Survival Message For College Students August 29, 2001
by: Phyllis Schlafly
Students starting college this fall need survival instructions to enable them to understand the jargon and prepare for the challenge of strange encounters. The prevailing environment on most college campuses is Political Correctness (P.C.) -- in faculty bias, course content, visiting speakers, and organizations and events funded by student fees. Here are the principal tenets of the campus dogma known as Political Correctness:
1. Everything is political. All academic subjects must be seen through the prism of gender and race oppression, including history, literature, social relationships, and even private conversation.
Most students encounter this immediately in their freshman English class. The writings of the DWEMs (Dead White European Males) have been censored out and replaced with Oppression Studies: writings by third- rate authors who whine about America's oppressive society.
2. Victimology. Every group is entitled to claim minority status as victims except white males and Christians.
3. Multiculturalism. That's a code word for the false notion that Western Civilization is bad and every other group, whether civilized or not, is superior. Multiculturalism is the only required course at all 16 SUNY (State of New York)universities.
4. Radical feminism. The entire world must be seen as one big conspiracy against women, and all men are guilty, both individually and as a group. Joking about this doctrine is not permitted; several colleges have even banned jokes.
At the University of California-Davis, law review policy is to use the female pronoun as a matter of course, except when referring to a criminal defendant, when a male pronoun is preferred. At Arizona State University, drama professor Jared Sakren was fired for producing Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew"; Shakespeare is not P.C.
5. Affirmative action. Reverse discrimination in admissions, grading, and employment for groups that proclaim their status as "victims" is not only mandatory, it is non-debatable.
6. Having sex with anybody, anytime, is OK and may not be criticized. Dating is out; "hooking up" is in. The social acceptance of pre-marital and homosexual sex and activism is non-debatable.
7. Tolerance. That's a code word meaning tolerance for Politically Correct views, but not for the Politically Incorrect. Tolerance requires conformity to P.C. views, and hundreds of colleges have speech codes.
Christianity is Politically Incorrect. In some colleges, students are not permitted to turn in papers that identify historic dates as B.C. (Before Christ) or A.D. (Anno Domini), but must use B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and B.C. (Common Era). Here is some additional advice for freshmen seeking a real education.
Don't waste your tuition dollar on worthless courses. Avoid such courses as "Sorcery and Magic" at Columbia, "Queer Theory, Queer Texts" at Dartmouth, "Lesbian and Gay Detective Fiction" at Berkeley, and "Feminist Biblical Interpretation" at Harvard.
Even elite colleges now offer courses in horror movies, rock music, witchcraft, porn studies, and subjects that focus on the trivial and the trashy or sexual politics. Such courses are not education; they are propaganda, entertainment, or behavior modification to impose the new P.C. absolutism of antagonism to religion and tradition. These courses are one reason why college tuition is so high. Students, parents and taxpayers are paying for high-priced professors to teach so many non-educational courses.
Students should avoid wasting their education dollar on women's studies courses, most of which are propaganda for radical feminist, and often lesbian, ideology and behavior. The Big Mama of women's studies is the bitter French spinster Simone de Beauvoir, author of "The Second Sex" and the famous line that "marriage is an obscene bourgeois institution."
Beware of the corruption in the English departments that teach "deconstructionism" -- the prejudice that there is no such thing as a classic and that literature means what the reader wants it to mean instead of what the author intended. Beware of the corruption in the Sociology departments that teach that marriage is a dismal prospect for all, especially for women.
Beware of the corruption in the Economics departments that teach the failed economics of socialism rather than the successful free-market economics of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. Beware of the math and science courses taught by instructors who don't speak understandable English.
Beware of freshman orientation. You might be asked to role-play what it's like to be gay, asked to publicly describe your first sexual experience, or told that if you object to coed bathrooms you need psychological counseling.
Finally, don't think you are getting a good education just because you get A's. Grade inflation is designed to make you and your parents feel good about the grossly inflated tuition price you are paying.