Oberlin Activists Posted Creepy Messages Accusing Specific Students of Perpetuating Rape Culture
Their crime? Bringing Christina Hoff Sommers to campus.
Left-leaning student activists at Oberlin College hung posters at the Christina Hoff Sommers event earlier this week that identified the students involved in bringing the individualist-feminist and AEI scholar to campus.
Each poster gave the name of a specific student-member of the Oberlin College Republicans and Libertarians and accused that person of perpetuating rape culture.
Images of the posters were sent to Reason via a source who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The last names of the students identified by the posters were blurred before Reason received them.
According to the source, a group of approximately 10 student-activists were behind the posters.
They have the right to denounce their fellow students as perpetuators of rape culture, I suppose, though the fact that some students would smear others with this charge for merely bringing a speaker to campus is disappointing. Do students no longer recognize that the entire point of challenge is to grapple with new and different ways of thinking about the world?
Over at The Washington Post, David Bernstein wonders when—and how—the idea of seeking physical safety from uncomfortable ideas arose on college campuses:
Just today I learned (via Hans Bader) that Oberlin, supposedly one of the great liberal arts colleges in the world, has been in a tizzy because of a speech by the rather mainstream conservative feminist Christina Hoff Summers, which supposedly made students feel “unsafe” well in advance. And so on.
In no examples that I have seen has there been any actual threat or prospect of violence against the students complaining that they feel “unsafe.”
This is a huge threat to the future of free speech nevertheless. Today’s college students are going to be tomorrow’s judges, and if they truly believe that “safety” means “never having to deal with opinions that disagree with one’s cherished beliefs,” then censorship has a good chance of gaining the upper hand over freedom of speech. After all, public safety can be a justification for suppressing speech, as with the “fighting words” doctrine.
Read Reason’s interview with Sommers about the event here.
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Someone SF'd the link to the image.
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I've grown to expect missing alt-text, but not missing image.
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It should be appearing now.
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Can't see the photo.
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It's a white and gold dress.
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You're crazy, it's blue and gold.
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if they truly believe that “safety” means “never having to deal with opinions that disagree with one’s cherished beliefs
They don't, as evidenced by their denouncing of "people who only watch Fox News", etc. They think that safety means "never having to deal opinions that disagree with liberal beliefs.
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It's Faux News you cretin. Lern 2 spel.
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Faux "News", you neocon ratfucker.
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Oberlin is now just a young adult daycare center.
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Look, these students* are paying $50k/year to have someone better than them inform them of their opinions. I can understand them getting pissed about someone else telling them different opinions for free. How would you feel if you realized you just wasted $50k learning the wrong things?
*ok, their parents are. But the point still stands.
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I don't think the parents are paying. These students will be bitching 1 year after graduation about how unfair all of their student loans are.
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Do students no longer recognize that the entire point of challenge is to grapple with new and different ways of thinking about the world?
Really, Rico? Challenge? Grapple with? These terms do not surround me with a feeling of warmth and acceptance. Next you are going to claim that a university is supposed to be about actual knowledge, instead of Feelzz.
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Freedom of screech?
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I think that Oberlin is in a particularly meteorite prone area. Their insurance rates would have to be through the roof.
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Frankly, it would be cheaper for them to just shut down the school.
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^most excellent!
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How about freedom from Dustin Diamond?
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Is it a poster of a blizzard at the Arctic Circle?
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a group of approximately 10 student-activists were behind the posters.
Name and shame
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" Ashley Jones perpetuates CENSORSHIP CULTURE"
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Tit for tat.
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Do I understand that these ridiculous posters were put up anonymously? That's not too surprising. Not that the posters need fear any real retribution. But they certainly open themselves up to ridicule for their childish behavior and complete inability to participate in an adult discussion. As we've seen, ridicule is something they can't cope with. Traumatic and all that. So I'm not surprised that they're too ashamed to cast their stones openly.
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Meet the lady who doesn’t want people to spread awareness about sexual assault. She’s doing her damnedest to keep the school from marching against it — at least as long as the march is led by a fraternity.
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Are lunatics attracted to feminism or does progressive education make them nuts? I suspect the latter.
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The correct answer is "yes."
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What a bunch of cowardly little shits. Instead of directly challenging those that disagree with them and engaging in a competition of ideas, they seek to enlist the mob through propaganda and libel. They don't even have the courage to face their opponents.
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Not sure if you could quite claim this as libel, exactly, since "rape culture" is so retardly broad as to have no real meaning.
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This isn't, but their methods are character assassination and ad hominem attacks. Libel is definitely within that realm.
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Oh yeah, they're pieces of shit, for sure.
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It's not libel.
It's very much opinion which is protected.
If they said A rapes B that's an assertion of fact, which can become the basis of a libel claim.
If they said, I think A is the sort of person who will someday rape someone else, it's not an assertion of fact but an opinion.
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Rape culture is the "immune system boosting" claim of campus activism.
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If in their world someone giving a speech is "violence"...
Then how would they define the specific targeting of individuals. Seems posters targeting people are the ones advocating for violence.
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Today’s college students are going to be tomorrow’s judges
With each passing day, the existence of the state becomes a greater threat to human liberty and indeed the survival of the species. -
The folks named in the signs should be marching down to the Dean's office and loudly demanding an "investigation".
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Were I an employer, these would be the only ones from Oberlin I would consider.
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Oberlin is a private college. They are free to screw up and over their students in whatever way they like. And students are free to leave. That's the only way this is going to change: by people voting with their feet.
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While I agree that people should be free to attend or leave shitholes, there are some points worth mentioning. First accredited institutions are only nominally private. The process of accreditation is government controlled and so are most student loans and grants, which in turn affects prices of all colleges. Second is the critique of how a supposedly liberal culture are in reality completely illiberal.
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First accredited institutions are only nominally private.
True, but the libertarian response to that is not to say "reform yourself to conform with the terms under which you receive taxpayer handouts", the libertarian response ought to be "stop the taxpayer handouts".
Second is the critique of how a supposedly liberal culture are in reality completely illiberal.
That's sort of like "critiquing" that "awful" doesn't mean "full of awe" anymore. Yes, the meaning of the word has changed, and it's not going to change back. That's why we have terms like "libertarianism" and "classical liberalism" now.
Oberlin is a "liberal arts college"; that "liberal" refers to "free" men, as opposed to serfs or slaves. It is also a bastion of US "liberalism", which has little to do with classical liberalism and instead refers to progressivism. The term "liberal" means many things.
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They are going to go after STEM next. Mind you, it's already begun, but not yet in earnest. The more they destroy the liberal arts, the more dire their own situation will get. These mendacious idiots are not the sort of people to give up when the evidence refutes them. It hasn't stopped them yet. And then when all baccalaureate degrees are worthless, everybody will stand around gazing at their navels and wondering how it happened. Maybe then people will start to vote with their feet, but only time will tell.
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Colleges are becoming obsolete. They'll just hasten the creative destruction that will replace them.
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Online education can't come fast enough.
Sort of like Disney copyright and DMCA. fences work both ways, and Disney will evetually fence themselves away from popular culture. The more people turn to their own mixes and mashups, and the harder Disney uses the DMCA to fight it, the more people will stay away from Disney and use Disney's own DMCA against Disney when Disney tries to copy public domain hits.
Markets always work, one way or another. People who pollute the existing markets just make it easier for other markets to replace them.
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They are going to go after STEM next.
College and university level STEM education and research really isn't all that different from the humanities: most of it is wrong, much of it is drive by fashion and special interests, and the whole thing is financed by government grants. Nor is that a new situation either.
The difference between the humanities and STEM is that STEM eventually does produce a few things that verifiably work, whereas bad humanities scholarship never does. Frankly, though, most people working in the STEM fields just piggy-back their reputation on those few successes of others.
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Another key difference, and this is the context I meant, is that terminal STEM degrees aren't generally worthless outside of academia. A BS in mathematics, for example, can get you a number of jobs. You are quite right that, within the context of academia, STEM fields are just as infused with left-wing politics as the liberal arts.
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... at $50k a year.
That going to make for some painful years/decades of student loan repayments.
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Almost nobody pays for college; most of it is paid for by direct or indirect government grants.
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Sorry, that should have said...
Almost nobody pays [anywhere near list price] for college; most of it is paid for by direct or indirect government grants.
The high nominal prices are there to bring in lots of funding and to have another mechanism to discriminate and redistribute.
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I don't understand where these kids in college the free time to screw around like this. All I remember was studying and doing projects, eating cheap food, and working all summer. Some semesters I only slept 4-6 hours a night.
No time for posters.
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Liberal Arts college. Not a university of science.
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I dropped out after 2 years because of money reasons (Going $60k in debt to get a BS in Physics that only qualified me to go to to grad school didn't make any sense when I already had employers offering me more than $40k a year) but I spent about 40 hours a week trolling IRC and usenet news groups and another 25ish hours a week playing Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, and Magic the Gathering all while carrying a 3.65 gpa in a hard science.
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I remember during freshman year me and my engineering friends added up all of our course hours plus lab time plus problem set time and that came to 45-50 hrs/wk plus, and that was just the direct course work time, there was a good 20 hrs/wk of studying on top of it bringing it to ~70hrs/wk.
We then compared it to our friends in the college of arts and science. They added up around 12 hrs/wk course work and maybe another 10 hrs/wk reading and writing. The rest was time off.
It was like we were pulling down two jobs, and the CAS kids just had a light part time jig with the rest as time off.
This is one of the main reason these "students" do all this nonsense. They simply have nothing to do and are bored. Also demonstrates the value of their degree.
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Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it... you felt ill this afternoon because you're getting better. You see, when we are healthy, we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all. By this time tomorrow, you'll be healthier still.
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Looking at those first names, are two of the people 'supporting rape culture' women?
Because I find it unlikely that women are supporting a culture in which it's okay to rape women. Just a thought.
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Stop erasing my lived experiences, man.
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Your the worst anyway
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CH Sommers, AKA Factual Feminist, AKA Based Mom. She runs contrary to the leftist narrative, so naturally she will be decried as "not a REAL feminist".
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The speaker that caused all this hullaballo is also accused of "perpetuating rape culture" and being a "rape denialist" and is.....a woman.
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They're the worst kind
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Feminists who promote the idea that there is a rape culture and shame anyone who tries to learn lessons from rape victims that might help other avoid becoming a rape victim themselves as "victim blamers" are the real rape perpetuators. Feminists end up enabling rapists.
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They want to destroy the idea that your life and your protection are your responsibility, essentially rendering you as chattel. Women are free and independent!*
*As long as they do what their wise female elders tell them.
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I'm glad that Oberlin is starting to be hatred by the people here like I have always hated it. I feel vindicated and safe in this space.
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Ha, look who's over at the Post.
Kizzy Kaprow
9:36 AM EDT
These student activists don't really "feel unsafe." They've simply latched onto an internet meme that works. It's an expedient, more pragmatic than idealistic. Social media gives them an unnaturally amplified voice, and the eternally aggrieved on all sides of this teapot tempest take it from there. -
He's...right?
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Yeah except only one group of people is getting thrown out of college and possibly into prison. It's all fun and games in the culture war until real people start getting genuinely hurt.
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Ya know ... I can imagine all sorts of mindsets. I can imagine Hitler so twisted by losing the war that he has to blame someone, like the Jews. I can imagine kids who knew nothing except Nazi bile and absorbed that shit like the diapers they were. I can imagine Lenin and Stalin having a mindset so distorted by the Tsar's regine that killing millions to raise society seemed like a good idea. I can even imagine the first European settlers seeing Indians and Africans without sities and square rigged ships and concluding that whites were superior and non-whites were only suited for slavery or death.
But I cannot imagine what it takes to have such a distorted self-esteem that you have no iinterest in making yourself better and more independent, and would rather spend your days doing shit like this. What kind of passive-aggressive-defeatist wants to spend all their time dragging other people down instead of doing something positive for themselves?
I simply cannot understand these people.
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Independence is scary. You might not be popular or well-liked or even modestly respected if you decide to start thinking for yourself. For these special snowflakes, nothing is more terrifying than being left on the "outside."
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Do you think that's all it is? Maybe I've always been too independent to grok wanting to not be.
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I think Machine pretty much nailed it. These kids were born into a world in which the Internet exists. They've been inserted into social media for as long as they can remember. They've never really had a need to think of themselves as individuals.
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It sounds plausible, but it's a strange concept to me. It may explain the horror of free range kids too.
Part of the problem is I have friends and relatives this age who aren't even close to hating independence. I know too many proggies and group thinkers, and none of them or their kids have this intense passive-aggressive desire to bring everyone else down instead of acting in their own interest. It is completely alien.
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I think growing up in a time when positive reinforcement is given no matter how poor their performance is also feeds into the problem. If you consistently perform poorly but are rewarded anyway, you're not going to know how to react when faced with someone who clearly outperforms you. The only response is to fade back into the group that will always accept you because you're special in your own way. The only sense of validation can come from being part of that group.
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I have to tell my dog owners in every fucking class not to reward their dogs when they don't perform the exercise correctly. They're just used to rewarding their kids that way, I figure.
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But I cannot imagine what it takes to have such a distorted self-esteem that you have no iinterest in making yourself better and more independent
This isn't anything new. What have religions said for millennia? You're a sinner, you were created filthy, beg for forgiveness and maybe you'll be cleansed of your evil. All this garbage is is the worst parts of misanthropic Calvinism with God removed.
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I can understand religious nuts, even religion itself, although I am areligious. They want a purpose in life, so they make one up. But see, they are at least doing something positive, not just curling up in a ball and trying to drag everyone else down. That's what I cannot get my mind around, this intense passive-aggressive attempt to drag everyone else down. It is beyond my comprehension.
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But see, [the religious] are at least doing something positive, not just curling up in a ball and trying to drag everyone else down.
Sure, progressives are stupid and annoying, they tax you, they wreck the economy, and they scream at you. But historically, religious nuts would drive you out of your home, torture you and kill you if you failed to abide by their speech codes and codes of conduct, and if you failed to pay them off.
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Right, but I wasn't wondering about that, just why I cannot understand social justice warriors who lash out like this.
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Think of it as advanced schadenfreude. The only way they can feel good about themselves is when successful people fail. Because of their screwed up self-esteem, they always believe themselves to be failures and when successful people fail it shows some glimmer of universal fairness. And if successful people won't fail on their own, they must be made to fail.
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My take on the Allegory of the Cave is that some of the folks ventured outside, saw the real animals, and went back inside where it was safer.
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If Sommers had given her talk with no incident, we wouldn't be discussing this. She likely wouldn't have made local, let alone national, headlines. Instead, these geniuses are making her a cause celebre among anyone a little creeped out by campus activists.
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I hope these idiots realize the more they screech about "RAEP KULTUR," the more they dilute the meaning of the word "rape." To them, there is nothing more evil than patriarchy and oppression and so on, but normal people watching this mess unfold in real time are eventually just going to roll their eyes and walk away at the mention of it. Sooner or later, the first question leveled at a rape victim is going to be, "Was it 'rape,' or really rape-rape?
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Stop raping us with your logic!
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These student activists are "Believers"; no facts, logic, or even ethical appeals will persuade them.
They are also bullies and need to be denounced as such.
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Do students no longer recognize that the entire point of challenge is to grapple with new and different ways of thinking about the world?
The point of higher education is to have an insulated platform to spout and reinforce already held beliefs. Their parents are going into debt to send them to an echo chamber.
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Their parents are sending them to institutions that will give them the necessary certifications and preparation in order to be accepted into right professional "guilds". In the case of Oberlin, I suspect most of those kids will go on to journalism, media, humanities, law, and non-profits, and Oberlin is excellent for that. Education doesn't have that much to do with it. It's about learning the proper language and beliefs for those social groups.
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I still think "Rape Culture" would be an excellent name for a band.
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If only to give Tim **** and Seth **** an out:
I *do* support Rape Culture... which is why you should come with me and check them out as they rock The Feve this Friday night and then join us again on Saturday for ladies night...
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Have these dimwits even come up with a coherent definition of "rape culture"? Or is coherence part of "rape culture"?
Ah, Progressives. The intellectual giants of our society!
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What was the "War on Women" tripe other than insubstantial, inarticulate spittle? It's nothing but sloganeering.
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Coherent definition would let ratfuckers wiggle out. If your concepts have loose and malleable borders, you can ensnare your enemies and let your allies off the hook more easily.
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This. 2+2=5. Ugly is Beautiful. Free Speech is Hate Speech. Independence is a myth. Freedom is Slavery. Racism Bad, Diversity Good. It's 1984-level doublethink.
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FIFY
They have the right to denounce their fellow students as perpetuators of rape culture, I suppose, though the fact that some students would smear others with this charge for merely bringing a speaker to campus is
disappointinga comical level of derp. -
"Today’s college students are going to be tomorrow’s judges"
The Oberlin feminists are tomorrow's nonprofit executives, woman's-studies professors, and baristas.
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Got libel?
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Once again the word "Orwellian" comes to mind.
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This story just makes me literally sick to my stomach
I need a safe place