Resident Assistants at Western Carolina University are subjected to mandatory racial and gender sensitivity training with slides instructing students to avoid certain phrases that could potentially be deemed offensive – but at what cost?
Have the progressive left gone too far? Resident assistants at North Carolina’s Western Carolina University are sounding the alarm bells in what they decry as school policy going overboard in an attempt to appease gender and race bias.
A report via FoxNews has told of resident assistants at the college expressing discontent with new courses that instruct students not to use certain ‘offensive’ phrases, including the term ‘melting pot,’ traditionally used to describe America’s population and cultural diversity. Until now.
Slide presentations being injected into courses tell students they are ‘denying’ the ‘racial experience’ of another person if they say ‘when I look at you I don’t see color,’ and that references to a ‘melting pot’ can be interpreted as saying people ‘should assimilate to the dominant culture.’
In one course called ‘Rainbow 101,’ (yes I know…) students are shown a picture of a ‘gender unicorn’ outlining various ‘gender identities’ and ‘gender expressions’ along with a video titled ‘Human sexuality is complicated.’ (see below).
Or maybe with new found free flowing binary associations we have just allowed racial, sexual and including gender identity to become complicated – convoluting what most would believe were core values inherent at birth. But then again this author is a straight white male and perhaps that might be part of society’s perceived belief that they are subject to ongoing discrimination by the dominant group.
What do we mean by education anyway?
‘It really pisses me off how what should be the one of the premier leadership positions on campus, being an RA, has been hijacked by wokeness,’ one Western Carolina student told Fox News. ‘I took the job because I wanted to help people in their college experience, not be told that men and women don’t exist and that everyone has their own gender unicorn.’
Another student in the meeting told Fox News that one of the presenters mocked a conservative area of the state for its politics and suggested gay people shouldn’t feel safe there. The student also says that the presenter explained that sex and gender does not involve genitals.
‘The Rainbow 101 class goes against my beliefs but I have to be in that class or I could possibly be fired,’ the RA told FOX. ‘I’m not allowed to speak against that.’
But shouldn’t education engage the notion of openly discussing difficult themes, even at risk of one’s thoughts ‘offending’ another subtext of individual or groups? Which is to wonder has appeasing legitimate minority concerns supplanted critical discussions and the idea that no agency should have power how a society conducts its thoughts?
The required new trainings occur each semester and are mandatory for both new and existing RAs at the North Carolina school.
