Tuesday, November 10, 2015

MIZZOU IS A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME

boblonsberry.com ^ | 11/10/15 | Bob Lonsberry 

Everything changed on American college campuses yesterday. A chill wind blew through every president and chancellor’s office.

A reign of terror commenced.

With the announcement that the chancellor and president of the University of Missouri system had been forced out of office, a new national paradigm of collegiate power was established. Its impact on an already tottering system of higher education is uncertain but frightening.

What’s the background: Black students, fueled by the professional protesting at Ferguson, felt slighted. They cited an incident in which the student-body president claimed he was called a racial slur, a swastika was drawn in excrement on the side of a building, and the unsatisfying reaction of the college president when black activists surrounded and detained him and his car during a homecoming parade.

Protesting became constant, a squatters camp was established, and the escalating rhetoric of racial anger grew louder and louder.

And school officials didn’t kiss the angry black ass just the way it wanted to be kissed.

So the president’s neck became the target.

And yesterday it was offered up.

And a lesson was learned.

Namely, that if you shout long enough and angrily enough, you can get anything you want. Further, the precedent is set that college presidents can be toppled for non-specific accusations of racial insensitivity – with racial insensitivity determined by the subjective rantings of a small number of anarchist activists.

The very nature of minority activism in America today is escalating dissatisfaction. No matter what is changed, offered or delivered, there is only a growing demand for more. The grievance is based less in reality and more in greed and bigotry. Blood in the water doesn’t satisfy a shark, it only makes it hungrier.

And the victory yesterday over the University of Missouri system will only inspire in activists today a lust for similar victories on other campuses. The trail has been blazed, and many will now follow it.

The new standard for campus racial activism will include a hammer that hangs constantly over the head of the president. Should a college leader not seem zealous enough in placating the complaints of minority activists, things could go Mizzou.

Every college administrator in America must have realized that yesterday.

As a consequence, minority activists have gained an ever larger role in determining the direction of American higher education. Saying yes buys a college president a season of peace; saying no could cost her her job.

The “progressive” nature of activism requires a constant upping of the ante, a pushing of the bar higher and higher. There is a competition among activists as each situation or person feels the need to outdo and surpass the other. If one marches, they all march.

And yesterday any number of activists on any number of college campuses set their sights on the president’s scalp. That has become the new gold standard of activist power.

In light of that, it should be noted that the basic posture of almost all minority activists on college campuses is discontent. It is hard to find a campus on which some committee does not have some grievance against some policy or percentage. A search of college newspapers and websites shows story after story about minority students complaining of one slight or another. There are a lot of people feeling disrespected.

And they mostly complain that the administration isn’t taking them seriously enough.

Which is what happened at the University of Missouri – and could easily happen at dozens of American colleges.

In a way, the colleges asked for it.

A haven of discontent with society for a generation, with hatred sometimes the unstated theme of a syllabus, it is only natural that colleges should be burned by the spark they flamed and fanned. When you teach people to be angry, you can’t be surprised when they become angry at you.

But somewhere the basic mission of education is jeopardized. When colleges become expounders of a narrow and angry anarchy, when the tail of racial and political activism wags the dog of genuine education, the system collapses and the society is damaged.

We need colleges, we just don’t need them to be like this.

We don’t need groups of shouting activists holding the reins of power.

But yesterday, that is exactly what they were handed.

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