Colleges seem to have taken the view that they have the right to our money, parents’ tuition and our children while the rest of us have to shut up while they indoctrinate our children. Here is actionable advice on how to fight back on the liberal agenda in colleges.
School Selection
Before you send your child to a college, compare it to the list on the Foundation for Individual Rights list of schools based on their speech codes. The schools that are the most restrictive are the most hostile to basic freedom of speech and conservative values.
Don’t send your child on cross-country college tours. You’re wasting money on out of state tuition rates compared to the programs available at nearly every state school, and you lose supervision of their day to day activities while you are paying the bill.
Ideally, have your child live at home while attending college. This cuts the cost of college in half (at least) and avoids full immersion in campus culture that may be contrary to your family’s values.
Program Selection
Tell your child why they should not select an identity-studies major, since these programs are only political indoctrination; if your child chooses this option, don’t fund it and leave them to pay for their own education. Do discuss how it isn’t going to lead to a viable career. Given the political swing of late, the human resources jobs that employed many of them are going to dry up. Instead, help your child find a major with value in the workplace and society as a whole.
In the Classroom
Challenge schools that host mandatory diversity training featuring guilt-tripping of students for supposed privilege, whether based on income or race. If the school says this is mandatory, pull your child out immediately and go somewhere else. The better solution, though, is seeing what the freshman experience is like through online discussion boards and not sending your child to a school that does this in the first place.
When a teacher says “this is a safe space, you aren’t allowed to talk about what goes in this class”, start recording. There is no privacy in a public school classroom, only the psychologist’s couch in an office away from one’s classmates.
Discuss contrary views openly in such classes, and if penalized for doing so, mobilize against either that professor or the school as a whole. If students are afraid of being failed or physically threatened by classmates for expressing a politically incorrect opinion, either demand that the school honor its stated mission (and justification for public funding) and open up or pull out your student and discourage others from attending. Schools actively suppressing all but far left views are defrauding the public while undermining civic values.
Document Everything Important
Do not fall for the lie that anyone has a right to privacy in a public place. Record every event that is a literal threat to other students, such as when liberal lynch mobs as took over Evergreen State. Post, share and promote it to protect the truth.
If you find you’re asked to give a statement to an administrator, inform them you’ll record it for your records. If they say you are not allowed to create your own record though they themselves will put things in their records (or your school record), say nothing more except that you will be seeking legal counsel.
Funding
If your alma mater has succumbed to social justice insanity, whether as bad as Evergreen State’s armed mobs of liberal bullies given free rein or Berkley telling cops to stand down as violent Antifa attacked conservatives for merely being in line to hear a speaker, do not give them any more money. Furthermore, tell them why you are no longer giving them money. Discuss the issue with relatives who may be donating to the school so that they will stop donating, as well, or alter their bequests.
Donate to legal defense groups assisting students in the cases above. FIRE is one. Liberty Counsel and the American Center for Legal Justice are others, though not the only ones.
Connect with political groups to end public funding for identity-studies programs that are only turning out trained activists.
Legal and Judicial Solutions
If faced with an administrative tribunal, get legal counsel – and not from anyone associated with the school.
When schools violate the rights of students - whether Title IX rape tribunals denying students their Constitutional rights or refusing admission to internships and graduate programs because of religious and political beliefs -challenge it legally after trying to work with the school to correct it. Furthermore, publicize it, so that it isn’t just you versus the behemoth.
Do not fall for the lie that speech equals violence. This belief in Islam equates criticism of the ideology with actual violence against the unbelievers and is the justification for death penalties for apostates. Physically interfering with a speaker entering a room or hitting people you disagree with is assault – prosecute it as such under the fullest extent of the law.
When a social justice bully physically assaults someone or destroys property, do not leave the discipline to school administrators who have recently been giving minor warnings or, at most, wrist slaps. Push for criminal charges, and file your own police reports. If they see real world consequences for their actions, their ideological peers will be discouraged from engaging in actual violence.
Don’t prosecute serious crimes via school administration, and refuse to recognize their authority when they try. Use the police when actual harm occurs, such as reporting rape to the police.
Educate parents and students that the university cannot punish students for speaking to anyone about university investigations and prosecutions. This has been a common restriction by universities, such as telling men charged under Title IX rape investigations that they will be punished for talking to friends about why they have to drop out of activities or seek guidance from professors or parents.
Comments
Tamara Wilhite's Amazon Author Page
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B073WNRYHP
Dino Manalis I disagree with putting such a price limit on tuition, since that does nothing to push schools to cut the fat, not demand higher tax subsidies or lower costs through online educational programs.
It's hard to fight city hall, though. As you note, it's best to pick a major that will be marketable.
Tamara-
How about science classes, or for that matter, any class that may stimulate logical analytical thinking.
Would that be allowed in your comfort zone?
Liberal arts are severely lacking in this, to the point that womens' studies majors never have to take a biology class and can deny biological sex differences are real.
Many liberal arts students and social justice warriors in particular need a stronger understanding of actual history, such as the 100 million killed by communism.
I'd love for them to listen to learn classic logic instead of emotional reasoning at college. Stephan Molynaux's work and Youtube channel is a good start. The lack of self-awareness in their views and contradicting official dogmatic statements is a sign it is such courses teaching logical analytical thinking is desperately needed by liberals.
Sargon of Akkad (Youtuber) is another resource, a liberal British atheist who is critical of social justice, liberal political ideology invested with religious fervor.
This Week in Stupid (24/04/2016) - Social Justice is a Cult Edition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN0oKIMlHyI
Maybe a certain brand of politics just naturally rebels against science and social justice.
Not everyone can be at the top of the class at the leading universities. But it doesn't hurt to associate with the top institutions.
To eschew an education at the University of California, Berkeley just because of a right-wing attack by the Devos family and others that are sponsoring toxic, controversial right-wing speakers is to disregard a very important campus and university. I have enjoyed the public face (podcasts and UCTV,) of UCB very much over the years.
I hope that you do not personally espouse the radical politics of the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos. To me, that guy is pure poison. His ideas have nothing to do with traditional conservative values. He sows the seeds of discord and violence. He is only a provacateur.
I like your idea about the kid living at home. Particularly if you live in a college town. Not everybody does.
We shouldn't deprive the next generation of the opportunities that we had. That is just selfish.
Gregory S. McNeill Yes, I attended college. I have a bachelor's degree in engineering.
I am not saying, "Stay out of college." I am stating that parents need to investigate schools and programs and direct their children to ones that are personally beneficial and socially useful - which social justice is not.
I am also advocating public awareness of problems colleges are creating by training unemployable political activists at our collective expense, not sending students or money to those schools and seeking to force reform for everyone's benefit.
What happened at Evergreen College horrified me. I understand why conservatives gleefully held that up as an example of liberal intolerance, I felt the same way about Berkeley. Just because you don't agree with a speaker or wanted "A Day Without White People" (or whatever those lunatics wanted) does not give you the right to riot or disrupt a campus. I have no sympathy for anyone who was arrested or kicked out of school (though I'm not sure anyone at Evergreen was), you make your choices, you live with them.
But, Tamara, it seems like you want to make your children little replicas of you. College is a time in one's life you get an opportunity to figure out who you are and what you want to be, not what your parents decide for you. So, is the idea to force your children to attend schools and learn only what you want them to learn? Or, what career you decide for them? We are mortal, Tamara, so, what happens when you depart this earth and can no longer look after them? What then?
Your children, your money, your choices, it's your decision after all. But, forcing your children to live with you or to take a major they don't want is a fine way for encouraging unhappiness later on. Or, worse, what if they have no aptitude for what you want them to be?
You can't control and protect your children forever. Growing up can hurt, delaying it only stunts a person's growth.
Jeffrey Kelly
1. I'm not saying colleges need to teach my particular views, but become neutral. Right now, it is so far left that social justice warriors, liberal jihadis, are turning on their professors as they were taught to do on the rest of society ... reflecting ideological extremism that is dangerous for everyone. Cutting public funding and flow of students reserves their right to do it by their choice, with their money.
2. My kids get liberal values from TV to Hollywood movies to public schools to news reporters who say don't be too upset about the shooting because most victims are Republican. It takes work to deliberately pass on my values. It is liberal students who never hear the conservative view while being taught that liberals and liberals alone are smart, educated, good, rational.
The bias is palpable and institutionally oppressive. Even some liberals admit it.
Conservatives Are Right: The Media Is Very Liberal
http://fortune.com/2015/11/02/liberal-media/
A Confession of Liberal Intolerance
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html
Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/
If you can't do the basic math of comparing the REALISTIC additional earning potential of a college degree in a particular field versus the cost of obtaining the degree, you shouldn't be enrolling in college. And by the way - the taxpayer shouldn't be funding your education nor guaranteeing any student loan. It's YOUR LIFE - you be responsible for your decisions!