Rachel Huebner is a student at Harvard University and is fed up with the current progressive culture that has swept college campuses by storm and left the inmate warriors running the social-justice asylum. 

A staff writer for The Harvard Crimson, Huebner recently wrote an opinion piece, "A Culture of Sensitivity," in which she expressed a longing for a time, pre-college, when there was still value placed on the marketplace of ideas:

I used to believe that open discourse was a value all Americans hold dear. I presumed that when asked about what makes America so unique, many Americans would respond that our pluralistic society is the foundation of so much of our success. That it was understood that without a marketplace of ideas, our society simply could not flourish.

But then I started college.

Now a sophomore, Huebner is no longer under any illusion that she will be able to engage in meaningful discourse while attending Harvard. College culture, she said, is no longer dictated by open expression but overrun by sensitivity:

This undue focus on feelings has caused the college campus to often feel like a place where one has to monitor every syllable that is uttered to ensure that it could not under any circumstance offend anyone to the slightest degree. It sometimes feels as though pluralism has become an antiquated concept. Facts and history have been discarded, and instead feelings have been deemed to be the criteria that determine whether words and actions are acceptable.

Huebner said she respects the "plethora of new identities" that have emerged over the past few decades but believes that many of the organizations and movements that accompany them have now "gone too far."

She provided a few recent examples of political correctness run amok from other college campuses and some from her own experiences. One in particular was covered here at TruthRevolt: the University of New Hampshire's "Bias-Free Language Guide," which tells us that calling someone "American" is offensive because that "assumes the U.S. is the only country" of the Americas, arrogantly leaving out South America and our neighbors to the north.

Bowdoin College is another example Huebner brings to mind, where a Columbian student was reprimanded for "ethnic stereotyping" because he invited friends to a tequila-themed birthday party at which people wore mini-sombreros. The student was put on social probation (which goes on his permanent record) and was kicked out of his dorm. Meanwhile, two student government representatives faced impeachment just for attending the party.

Making this even more frustrating for Huebner was the fact that a few months earlier, Bowdoin hosted a reunion where attendees could have a picture made in a photo booth and add prop mustaches and sombreros for fun. Or it was the "administration-approved" Cold War party, which just so happened to occur on the same night of the birthday party, where guests showed up dressed as Soviets? No problems there, either. Nor were there any repercussions over the dining hall hosting Mexican Night a week later.

"Nonetheless, the tequila party was the only one deemed cultural appropriation," Huebner added.

Here is a story from her own experience at the Ivy League school:

In a class I attended earlier this semester, a large portion of the first meeting was devoted to compiling a list of rules for class discussion. A student contended that as a woman, she would be unable to sit across from a student who declared that he was strongly against abortion, and the other students in the seminar vigorously defended this declaration. The professor remained silent. In a recent conversation with peers, I posed a question about a verse from the Bible. A Harvard employee in the room immediately interjected, informing me that we were in a safe space and I was thus not permitted to discuss the controversial biblical passage. And these are just stories from the past three months.

"The rise of safe spaces has also deeply encroached upon open dialogue and free expression," Huebner continued. "It is ironic that while the origins of the term safe space can be found in the 20th century women’s movement, where it 'implies a certain license to speak and act freely,' today the term has come to be associated with precisely the opposite: the inability to speak freely."

Safe spaces are now places where books are banned, debates are barred, and journalists are silenced, Huebner laments.

She concludes:

The assaults on free expression have dire consequences. The rise of the microaggression movement has been reported to be detrimental to mental health on campus. Students’ emotional distress is increasing as educators presume that fragile undergraduates need to be protected from any form of dissent. Administrators must recognize that the current restrictions are incompatible with the very premise and goal of an education.

It is time to stop focusing on feelings as the criteria for speech and actions on the college campus.