When Safe Spaces Become Danger Zones

Students at Emory University recently staged protests because someone wrote “Trump 2016” in chalk on campus sidewalks. The students were “in pain” and no longer felt safe at Emory. Add that to the growing list of student protests over offenses ranging from culturally insensitive Halloween costumes to racist cafeteria food. Yep, students at Oberlin College were deeply upset because the school cafeteria did not make the General Tso chicken sufficiently authentic. Each week it seems like there is a new and even more absurd example of students on college campuses having complete emotional meltdowns over the slightest offense.

Obviously there are legitimate cases of prejudice, discrimination, and general injustice that warrant action. But I am not talking about these cases. I am talking about students wanting a speaker banned from campus because of her or his political views, students (and faculty) threatening physical violence to prevent reporters from entering their safe space, students wanting administrators and faculty to be held personally responsible for the immature and distasteful actions of a few people, students demanding recipe changes to make cafeteria food more culturally sensitive, students destroying all the copies of a school newspaper because they disagreed with an article in it, and students being so disruptive during an invited lecture that the speaker could barely make it through her presentation. These are the cases that are making terms like safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microagressions the punchlines of jokes.

Week after week we read about another instance of an activist culture that is not about helping people in need or fighting real injustices in the world but is instead focused on protecting its own echo chamber. Even President Obama felt the need to chime in by reminding students that it is not the job of colleges to coddle them or shield them from ideas they disagree with. Clearly, this is an issue that is gaining widespread attention. And it deserves attention because the consequences of this behavior could be severe.

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