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The year 2016 will go down in history as the year that college students stopped learning, and started complaining.
One might think that after 24 months of holding rallies against Taco Tuesday, marching out of class over chalk scrawlings, and mercilessly brow beating any classmates who failed to be a ‘good ally’ and dared to vote against ‘her’ to no avail, they might change tactics and act like normal people. Call it wishful thinking.
The liberal lunacy apparently continued at Loyala University in Maryland last week when students demanded that the ‘America’ theme of a senior class party be changed because it was deemed by some to be ‘alienating, divisive, and harmful.’
An article by the Daily Caller claims the school’s Executive Vice President Susan Donovan, said:
“I encourage you to reconsider this plan in light of the legitimate concerns raised by so many,” Donovan went on to say. “We have made progress in providing a welcoming climate on campus and do we want to reverse that progress with a theme that divides us?”
Look, I think excessive displays of nationalism are about as cheesy and unnecessary as it gets. That Lee Greenwood song barely passes as music and if they got rid of the national anthem before sporting events, I probably wouldn’t bat an eye.
But college is a place for theme parties – at least it was when I was in school, I’m really not sure what kind of hijinks these safe space kids get into nowadays – and ‘America’ theme parties are pretty easy to throw together. All you need is some red, white, and blue bunting and a playlist with a bunch of songs that include the name of the country in the title, and you’re pretty much all set – hell most solo cups are either red or blue with white on the inside — mission accomplished indeed. So as an outside observer this seems more like a party planning committee looking for an easy way to throw together a student fiesta (If you’re keeping score at home that’s one count of cultural appropriation on my part) than it does a nefarious plot to make students of color feel marginalized.
Of course nothing is that simple in 2016, so we have to find something to fly into an uproar over. But it seems the outrage on the part of these concerned ‘progressives’ is far more divisive than the party itself.
If one were so inclined to look at the deeper meaning of an ‘America’ theme party — although one would have to have way too much time on their hands to do so – they might see an opportunity to celebrate the diversity and unity that makes America great. Students from any number of backgrounds could get involved in the planning and create an event that celebrates all aspects of American life – thus taking a ‘theme that divides us’ and turning it into a theme that unites us.
But there’s no way that will ever happen, at least not given the current climate on college campuses. To do so would mean dropping the act of ‘othering’ those who we disagree with on cultural, social, or political grounds. It’s something that both the left and the right engaged in with fervor over the course of the election, and in this case it seems even school administrators have become so drunk on the Kool Aid that they don’t recognize the solution sitting right in front of their faces. School officials are constantly looking for teachable moments; it appears they just ignored one.
This contributor is a Marine veteran that has served in the Middle East. Due to the sensitive nature of his current job, he has requested to remain anonymous.
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