Trigger warning–I don’t, and no one else is obligated to consider your emotional constitution. The only one in control of your emotions is you.
Let’s get to it, “safe space” is no safe idea.
The only safe space a student needs is one in which his or her constitutional rights are protected.
The idea that college is the go-to place to be comfortable is asinine. All of ancient philosophes are rolling in their graves at our generation’s obsession that our environment reflect our mental fragilities and coddle our incompetency.
If you signed up for courses and aim to have no neurological response, you should drop out. Your brain already has. You’re supposed to be challenged. I’ve taken plenty of courses that conflict with my worldviews, my way of life, that function on different wavelengths than my own philosophy–and that’s entirely the point.
No part of the college experience has ever been nor ever should be designed with ease and emotional comfort as a priority. This is the gauntlet. If you can’t handle it, you can’t handle it. If the idea of an institute in education where all individuals are respected and where all persons rights are championed is triggering to you, or makes you uncomfortable—grow up or drop out.
Expecting to grow without being presented with challenges or different ways of thinking is incredibly ignorant.
The entire objective of equality hinges on the premise that we must never exclude. There is no group of people on campus that are deserving of the stripping of their constitutional rights. Rights do not stop where feelings begin. This is a quintessential cornerstone of liberty, and liberty shall leave no stone unturned, no voice obscured, no citizen alienated.
There is no justifier to the implementation of a systemic ideology that excludes students from their rights on the basis of their sex, their social class, their race or ethnic background, their sexuality, their disability status or their freedom of expression.
In our time, after every fight, fought tooth and nail for civil rights progress that has inched us closer towards a better reality for all, to look those truths in the eye and to advocate for policy that aims so maliciously to tear at that very painfully woven, bloodstained fabric, is abominable.
If going to college has resulted in a massive, nationwide movement to implement the systematic removal of agency, representation and liberty of specific groups of people—there is something dangerous brewing in education.
There’s nothing “intellectual” or “educated” about disenfranchisement.
To go to a university, the champion of intellectualism and freedom, and to develop nothing but the idea to strip the freedom of another, to target a group on their social status, is nothing short of a scam.
The “safe space” ideology is scamming generations out of free thought. Why are we so quiet about it? Are we just going to let this trend continue without expressing our free speech as well? We probably should while we still have it.
What the “safe space” movement has done is poison the institute of education. A safe space isn’t constructed with the idea of safety for all students. If you start thinking about policy, and safety, put those two together and think “we shouldn’t extend this to everyone,” you probably shouldn’t be in a position to made safety policy decisions.
Let’s call safe spacers what they are: hypocrites. Advocating for the necessity of safety while encouraging persecution, reinforcing stereotypes, contributing to a culture of polarization, is nothing short of the exact “forces” they claim to oppose.
Safe spacers are only interested in a safe space for themselves. This does not include dissenters, or even those that don’t actively support their ideology. If you don’t listen and believe, they believe you have no use for your ears and no worth to your words.
As a dissenter, I’m the one who’s vocal about their rights to discuss and express their points of view. I’m incredibly tolerant towards my own dissenters. What is freedom of speech without the freedom to dissent?
However, although their expression is not concerning, the step they’re trying to take into policy does fully intend to disenfranchise others. That is not free speech—that is an act of coerced silence. That is an infringement on the rights of others, and should not be entertained.
Barton Kleen
Managing Editor