A CMC student embarked on a hunger strike Wednesday that quickly resulted in the resignation of Dean of Students Mary Spellman. Much like those at Missouri, CMC students have complained about both specific incidents and a general climate of alleged hostility towards minority groups.
The strike was over Spellman’s response to an email from CMC student Lisette Espinosa, which according to critics showed CMC regards itself as a place for white, upper-class students who view all others as outsiders.
Espinosa had shared an article with Spellman she had written about feeling unwelcome at the school as a low-income racial minority, and Spellman had responded by saying she was working hard to assist students “who don’t fit our CMC mold.”
Tuition at Claremont McKenna is $49,045 a year. Whether or not students there “fit the mold,” none of them are underprivileged. It is an elite institution with an endowment of $700 million, and every student on campus is a beneficiary of enormous privileges that the vast majority of Americans will never have. If there are any Claremont McKenna students who are smart but poor — so that the high tuition was a problem — they could have saved more than $35,000 a year by attending the University of California-Berkeley, where in-state students pay a paltry $13,432 annual tuition. And yet a student at Claremont was willing to stage a hunger strike because the dean awkwardly phrased an email?
What the hell has gotten into these kids? A cynic might look at the recent eruption of campus activism (and by “activism,” of course I mean petulant tantrums) and suspect that these students are just young Democrats, warming up for the 2016 presidential campaign, the same way the 2011 “Occupy Wall Street” protests were a warm-up for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Learning how to manipulate media coverage to control the political narrative is the most important skill any young Democrat ever learns at college, and inciting their fellow students to think of themselves as Oppressed Victims of Society will invariably add to Hillary Clinton’s vote total in the crucial 18-24 demographic. (“Look! Those evil right-wingers are trying to silence your voices!”) So the cynic may perceive mere partisan politics as the motive of these puerile tantrums, but is it possible that there really are larger issues involved?
“Million Student March” national organizer Keely Mullen made an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on Thursday and discussed her protest promoting free college, debt forgiveness and a $15 minimum wage for students.
When Mullen was pressed by host Neil Cavuto on how she finance this proposal, she stumbled with her response but eventually proposed a 90 percent tax on top income earners.
“Great question, I mean, you know, so — I’m not sure if you’re talking about a national level or per school?” Mullen said when initially asked.
“I live in a world and I see a system around me where there is a population that is doing nothing to contribute to the progression of society,” she added.
It is apparent that the simple question — “How are you going to pay for this?” — had never crossed Keely Mullen’s mind until Neil Cavuto asked her. To say “tax the rich” is an insufficient answer because (a) it is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the total cost of what the “Million Student March” is demanding; and (b) rich people are not just a piggy bank that can be cracked open and plundered for the benefit of whatever political movement proposes to take away their money to fund “the progression of society,” as Miss Mullen so clumsily phrased it.
Keely Mullen is majoring in political science but it would seem she doesn’t know the first damned thing about Basic Economics. Before any government can tax a dollar, you see, that dollar must first be earned by the production and exchange of goods and services in a market where consumers are the demand and producers compete to provide the supply. Wealth is the accumulation of excess income, and is deployed as capital in the marketplace as investment, where the owners of wealth — including everybody who has a 401(k) retirement plan — seek to earn dividends by owning shares in enterprises that yield profit. Whatever the rate of taxation, or whatever governments do with the revenue gained by taxation, it is the success of the market economy that produces the income and wealth that are ultimately the source of tax revenue. If taxation or other government policies hinder the growth of the market economy (for example, by disincentivizing capital investment), then government is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is the market economy that pays for everything, including the various government programs that already subsidize tuition for college students.
Is that too difficult for Keely Mullen to understand? I did not attend an elite college. I went to Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, where tuition even in 2015 is still only $8,790 a year. You could send five kids to JSU for the cost of sending one kid to Northeastern University, where political science majors don’t even understand Basic Economics, so how is it that a dumb redneck like me can explain this stuff? Perhaps it is because my professors were aware of how vastly ignorant the average student is. In contrast to posh private schools like Northeastern and Claremont McKenna, no professor at JSU ever takes it for granted that the teenager sitting in a classroom knows anything. Whereas the kids at elite campuses are treated like Special Snowflakes whose delicate sensibilities should never be offended — “Trigger warning!” — the student at Jax State doesn’t expect to be pampered and flattered by the adults who are paid to teach him the knowledge and skills necessary to earn his way in that frightening place called The Real World.
There are kids at JSU waiting tables and flipping burgers to pay their way through school, and those kids may never lead any national protest movement, but they will certainly “contribute to the progression of society.” Keely Mullen, on the other hand, is a useless parasite whose “activism” is about encouraging others to become useless parasites:
Student pursuing opportunities in community organizing and anti-racism advocacy work. My specific interests lie in the intersections of racial injustice and public education.
Oh, but Keely Mullen didn’t attend public school. The snowflake is an alumna of Chicago’s prestigious Francis W. Parker School, where annual tuition is $32,830. So this privileged parasite is now spending Daddy’s money to seek “opportunities in community organizing,” as opposed to doing anything useful in terms of providing goods and services in the market economy. If vicious brats like Keely Mullen are the future of America, we are totally and hopelessly doomed.
In an ironic development, to say the least, protesters at the University of Missouri (MU) segregated themselves by race Wednesday night, having white students leave a gathering in order to create a “black-only healing space.”
If you re-arrange it to “Only Healing Black Space” the resulting acronym is “OH BS“. Someday, after the detox, they’ll thank me.
The motor had once been electric, mounted on the beam atop two poles. It still drove the fan blade that kept Her Majesty and the People Who Mattered comfortable in the sultry summer.
The drive belt that went through the center of the wooden poles was the same old rubber friction affair, only instead of alternating current, it was motivated by a set of stationary bicycles manned discreetly by lean, gnarly men who pedaled aimlessly, as though stuck in a Sisyphean Tour de Hades.
This story lacks dialogue, for all regrets over losing the 2016 election had long since been uttered.
HRC supported the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) which voters in Houston overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box earlier this month, in large part because of concerns that the measure would have endangered girls and women by compelling “transgender” access to public restrooms and locker rooms. William Bigelow reported:
On October 5, campaign finance reports showed that the group supporting the measure, Houston Unites, had raised $1.2 million, while the group opposing it, Campaign for Houston, had raised only $275,000.
The Washington Times reported, “The ordinance, which included fines of up to $5,000 for preventing someone from using public accommodations, such as business-owned bathrooms open to the public, based on gender identity.” . .
HERO was openly supported by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton . . .
Despite a 4-to-1 money advantage, and despite the fact that Houston is a Democrat Party stronghold with a lesbian mayor, voters rejected HERO by a 61%-39% margin — a decisive defeat for the effort to “mainstream” transgenderism. The defeat of HERO was widely seen as a conservative victory. Hillary Clinton blamed “the far right” which she said created “a lot of fear, and a lot of anxiety” about “the bathroom issue . . . that was totally without merit, that there was no basis for it.”
The problem with such a claim, however, is that it is rejected by radical feminists, who believe that “the bathroom issue,” as Mrs. Clinton calls it, does have “merit.” There is a petition to “Drop the T” from LGBT:
We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men. . . .
The vilification and harassment of women and gay/lesbian individuals who openly express disagreement with the trans ideology; a simple disagreement over an issue can result in responses that range from insults (“transphobic bigot”) to threats of physical harm (often, in the case of women, rape) and even death . . .
The infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex; this is most pernicious in the case of men claiming to be transgender demanding access to bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s shelters and other such spaces reserved for women. . . .
And while we’re doing the work of calling out horrible transphobic “elders”, I present you with this, posted just a few days ago. Trying to take the “T” out of LGBT, and claiming that transwomen are actually men who are lying to get into spaces … that too is anti-trans violence that mustn’t be condoned. I ask us all to end this silence. If you support spaces where people like [name redacted] teach, ask yourself, is this really in line with your values?
I am proud to work for the organization that has authored the Equality Act. Because we will NEVER be equal unless we bring everyone along with us.
Any attempt to rationally discuss issues that gays/lesbians/bisexuals are concerned about regarding the trans movement is met with unparalleled vitriol, harassment, death threats, and silencing—demanding that the person commenting contrary to the trans narrative be banned from forums, for example.
I know that lesbians have for several years been the object of attack from trans activists for their (rightful) desire to enjoy exclusively lesbian and women-only events such as the now shuttered Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, in the wake of the Stonewall brouhaha as well as the recent proliferation of stories about effeminate boys and masculine girls being directed by their parents and health professionals into the trans identity. So many gays and lesbians were “sissies” and “tomboys” as kids, I think they see themselves in these children and are concerned about them being directed down an inaccurate path.
Read the whole thing. This is a serious issue involving real human beings and, as with so many issues today, certain “progressives” (evidently including Hillary Clinton) want to exercise a totalitarian authority to tell us what to think and control what we are allowed to say. It’s like the climate change “consensus” — a clique of influential insiders have anointed themselves Official Experts, decided what the Correct Opinion is, and the rest of us are just supposed to nod our heads in mute assent. How dare we question the Official Experts?
The Competitive Victimhood Derby is ultimately a zero-sum game, you see. There can only be one winner, and the transgender claim to equal victimhood is rejected by radical feminists, who view this as an attempt to usurp their own categorical claim.
It’s like a traffic jam on the Crazyville Road, where two politicized groups of wackjobs are compelled by the implicit logic of their arguments to fight each other for supremacy.
Over the past 22 months, however, I have come to appreciate the seriousness of this issue in the post-Obergefell era. The “vitriol, harassment [and] death threats” directed against Cathy Brennan and other radical feminists who refuse to back away from a scientific fact — i.e., female is a matter of biology, involving XX chromosomes — should alarm everyone who cares about truth. The ideology behind the transgender movement demands that we pretend that Bruce Jenner deserves recognition as “Woman of the Year.” Lunatics want to compel us to cooperate with their delusions, and we are condemned as hateful bigots if we refuse to play along with their make-believe game. So the “Woman of the Year” is 66 years old and has a penis, and you’re not even allowed to call him “Bruce” or mention that he is a grandfather.
Having examined this issue in depth (see “The Queering of Feminism: Why Does ‘Equality’ Require Promoting Perversion?”), I cannot be accused of ignorance in regard to these arguments, and I am indifferent to accusations of “hate.” One can scarcely have any opinion at all nowadays without being accused of “hate,” and the fact that these accusations are flung around so haphazardly should tell us that the Official Experts are afraid of honest debate. The question we should be asking is this: Who authorized these people to tell us what to think?
David was first introduced to the Craft at the age of 11 by his stepmother, and then on a deeper more intentional level by a childhood friend at the age of 12. That same year, he began training with a friend’s family coven and initiated a year later.
That’s how you become a “human rights” advocate, I guess.
Young people are under assault from reactionary forces and most of their grievances are not about imagined slights, but about very serious problems they are facing, on and off campus. . . .
[T]he revolt against Wolfe didn’t come out of nowhere. The accusations that Wolfe was indifferent to a handful of racist incidents on campus are only the tip of the iceberg. It appears that, for months now, the campus has been the staging ground for all manner of conservative attacks on the wellbeing of young people not just on campus, but across the state.
Marcotte asserts that “young people — particularly young women and people of color” are being “victimized” by, inter alia, the university’s decision (later reversed) to end health-insurance subsidies for graduate students and the cancellation of the university’s contracts with Planned Parenthood:
The school was listening to and willing to interfere with the health care and educational access the students had, to pander to the whims of a bunch of delusional culture warriors.
While all this is happening, black students on campus are reporting a series of racist incidents. Campus protests were invigorated by the protests against police brutality in nearby Ferguson, but it also appears that all this tumult is invigorating racists, too, who are getting increasingly confrontational and provocative.
Is this true? Are there “racists” at the University of Missouri who are “increasingly confrontational and provocative”? Does Amanda Marcotte, or anyone else, have a list of these racists? Can she name even one of them? And what about this “series of racist incidents” Marcotte describes — has anyone been prosecuted? Are police investigating? Have the federal Department of Education or the Department of Justice raised any concerns about the racist climate on the Columbia, Mo., campus that Marcotte blames on “reactionary forces”? Where is the evidence for Marcotte’s claim that “tumult is invigorating racists” at the University of Missouri? Sean Davis at the Federalist is deeply skeptical:
A reported incident of vandalism at Mizzou sparked university-wide protests, a boycott by the school’s 4-5 football team, and eventually the resignation of the university’s president and chancellor.
There’s only one problem: no evidence of the alleged incident, in which a poop swastika on the wall of a dormitory restroom was reported, has ever been made publicly available. Did this incident occur as reported, or was it an immaculate defecation that formed the foundation of an unimaginable deception?
According to Billy Donley, the president of Mizzou’s Residence Halls Association (RHA), the poop swastika was reported at approximately 2:00 a.m. on October 24, 2015.
“On Saturday, October 24th, at 2:00am an individual came into one of the restrooms in Gateway Hall and drew a swastika on the wall with their own feces,” Donley wrote in a letter several days after the alleged incident. “This event happened while many students, including myself, were already asleep.”
Later in his letter, Donley noted that he only found out about the alleged vandalism incident “via a flyer posted on the walls” of the dorm.
This allegation — smeared feces used to make Nazi graffiti in a dorm bathroom at 2 a.m. — is certainly remarkable and by “remarkable,” of course, I mean, preposterous. Sean Davis was unable to find anyone at the University of Missouri who even claims to have seen this fecal graffiti, and what kind of evidence do we have that it actually happened?
When asked if there was any photographic evidence of the alleged incident, one [university] staffer replied, “Not to my knowledge.” . . .
Multiple activists on Twitter pointed to this photo as proof that the incident occurred as reported, but a Google search for the same image shows that it has been floating around the Internet for nearly a year. A reddit thread from November of 2014 appears to contain the earliest publication of the photo in question, meaning that it most certainly does not constitute proof of the incident alleged to have occurred at Mizzou on October 24, 2015.
Maj. Brian Weimer, the public information officer for the Mizzou police department, told The Federalist that he also did not personally see the poop swastika that was reported to police. When asked if anyone in the police department personally witnessed the swastika, Maj. Weimer clammed up and referred all questions about the incident to the university’s custodian of public records.
This is not a trivial matter. As Sean Davis points out, campus “hate” incidents are frequently revealed to be hoaxes, and if such a hoax helped incite protests that led to the resignation of university officials, taxpayers in Missouri have a right to know why the university police investigation was inadequate. The dubious circumstances surrounding this incident suggest that University of Missouri students may have succumbed to paranoia, believing they are “under assault from reactionary forces” that exist mainly in their own fervid imaginations.
