s enabling one’s disconnect with reality.

Campus bureaucrats can’t resist pandering to racial (and gender and sexual) grievance mongers, and it doesn’t seem to matter at all if the people claiming a grievance are entirely out to lunch.

Typically, these folks need to be scolded rather than pandered to. In this case, Targett needs to be asking “why did you say that wire hangers were nooses when they didn’t look at all like that.  What were you thinking?”

This reminds us of what Marquette diversity official William Welburn told a small group of students who objected to the removal of a mural honoring cop killer and terrorist Assata Shakur.

“I believe very strongly that we are not going to have processes like this again, especially when it comes to issues of how this campus handles diversity and inclusion,” Welburn said. “Whatever we do moving forward, we have to think about women, women of color, African-American women specifically because of this incident. We have to think about the damage.”

What Welburn should have asked the students was “Did you really think it was a good idea to honor a terrorist and a cop killer? Why in the world did you want that?”

But campus bureaucrats can’t possibly imagine that the grievance mongers might need to be confronted, challenged to defend their ideas, and learn that lots of people out in the real world don’t agree with them.

The coddling of the activists is simply a failure to educate.

Nooses? Here are the “nooses.” What sort of people could see a hate crime here?

Politically Correct Indoctrination: Residence Life at the University of Delaware

Via Modern Commentaries, and Michelle Malkin, a hair-raising account of coercive indoctrination at the University of Delaware.

The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.

“The University of Delaware’s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional.”

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

According to the program’s materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain “competencies” that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of “citizenship.” These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,” “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,” and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.”

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

In the Office of Residence Life’s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as “treatments.”

We would like to say that nothing like this could happen at Marquette. But unfortunately, this is all too similar to what has happened here.

We just blogged about propagandistic programs put on by the Office of Student Development, the University Ministry and the student government.

Then there was the Stalinist boot camp that Freshman Orientation staff had to endure.

And the “Tunnel of Oppression” staged by Residence Life and Intercultural Programs (both parts of the Office of Student Development).

The administrative bloat that afflicts most universities plays a large role in this. Way too many bureaucrats have to have “programs” to justify their jobs, and politically correct indoctrination is what comes most naturally.