Stanford Students Aren’t Allowed to Feel ‘Unwelcome’
How nice for them. It must be great to live in a world where your beliefs are never challenged in any way.
Devon Zuegel writes at The College Fix.
Stanford Funding Policy Mandates Students Never Feel ‘Unwelcome’
OPINION: Stanford funds atheist speaker, denies support for conservative ones with policy that allows bias, stifles free speech
The Stanford University Graduate Student Council helped fund a guest lecture by atheist Richard Dawkins last fall, but this quarter denied a request for $600 to help a conservative student group shoulder the cost of a spring conference on traditional marriage.
In denying the latter request for the Stanford Anscombe Society’s “Communicating Values” conference, the student council cited its funding guidelines, which prohibit financial support to any event that makes students feel “unwelcome.”
The policy states that the student council “will not fund events or activities that … have any appearance or tone of exclusivity,” nor can it dole out money to “create an environment where a given segment of the graduate student population are made to feel unwelcome at the event due to religious, political, or other conviction.”
However, the council broke its own rules when it helped pay for the Dawkins lecture last fall. If the student council were truly committed to its official guidelines, it would have rejected the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA!) request to help fund his speech.
Dawkins is famous for saying that those who do not believe in evolution are “ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked.” While I agree with Dawkins and personally find the views of the traditional marriage conference speakers detestable, the double standard applied by the council is unacceptable.
How can the Stanford Anscombe Society be ineligible for funds due to hosting speakers who are discriminatory toward the homosexual community while AHA! receives support to host a speaker who calls those who support the theories of creation and intelligent design stupid idiots?
Stanford Funding Policy Mandates Students Never Feel ‘Unwelcome’ (The College Fix)
Comments
When Devon Zuegel said this: “Dawkins is famous for saying that those who do not believe in evolution are “ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked.” While I agree with Dawkins and personally find the views of the traditional marriage conference speakers detestable,” he articulated the council’s mindset: some people say thing other people don’t like, and as long as those people are Judaeo-Christian traditionalists, they shouldn’t be heard.
Zuegel thinks he’s a cut above the rest because he perhaps will not allow his disdain and distaste for The Other to stop them from speaking. However, when you categorize people who don’t agree with your perspective as “ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked” and assert their view of marriage is “detestable” you not only marginalize yourself for your very radical, irreligious, and ahistorical viewpoint, you also have paved the path to shutting up and ridding society of The Other.