In February 2013, two Oberlin students created racist and anti-Semitic messages around campus to make a political statement. Though they didn't believe the racist comments -- one of them was a big Obama supporter -- the messages understandably upset the students on campus and the media, of course, pounced. Suddenly, the nation was besieged with news stories of rampant racism at Oberlin, and the school officials and local police didn't set the record straight. For weeks, the national media focused on the issues of racism on campus, not realizing it was all a sham. Even after the truth was made known, Oberlin used the incident to push for more extreme, multi-cultural policies.
Well, it's happening again, this time at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Mike LaChance wrote about some racially charged incidents for Legal Insurrection, in his piece Racist Notes at St. Olaf College Lead to Mandatory Race and Gender Classes:
Racist notes targeting African American students recently appeared on the campus of St. Olaf College, a Lutheran school in Minnesota…. Students who were protesting the racist notes presented a list of demands to the administration which the school president ultimately signed….:
As part of their terms, students demanded the creation of a task force led by “two faculty members of color” and “three students and one alumni member of color.”
In addition to their terms and conditions, students put together a separate list of demands, which includes the creation and enforcement of “a comprehensive racial awareness and inclusiveness curriculum” and a revision of the school’s general education requirements to include “mandatory introductory courses in Race & Ethnic Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies departments.”
There's just one teensy weensy problem with all that: The College Fix reports that this too was all a hoax. In their article, Racist note that prompted St. Olaf College shut down is hate-crime hoax, they reveal that a student admitted writing the notes as "a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”
A note that used the n-word and threatened a black female student at St. Olaf College — sparking an intense protest that led to classes being shut down for a day as student demonstrators accused the school of institutional racism — “was not a genuine threat,” the school’s president said Wednesday.
President David Anderson said in an email to students that an investigation into the note identified a person of interest “who confessed to writing the note.”
“We’ve confirmed that this was not a genuine threat. We’re confident that there is no ongoing threat from this incident to individuals or the community as a whole,” he said.
The race-hoax phenomenon isn't have the right effect on the college campus culture. Instead of seeing the results of rampant pc-nonsense, the colleges are buckling down as if the racial incidents were authentic. What on earth is going on? Howard S. Schwartz, Professor at Michigan's Oakland University, believes that these campuses might be fabricating their own "racist realities" to justify all their preconceived notions of rampant racism in America.
That's just nuts.
I'm old enough to remember when colleges were supposed to teach you something about the real world, not indoctrinate students with fearful, inaccurate messages about a false world only they inhabit.
Image Credit: Adam Fagen on Flickr
