Friday, March 11, 2016

Activists at Western Washington University Go Full SJW, "Demand" Creation of A "College Of Power And Liberation"

Behold, a left-wing pipe-dream:
   Student activists at Western Washington University (WWU) have started a petition demanding the creation of a new college dedicated to social justice, resources to learn alternate histories, compensation for harassed students, a student committee to police offensive speech, and culturally segregated living arrangements.
   The petition, drafted by the Student Assembly for Power and Liberation (SAPL), has been signed by 494 students as of press time.
   “[W]e cannot count on the University to follow through for hxstorically [sic] oppressed students. These demands come out of a long hxstory of oppression played out at all levels of schooling,” the demand states.
   SAPL says that the reason for these demands is to combat the oppression that is, “upheld through this institution, as it was created to uphold white supremacy at its core.”
Their first demand is for the creation of the College of Power and Liberation that will require hiring ten tenure track professors which students will have active participation in the interview process.
   “[S]tudents must have power in deciding what subject areas and [what] professors can teach at the college,” the petition says.
   The second demand calls for students and faculty who are committed to confronting racism, misogyny, trans- and homophobia on the campus, to be compensated for doing decolonizing work.
   Such work includes, but is not limited to, “Providing space and resources to learn alternate histories, supporting student's non academic work, emotional and intellectual labor that is not about publishing or service to the institution, providing often unrecognized trainings, workshops, and/or interventions on behalf of students.”
   All the other absurdity here to the side...don't miss that very last bit, which, if I'm understanding, means that they want students to get paid for imposing their far-left political views on other students...
   I have to say, though, that if someone could magically come up with all that money...my guess is that there are a fair number of universities in the country that would be happy to oblige. It'll be kind of interesting to see how close universities will actually allow themselves to come to being left-wing indoctrination camps before this all subsides...if, in fact, it does subside.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

(1) Someone got lazy and didn't override spellcheck for "hxstory" later in the document. I hope they've thoroughly self-criticized.

(2) No way in hell an undergraduate drafted that second demand, not with "not about publishing or service to the institution" in there. A student would never have bothered to decouple these resources from publishing requirements and committee work. Those are the bane of the junior faculty who drafted these demands or directed that they be drafted.

Once again, the kids are being treated as sock puppets by the para-faculty, people whose years of writing grant application BS have erased any distinction between the advance of social justice and petty careerism. The PC movement has a great deal more to do with the employment crisis in the humanities than it does with the well being of minority students.

7:48 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

No, right, I noticed that! (I'm concluding you're the same anonymous that made the point originally.)

The first thing that tipped me off was that they asked for a *college* rather than a department. That's not the way students usually think. They think in terms of departments and the university. Then, as you note, the stuff about "service to the institution"...that's a faculty-member or administrator...or, as you say, "para-administrator"...

Totally right, and, though I skipped over it, that's a damn great point and really filled in a giant missing chunk of the puzzle for me.

10:06 PM  

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