We live in a world different from the one our parents used to know. Today's world and today's university follow a politically correct standard which is so frigidly asinine that only the most soulless can live up to it. It has become such a faux pas in our culture to even insult someone for having different views that to do so is a more grievous offense than to beat someone up in a drunken brawl.
In keeping with my tradition of repeatedly kicking a dead horse (a phrase which I'm sure the hippie-vegetarian faction on campus regards as very politically incorrect), today's topic will be the school's ridiculous treatment of Ken Gagnon. Gagnon, as you may remember, was one half of the witty humor behind TNH's On the Spot column. He has lost his position after the (beware impending sarcasm) heinous and utterly unforgivable act of badmouthing a fellow classmate in his (gasp) LiveJournal.
For the uninformed in the audience, LiveJournal is one of the bastions of nerdiness (I myself have one), where kids typically write about corny stuff that no one in their right mind cares about. Topics typically include things like emotions, bad poetry and feelings on current world events. Usually even mentioning one's LiveJournal in public warrants a large degree of ostracizing from whatever circle one happens to run with.
Ken Gagnon wrote some things about a fellow columnist in TNH. It is chic these days to not mention this columnist's name when people become upset with her, with the way people treat her, with her viewpoints, et cetera, as is happening now, so she will not be named (but you monkeys are smart, you can probably figure it out). The things Ken Gagnon said were horrible, make no mistake about it, and despite an inkling suspicion that his words were ballooned grossly out of context, there is still no way of making right the expressed desire to "face rape" someone.
In the university system, we are all under the assumption of being adults until proven guilty of being otherwise and so of course the adult thing to do would be to talk to Ken. It wouldn't be hard to do; the words could go something like this: "Hello Ken. You have written something offensive in a public domain. Rather than continue to hurt someone's feelings could you please remove it and put in its place some sort of apology?" To which young Ken Gagnon, who we can assume to be a young man of reasonable intelligence and rational thought would reply: "Gee, I never thought of it like that. Allow me the ten seconds it will take to edit the offensive comment out and replace it with some manner of apology."
That, of course, is how things should have gone down if all parties involved were rational adults, but we are dealing with the University of New Hampshire, so suffice to say, things did not go that way. Instead, the fuehrer of the English Department (yes that is another reference comparing the administration at this school to the Nazi party for the slower readers out there) disallowed Ken from attending his English 519 class. Ken also lost his position as editor of the On the Spot section in this very newspaper.
This move has got the rest of the LiveJournal nerd community quaking in our collective boots. God forbid someone should track down my LiveJournal and find a tasteless reference to genital herpes. Mention of genital herpes (being a virus) in a negative or humorous light, if found out by the administration, could likely get me kicked out of my microbiology class if this current incident holds true. I might be safe with keeping my column, because this being an opinion column, I can't imagine that the opinions I post in my journal would be much different then what you are reading right now, save for slightly more use of profanity.
The truth is that we all say stupid things. Many of us (*Cough* James Paine *Cough*) back these things up by doing stupid things. Ken Gagnon said something stupid and rather than correct him to proper social etiquette ("It is inappropriate to talk about face raping"); the University enacted their patented "Utilize an Atomic Bomb to Demolish Target Anthill" strategy. That strategy is surely better then those tired old-fogey ways of dealing with problems, such as rational discussion and mediation.
Eventually there will be a backlash against the ridiculous politically correct environment that is becoming more and more the norm at colleges nationwide. Instead of hiring new diversity strategists and having classes which focus on the relations between bisexual Asian rice farmers and Navajo water prospectors, the budget will be reallocated so that the physics department can afford to buy such amenities as chalk. Until then, I am waiting for the lynch mob to come for me after they read my LiveJournal review of "House of The Dead" or something equally asinine that I wrote.
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