POINT: Postponement of SCA panel reveals snowflake culture
According to the Princeton Review and unanimously agreed upon by industry giants, USC has the best video game design program in the country. Women also happen to comprise nearly half of USC Games’ undergraduate student body and a majority of its graduate student body. Because neither sex nor gender identity really have any bearing on one’s ability to design a video game, these two statistics likely have no correlation to one another.
However a lack of correlation does not mean that Games’ large population of women is not a good thing. After all, the video game industry reaps incredible profits, so women en masse entering the top ranks of the industry can contribute greatly to the decrease of the gender pay gap, which economists largely attribute to a dearth of women entering profitable — often meaning STEM — fields.
So when USC secures a panel with leaders in the video game industry, such as the Head of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment and the CEO of Riot Games, it has a net positive effect for everyone involved, from the students whose work would be showcased to the women who attend a highly diverse school which is actively redefining the industry standard. Everybody wins, until the top games department in the country cancels the “Legends of the Games Industry” — that’s not me editorializing, that was the actual name of the panel — just four hours before the event because the panelists happened to, well, collectively lack vaginas. The cancellation of the event denied female students an educational opportunity in the name of feminism. This action of “diversity” is the opposite of progressive; it’s reflective of a new regressive status quo to ensure that everyone is equal by holding everyone back.
As expected, outrage ensued. Students who were going to have the privilege of showcasing their games to their professional heroes became furious. More than twice as many students reacted as “angry” or “sad” than “liked” the Facebook post notifying them of the last-minute decision. You see, when most people, gaming aficionados and plebeians alike, hear “Head of Game Design at Blizzard,” they probably think of the colossal impact of World of Warcraft and StarCraft on mainstream culture, not about whether or not said executive is a man or a woman. To further add insult to injury, the only reason the panel had no women was due to scheduling conflicts.
Officially, the event has been postponed to an undisclosed date.
“There was no perfect choice here,” Director of USC Games Tracy Fullerton said. “There was only the choice to stand for one set of values or another. So, I chose the path I believe in. You all are free to disagree, but I think it is the right side of history.”
In essence, “the right side of history” was prioritized over a valuable academic opportunity to advance the intellectual development for male and female students alike. In an industry which is finally beginning to eliminate a sense of otherness for women in games, USC, which has a role at the vanguard of progressivism, has chosen to take two steps back by reconceptualizing gender as an academic and professional liability.
Advancing women’s earning power, professional status and social influence means affording them, and often men as well, as many learning and practical opportunities as possible. Sure, cancelling on industry leaders just four hours before a highly anticipated event may protect the feelings of a few, but it removed a professional opportunity for one of the largest female student communities of game designers in the country and diminished a potential for prestige for the school as a whole.
This is the new dystopia, in which visual representation is more important than the actual progress of women and men alike, in which a word, “diversity,” is valued over real learning and in which snowflake culture has actually manifested itself as a direct adversary of progress. As a woman in a STEM field, but much, much more importantly, as an individual, to this new regressive standard, I say, “no, thank you.” I’ll take progress over preposterousness every time.
Tiana Lowe is a sophomore majoring in math and economics. “Point/Counterpoint” ran Tuesdays.
The value of the USC gaming degree just dropped. Do you think any of these panelists would ever return after a last minute cancellation because they were not the right sex? Do you think they will now hire anybody out of USC and risk getting social justice warriors instead of programmers? Nope.
I have been in business for 20 years, and such an insult is not forgiven very easily out in the real world. The gaming industry is going to take their money, resources, and time to other places. Count on it.
I’m trying to imagine how the male panelist felt when they were told it was cancelled. They had made time in their calendars for this, but their voices were suppressed because of a woman’s scheduling conflict. Imagine if there had been another panel where several women were told to go home because the one guy couldn’t make it.
The men were second-class citizen’s here.
They definitely second-class citizens. It’s incredibly rude to cancel on people like that.
I hope that all the panelists, including the woman, refuse to participate in the re-scheduled event and instead organize an off-campus panel that is not in danger of being cancelled at the whims of a social justice warrior.
The key point in all of this is that the cancellation hurt USC Games’ women students. Did they not have anything to learn from the remaining panellists? Is it not possible that they might have received inspiration from them? Could they not have been entertained by them?
By this logic, a female student should never have a male professor. She could not be moved by a book written by a man. Her life would be diminished.
The “logic” is preposterous.
Beware of those claiming to be on “the right side of history”. They are truly dangerous people.
It is unacceptable for a teacher to affect a student’s dreams. Her decision not affected the university’s reputation but also her students. If the forum was to have a woman’s perspective why did she not effectively handle the situation from the start and invite a majority of women to hear the pitches of the students. Now the university will have to deal with damage control with an industry that will feel sensitive whether or not to say yes or no in the future to attend this setting. The university, and in particular this area, is set up for business and not politics. I have never written a comment in the Daily Trojan and i am a professional in the industry. What I think was done to the students was horrible. There is no other option than to have her suspended from her role or fired from her position.
She HAS to be dismissed. Her position is untenable, unless of course her sort of bigotry is the norm within the USC administration.
That anyone at USC would use “right side of history” without irony justifies seizing all its assets and distributing them to the very very rich, then bulldozing the site and salting the earth.
Unfortunately this only hurts the students at Usc and the university’s reputation. Frankly there did not need to be any issues involved. Just business. The students had games, the needed money, the panel was the next step. Tracy Fullerton needs to be fired or resign for making decision that affects not only the university but also the students.
The Students at USC should be protesting for Tracy Fullerton’s resignation. She’s not looking out for the interests of students, but simply in pushing an agenda.
If Tracy Fullerton hates men so much she should be removed from her post. It is clear that her misandry has totally blinded her judgement.
great article
“the right side of history” i really hope he has trouble sleeping at night. game development is a rich landscape and i’m sorry but there are quite a few men who have made fantastic contributions to the industry they love. discounting everything they have done simply because they were born male, and canceling LAST MINUTE when all of these A-listers had already made work and travel arrangements is an INCREDIBLE display of pandering, and “postponing” probably will not happen after such a shockingly disrespectful gesture on the part of USC. Way to discount all your gaming students male AND female who wanted to learn something and get fired up at the seminar.
There is infinitely more to gaming, game development, and gaming history than GENDER. interactive entertainment is about story telling, and to reduce the entire industry to identity politics is reductive and abusive. right side of history my ass. when the pendulum swings back to LOGIC and REASON and people remember they are free to think for themselves as INDIVIDUALS and not simply as part of a collective grouping, the world will be the better for it. Men have grown out of the culture of thinking of themselves only as men, we are empowered because we are individuals. Women are empowered the same way, and it’s time they stopped silencing those voices. Being born female does not cripple you prompting special treatment and constant propping up, nor does it require perpetual guarding against offense and virtue signaling. Women are not infants.
Stop treating them that way.
Good to know people at USC don’t know what fascism is. It certainly takes a certain amount of brain power for them to think the cancellation of a panel that was entirely within the rights of the people organizing the panel is somehow fascism, just terribly used brain power that helps no one.
Nothing about this is sexist toward men or racist toward white people, so please stop appropriating social concerns to try and pretend you’re the one being oppressed. I’m also glad the entire first page is made up of right-wing bigotry, really makes me feel good about spending four years at USC.
I would like very much for all of you to stop making up stories about snowflake culture and finding whatever “emotionally hysterical” people you can to prop yourselves up as the rational ones in your imaginary war on Christmas, I mean white men.
Cuck
No one cares what you think about anything.
Why don’t you go solve some more of the worlds problems by enforcing mandatory diversity requirements. I’m sure you people are doing a lot of good.
Jerk off
This is what people write when they have lost an argument. Cameron just handed your ass to you.
See earlier comment.
Oh and people who declare themselves to have won arguments are generally in the wrong.
You’re a nobody and it’ll always be that way no matter what you think or say loser.
You forgot the comma before “loser”. Say hey to your mom for me.
As a game industry professional of 21 years, I’m really disappointed in this short-sighted and unprofessional move from any educational institution, let alone an institution with the massive stature that USC commands. Ms. Fullerton has robbed your students (female and male) of access to true legends (this is not hyperbole) of the industry. Professionals in this industry run — even pay — to see leaders like these, male or female, speak on their experience. And to have the opportunity to meet/greet and present ideas to them? Priceless. The fact that 0 of the 7 speakers were female does not represent a non-inclusive event, it represents the current ratio in the games industry. Put your hand in a hat full of game industry names and pull out 7 of them; you will be lucky to pull out more than 0 female names.
Is this unfortunate? Sure. But if Fullerton really wants to change it, cancelling a program that would have benefited the women currently in the program is the exact opposite of logic. She had the opportunity to chip away at that ratio, to inject more women into the industry and change that ratio in the coming years. But instead she chose to shut the door on your female (and male) students and thus take away just one more opportunity for them, and alienate leaders in the space in the process.
My impression of the USC Games program has been seriously compromised; there is a major disconnection between the educational goals and the industry itself, and the students will be the ones receiving this disservice.
Such sacrifices have to be made in the pursuit of mediocriity.
The leaders of the industry should send out a joint message demanding she steps down.
So this is what USC has become? Males have no voice unless there’s a woman in the room to validate them?
And make them a sandwich. There should always be a woman around to get some coffee and make sandwiches.
When I pull up a university newspaper, to read about the “Social Justice Community’s” newest outrage, I have to remind myself that I haven’t pulled up a satirical site. The Onion has become less amusing as the gap between it and the real world has closed:
“College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea Students, Faculty Invited To Freely Express Single Viewpoint”
It is abundantly clear that there will be less and less education at once prestigious institutions like the University of Southern California because of the smothering blanket of political correctness.
It is simply a fact, that over the past five hundred years, virtually all the great art, music and literature, what was once the core curriculum of a liberal arts education, was painted, composed or written by people of European descent, mainly white males. Since while males are now seen as
“white devils” by college professors across the country and the root of all evil by the studies majors, there is less and less that can be taught, all apparently replaced by ersatz knowledge, perhaps written in Swahili or Nahuatl, so it isn’t in the conqueror’s language.
The gaming industry is something as an old curmudgeon that I have little interest in, but this wonderfully inventive and versatile medium was overwhelmingly the product of men and just like the computer industry that made it possible, a small number of pioneering men who bet big on a new technology and it changed the way that young people use their spare time away from work or school and of course, made other technologies possible because of their genius. If the pioneers were mainly men, it may be inconvenient for the Tumblr brigade, the Social Justice mob that creates their own DOS attack on anyone who does not bow down to their rule diktat, but it is a fact.
The fact that USC has cravenly given in to mob rule means yet another scalp has been taken by the maladjusted feministas, and another institution has fallen and can’t get up.
Lazy thinking peppered with cliche. C-
Says one of the foremost paragons of lassitude and drive-by shilling. F-
As someone who assigns the grades, I would suggest that you show some respect to your intellectual superiors and see me in office hours.
Dumb-ass comment. Not funny
Not true. It was hilarious.
Where was Tracy Fullerton when these invitations to industry were going out? Where was Tracy Fullerton when the poster ad was created? How did this advance so far without Fullerton’s knowledge and consent? It seems more than a little suspicious that the panel was cancelled within hours of the highly publicized event. Was this event and its cancellation a premeditated media stunt staged at the expense of students and industry leaders?
To figure out who is in charge of you, find who you can’t criticize. This goes to the top or they wouldn’t get away with it.
Disgusting. What “value” was she supporting? The value that mandates destroy anything that her tribe isn’t a part of? The only value at issue is non-discrimination. So long as no one was barred or discouraged from participating based on sex, then the sex of the participants is a matter of supreme irrelevance.
Yes. Ideas are spawned by active brains, not by closed minds, regardless of surface characteristics.
So the “right side of history” involves fucking your students over because of “Muh Diversity.”
Pathetic.
Wow, the cartoon doesn’t even match the point of the article. Did the editors even give context to the cartoonist? Or just “lack of diversity in video games panel”.
Anyways, great article. Perfectly shows the state of USC Games. I’m all for diversity, but canceling events due to a lack of it shows a lack of respect for people who worked hard to get where they are today.
She will remembered on the dumb side of history.
She will be on the wrong side of employment.
The Interactive Media program has been infested by these lunatics for a while now. Looks like the schism between the film school’s games program and Viterbi’s games program (which I proudly graduated from) has ultimately been a positive for Viterbi, as it shields them from this idiocy.
Fire Fullerton who is politicizing her position
It seems like this is yet another article that didn’t take the full discussion thread into account (with over 100 comments and replies with opinions from all sides) and only took pieces of the discussion to create a very biased opinion and create an issue that was non-existent and tieing all together with a ribbon of “gender.”
Do you know how hypocritical it is to hold a panel that goes against your vision? When articles and awards are given to you for your dedication to being an ambassador and creating positive change?
For a woman with a vision to make it a point to bring not only more women into the field, but also people of color and people who represent the various spectrums present not only in the games industry but in society in general. Oh how terrible. How awful.
So yeah lets make a progressive decision that some people aren’t going to like but that will benefit all of us in the long run. Lets not just recreate the panel, which the panelists were on board with, and to the existing line up, lets include a woman or two but lets also bring in a black developer or executive, oh and a Latino one, maybe a developer who is low income as well, just to give students a wide range of professionals who they can be inspired by and not just try to impress to land an internship an/or a job.
When you have students in the department, like me, who don’t have anything in common with a rich white guy, who do we look up to? To genuinely make a relationship with, not just a superficial fake smile and exchange of business cards in self interest? I wouldn’t be in the program if I hadn’t had a mentor who took me under their wing because they knew where I came from, understood my culture, and wanted me to succeed and be an inspiration to younger people like me.
I’m Hispanic. For a fact, my work and success is an inspiration to Hispanic kids because they can look at me and say, “Hey, You are like me and you understand me. And if you can make it, I can too.” That’s what this is about. I’m tired of people making this a gender issue. It’s not. It has little to do with it.
So, I’m cool with the fact that they will make a new panel. With more people, with more representations across the board. To inspire.
It’s not about you.
It’s about sharing knowledge.
No one on that panel cares about your identity politics & was doing all of you a favor.
I hope they all refuse to come back after such a flagrant case of discrimination against them based solely on their gender.
I disagree. It is about me and all my classmates. It is about sharing knowledge but also about making relationships and networking. That’s how the industry works.
And I disagree with you again. No executive chooses to come to a panel at a school if they didn’t care about the students they are talking to. They weren’t doing anyone a favor. They did it because they wanted to.
They won’t refuse because they were part in the decision of calling the panel off. And you missed my entire point in the previous message. No one was refused anything because of gender. As a collective, they decided that bringing in more people would make for a better panel.
Of course they are doing you a favor. These are highly paid people whose time is extremely valuable. When they chose to come to speak at a collegiate function and not to charge for their time, they are in essence doing the students a favor.
All you have to do is to spend five minutes in the narcissistic world of entertainment, to see how film or recording stars are paid to attend “benefit” events with riders a mile long, flown to and from on corporate jets, to see that when someone who is a major industry figure come to speak, it is a favor.
As a professional and a consultant in another business, when I go to speak at to a non-profit, or to a group of students, without charge, I am doing them a favor. Whether I feel I am giving something back or not, I am doing them a favor, that is why people thank you publicly and privately for taking the time to make the effort.
But that’s a pessimistic and narrow minded way of looking at information sharing. Just because you are in an industry doesn’t make you better than a student who is aspiring to be there. No one is ungrateful. If anything, I’m beyond grateful for all the professionals that have come in to speak to us on a weekly basis.
But I’ll tell you this. Through the program, I was able to get a writer at Ubisoft to be part of my thesis committee. This person flew from Montreal to Los Angeles out of pocket to be at my thesis defense because we form a relationship and they want me to succeed. Sure, technically, you can say he did me a favor. But it’s so much more than that. That’s the kind of relationships and connections we make theough the program.
It doesn’t make them a better person, that’s not what anyone would say, it makes then better in your chosen field Juan. As a student, you are there to learn. Speakers and panels are brought in so that someone younger and less experienced can learn from someone older and more experienced. A professor only knows so much and has often been teaching for years, so he or she should bring in all sorts of interesting people in the field. I never charged to meet with groups or students and if there was an honorarium, I endorsed it back to the group, transportation, that of course was fine, especially by private jet, no one likes commercial aviation if they can avoid it.
This is the problem I find when I visit campuses, finding college freshmen or sophomores who have often never worked at a job, never traveled to any extent and never read widely who feel they know it all, who are going to tell the dean or chancellor to remake the university in their image.
This is why writers like Hemingway went out and lived life, adventurous, perilous lives, then became writers, rather than attending writer’s workshops. Now we have film directors like Tarantino who only watched other movies to make movies, where most of the greats had been to World War I, traveled, lived, then made films. When you get out and knock around the world, you find out how good people have it in the west.
Juan, you are a student there? I’m in the gaming industry. For talented people who get shit done, bullshit like this is anathema. Tracy is a perfect example of a talentless hack being placed in charge and is now enforcing her administrivia agenda on people who actually accomplish things.
Not satisfied with the diversity of this panel? Fix it next time around. That is the logical decision, instead of ruining the day for hundreds of people because the panel doesn’t have someone with breasts. Absolutely ridiculous.
I am a student at the program about to graduate.
I believe Tracy is human. I believe she has made mistakes. I believe she isn’t perfect. But I don’t believe she is talentless. There’s a reason why her game design book is used in major game design programs.
Sure, the panel could have just been changed next time. But it would have been hypocritical. I think that’s what really irked the faculty, not just Tracy.
Again I’d like to reiterate that the panel wasn’t postponed because of lack of women; it was postponed because of a lack of diversity as a whole. What they should have done was to create a panel that included a wide spectrum of industry professionals. But they didn’t. It was their mistake and that’s okay. They’ll learn from all of this, move on, and hopefully won’t let it happen again.
Do you know what the word hypocritical means? Clearly not
Yes, in the real world, it’s who gets things done, who can deliver the product on time, on budget. Most of this is of course nonsense, there will never be an equal number of any racial or ethnic group or sex in any occupation unless it is by totalitarian diktat.
People make their occupational choices based on many factors, so who cares of the number of blacks or women or Asians or Hispanics isn’t exactly how it is in society at large? Are we do order all the Vietnamese out of the nail business in California, the Cambodians out of the donut shops, the East Indians out of the motel business or create a law that fifty percent of the beauticians have to be men and order people from the Philippines out of nursing?
It’s always most amusing that the Diversity Police are only worried about high-paying, sit-on-your-arse-type-at-a-keyboard jobs or glamorous ones like feature film director or CEO, rather than all the dangerous and physical jobs that are virtually all male.
You’re not actually saying anything, just spouting phrases that you’ve heard “it’s about me and my classmates”…
If it was about making relationships then I’d love for you explain why cancelling the panel was a good idea.
I didn’t realize how haaaaaaaard it must be for you to talk to someone who’s a different race or gender then you. Poor you. Identity is so much more important than actual output and quality of work. You’ll fail.
Why can’t you look up to the rich white guy, it’s his position in the industry you should be aspiring to not his life experience outside the games industry/academia.
Only taking the advice of people of the same race/sex as you is quite frankly a bigoted way of doing things.
The panel is call “LEGENDS OF GAMING”, if that latino or black executive that nobody has heard of is just gonna be there for being a token, Whats the point?.
He is not there because he is a legend of gaming, he is there to satisfy the diversity quota. That shit right there is whats insulting and condescending about the SJW logic in this.
Nobody cares if the panel dudes are not gonna add you in facebook or becoming your pals and Best friends forever. If you can’t get the success of a developer because the color of his skin then thats on you.
Like do you think any western dude has anything in common with the culture of Hideo Kojima?. NOBODY CARES.
Is not like because the panelists are from your culture or race that they are gonna make a relationship with you and take you under their wing. Am latino too and from the little i know you i don’t think we would get along.
Jesus Christ, your thoughts are utterly reeking of bigotry and ideological brainwashing.
Get a grip of yourself.
He and the rest of the SJW crowd have clearly been sitting around for years in a circle gripping themselves, that is the problem. The one type of diversity they can’t stand is diversity of opinion.
From Thursday’s Onion:
“College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea Students, Faculty Invited To Freely Express Single Viewpoint”
I disagree. I’m all for diversity of opinion.
But the reality is that the decision happened weeks ago. We had an open forum after the postponement of the event. And we discussed our differences amicably.
And the other reality is that the panel was made for us. Not for any of you. But for students. At the end of the day, the backlash that our department is receiving is irrelevant. The decision happened and a new panel has been made and the event will happen at a later date.
You may claim to be for a diversity of opinion, but on campus after campus, speakers whose opinions differ from the majority view are prevented from speaking, disinvited, or of course blocked from speaking, or shouted down when they try. When the event is cancelled, then postposed with a different slate of speakers to please the activists of the Social Justice world, the mob has of course won.
No, I don’t believe the event was postponed for any type of social justice agenda. It was a judgement call on behalf of our faculty. Also, I’d like to reiterate that all the panelists were involved in the decision.
I can say that of course, when you differ on opinion you will have backlash in some way or another. I personally have had a differing opinions with a few faculty members, including our chair. But that’s okay. It makes the world a colorful place.
What is not okay is the way this has blown up to attack our chair personally. It’s just inhumane. We as a student body are over it.
Of course it was a social agenda. The legends of gaming were unfortunately white, so the panel was not allowed to speak, the “judgment call” was made because of racism, because the speakers were so clearly white, thus not “diverse.” Now, in reality their opinions, their life experiences could be incredibly varied, much more varied than if there were register, authentic minorities present, because our diversity comes from our experiences, our values, our thoughts, our dreams, not some surface characteristic.
How is it even possible that you are this stupid?
A judgement call ? Yes a judgement call based on the need to advance a social agenda. The head f the department said as much and noted that she wanted to be on the right side of history. ( which of course means rigid gender based quotas being enforced on any type of event).
Not true
You are so articulate. There have been instance after instance of speakers being shouted down, prevented from speaking, blocked, countless. The left does not want debate or to exchange ideas, it wants a monoculture.
This is why usc republicans opposed Angrla Davis coming to USC? Be consistent. Intelligent conservatives are more than welcomed. Diversity of thought is great but we should be shamelessly elitist in stopping clowns from polluting the discussion.
That’s funny, I assumed the panel was made up of computer industry legends, not clowns like yourself.
As someone often invited to take part in such things, I often also ask a female colleague to attend with me or sometimes in my place. Women often don’t put themselves forward and men tend to select people like themselves for such panels. It’s both good manners and good practice. Too many men- as we can see from this comments section- are long on chutzpah and short on anything intelligent to say.
They oppose Angela Davis because she is a fucking moron. But you do make her look intelligent. Maybe you should help her out by being on a panel with her.
That’s the sixth reply. Angela Davis is considerably smarter than you and the “conservative” speakers who were protested.
How do I reek of bigotry and idea logical brainwashing?
I’d like to understand your personal anger towards me and how it relates to the big picture.
Bob is intimidated because he is not as smart as you. This he is acting out.
I have no personal anger towards you, sweetie. I have animosity towards your bigotry and demanding the world revolves around it.
Juan – you cannot “genuinely form a relationship” with someone because they are white? That is an extremely racist statement dude.
I never said that? Please don’t take my words out of context to create an issue that is not there.
But I am most inspired by people who are not white because, most often than not, they struggle and persevere at a larger degree.
I can and have formed genuine relationships with white people. White people have mentored me. But do I form deeper connections with people who have a similar background to mine, aside from skin color and culture, who are low income, who are disabled or have health issues, who have not lived their lives in prosperity and who are constantly looked down upon in prejudice? You bet I do.
“I am most inspired by people who are not [race, gender]” – Juan 2016
Dude, that is one of the most bigoted comments I’ve ever seen.
I really believe you just want to argue and attack me personally, I’m being very respectful to you. I’m sorry that you can’t see things from any other perspective other than your own.
We can go on a tangent and talk about race, privilege, whitewashing, etc. if you want.
I’m not attacking you, just pointing out your bigotry. BTW, Jeff Kaplan, who is on the panel, started at Blizzard as a quest designer. He was just a working dude who played too much Everquest. He had no game design degree from a prestigious college.
In that respect, you are far more privileged than he is. In fact, on a world scale, any US college student is more privileged than literally billions of other kids. You need to seriously check your privilege.
I am inspired by whoever inspires me, no matter what their race, sex or national origin. I am no more inspired by someone because they are a minority.
Frederick Douglass was born a slave, almost completely self-educated, get he became one of the most articulate spokesmen against slavery and for human equality. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln was also self-educated, from the most humble of beginnings, yet he rose to the greatest heights. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand was born to the planter class, a patrician, yet he inspires me as well, despite his failings.
I am constantly inspired by figures from the past, but while I am perhaps more impressed by some of those who came from very modest backgrounds, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, the people who make those sort of leaps can be any skin color.
There are millions of very affluent, patrician minorities today, whose children have every advantage and millions of poor whites still who grow up disadvantaged. It’s a very complex world today, it’s changed massively in my own lifetime. When I was a young guy and spent time in East Germany, I saw just how bad life could be for everyone, all of them white, in a totalitarian society and understood how good people in the modern west have it, even those who start with little.
Great. That has nothing to do with the cancellation of a panel hours before hand because one person got sick and thus the mandatory diversity requirements were not met. That is mental.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen written.
Truly.
“University of Texas cancels all-women panel to stay on the right side of history”
Once again, USC makes the news for all the wrong reasons. Confirms my decision to no longer donate to the university, though.
Good comment below an article on this topic at one of the major news outlets: “Liberals need to uninstall ‘Stupid 2.0’.”
By the way, how much longer do you think USC is going to remain at #1 if it makes a habit of alienating the industry like this for clownish reasons?
USC climbed the rankings when it started becoming more liberal. It’s no coincidence. Look at the litany of stupid emotionality on here from other posters.
“USC climbed the rankings when it started becoming more liberal.”
*Some* of the rankings. And of course it did. Look who’s doing the ranking.
In some of the rankings by European groups, which place a higher emphasis on papers published and research, USC doesn’t make the top 100.
Lazy answer. What elements of the rankings bias it towards liberalism? Would you include metrics like student yield? Most institutions ranked higher are more liberal than USC.
Of course it’s a lazy answer, it was in response to a lazy implication.
And this is hardly the forum for a long, digressive discussion about ranking methodologies. I’m not particularly interested in having one, either.
So you have nothing.
Please stop with the inane bullshit
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
“the right side of history”? You have an unjustifiably high opinion of yourself.
This decision did affect the hundreds of students that would have attended, and likely learned a lot, from this panel.
This woman is an example of what happens when you place vapid, talentless, hacks in charge of people who get things done.
Artists, designers, engineers, create the games and technology of this world. Regressives like Tracy just impede their progress.
And yet she probably earns more than you. Shut your pie hole and try learning a thing or two
Your posts are always precociously fact and idea free, the equivalent of a drive by shooting, rather than an honest attempt to contradict what someone actually wrote. What the person above earns or doesn’t earn has nothing to do with whether canceling the panel because it had too many white “legends” on it or not has nothing to do with one’s earning. It’s a non sequitur.
Good Latin. I was responding to this fool’s ad hominem to Tracy, which was totally without cause or merit.
Please stop being a moron
please don’t speak to your betters until I give you permission.
Your posts are the equivalent of a lonely MRA jacking off into the void and pretending anything you do is valued or matters. Yes, I’m responding to your post, but not because you’ve struck a nerve, more because you put a face to a problem festering deep within culture and I’m going to castigate you like the personality-less parroting cipher that you are.
And you, a paragon of virtue signaling, who is unable to write a four line reply without relying on pornographic imagery, like a modern film writer who is so devoid of ideas or intelligence that he has to film each “comedy,”scenes of retching, belching or passing gas, who cares what you post?
You are clearly unable to write an articulate or cogent response to the matter at hand, the fact that a panel selected to represent “legends” of the gaming industry had to be cancelled because it was made up of white men.
Now, if a similar panel had been assembled at a major university for a course or class that was made up of all women, or all black men and then it had to be cancelled because there were too many African-Americans or too many women, you would be the first person to be leading the usual social justice mob in the direction of the organizers.
Deciding that there are too many male or white “legends” on a gaming panel represents the rankest form of prejudice and is politically correctness run amok.
And “personality-less cipher” makes no sense at all in the context of a series or posts and counter-posts on a subject such as this. Everyone here is anonymous by the nature of the medium, thus not a complete personality, thus a cipher. Making a persuasive argument is not a matter of “personality,” nor is it a matter of relying on sexual insult or assuming someone’s identification with a particular movement or group that I was previously unaware of, it requires a little more thought and intelligence than you are clearly able to muster with your remaining synapses.
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
Benjamin Franklin
Decided not to read that, not worth my time. I’m sorry you have to live as yourself.
Typical cuck.
A lot of people could have learned from that panel, but it was interrupted for bs reasons that have nothing to do with game design.
Would have been better if they had managed to have ONE woman on the panel. It is not hard. We have a problem with diversity on many panels- I believe that there is a humorous tumblr which lists them all- but a little bit of effort would help. Women can give insights in being a woman in the profession that men cannot. It is a shame that the panel did not go ahead, I agree, but there needs to be MUCH more effort made providing guidance for all kinds of people who want to break into the profession.
dumb
dumber
You’re just a no-dick/effeminate, white-guilt cuck. You’re the same as a hippie. Get the fuck out of here bitch boy, 4chan has your number now.
I love keyboard warriors who are probably thanking their mom for bringing soup down to the basement and whack off to brony porn. They read Ayn Rand and imagine themselves spurned geniuses but in reality their only act of great creativity is jacking off into their sock drawer. Loser.
If there was hypothetically a power panel consisting of former presidents of the United States, would it be cancelled due to a lack of gender diversity? Would the information and experience such heads of state could impart be rendered worthless and unwelcome just because they happened to be male? Would the school seriously say “that’s great, but don’t bother”?
This is idiotic. There ARE women in the video games industry who could have attended.
False. Women were invited, they couldn’t come. The cancelation (and to a greater extent your pathetic attempts to defend the asinine) are what’s idiotic.
She wasn’t hired to be the head of the PC police. Fire her
A student should sue the moment they allow an all female panel to go forward as it shows precisely what this is really about — hatred of men. Equality seems to be the opposite of what these feminists want. They’re just bigots who now have a bit of power. Time for the law to step in and kick these people in the teeth.
“an industry which is finally beginning to eliminate a sense of otherness for women in games”
The only sense of otherness they might have had is due to their low numbers of participation – most guys who like games try as hard as they can to get their lady friends / romantic interests into games, but it most often doesn’t work.
And the industry isn’t eliminating the “sense of otherness”, since the only way it actually exists is in their low participation numbers, and that hasn’t really been changing (if you don’t count phone minigames like Angry Birds).
2016 Princeton Review rates Utah as the top game design program, folloed by USC.
I hope for USC’s sake we see alumni and donors rebuke this political agenda pushing, just as Oxford alumni did when groups demanded the removal of a Cecil Rhodes statue from campus. Look at the fallout at Mizzou and realize you’re devaluing a USC degree.
This is stupidity.
To compare USC to Oxford? Yes, it’s certainly a stretch. The article also erroneously claims USC’s game design program is ranked first by the Princeton Review, though Utah is ranked higher.
You mischaracterize the Oxford response to fit into your preconceived agenda.
Did I not just say that? Foolish to expect the actions of a world-class university to be mirrored at an overpriced California daycare.
Having attended both, I should say so.
Tiana Lowe gives me hope for the future. Tracy Fullerton makes me shudder for the future. I hope the Tiana Lowes defeat the Tracy Fullertons…
Excellent article. Denying students the chance to learn hurts everybody. I hope the author reads this comment – you just illustrated the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals want equality of outcome, so their policies mean everyone will be equally poor. Conservatives want equality of opportunity, so their policies mean people can rise to the level they desire. Your article is a condemnation of liberalism.
Conservatives don’t want equality of opportunity. They want to preserve existing hierarchy. Liberals want equality of opportunity and some socialists want equality of outcome.
Might want to call it a day dude. You are getting destroyed here.
Haha. The first good argument in these comments will be the first. Just a bunch of bottle middle-age men with erectile dysfunction who listen to too much Limbaugh and are not very smart
You are criticizing “arguments” while making dick jokes. Also, age-discriminition is bigotry dude. Check your privilege.
It is MY privilege to make you look like a contemptible oxygen burglar.
And its my privilege to point out that if you don’t know the meaning of words like privilege you should not really be using them. Is English your first language?
Also, it is “it’s”. I could give you some English lessons if you can afford it?
Why are you so stupid?
That is the fifth really insipid response to my comment which don’t measure up. Stop spamming this section.
You’re feeding the troll.
So, the next nursing career panel that is over-represented by women should be cancelled too. Got it.
You can’t have an academic panel unless at least one of the panelists is a woman.
Will the converse of this new “rule” also apply to future panels discussing feminism and gender issues?
Probably. There are men studying feminism and a variety of topics.
FIFY: There are “men” studying feminism and a variety of topics
Unfortunately they’re studying (and likely supporting) a movement where the most vocal members hate men (including those men who support it). These vocal members push for unfair biases against men in many facets of life, from education to law enforcement. I’m sure you’re one of the ones who are supporting this movement, considering your previous comments.
How does it feel to support a movement that says if a woman accuses you of a crime, and you deny that you committed that crime, your gender should be weighed against you in deciding who to believe. And I sincerely doubt it will stop with “men”. As soon as the white cis-gendered males are crushed, I’m sure they’ll turn their attention to the males of other races, then the trans folk who identify as male. It isn’t about equality, no matter how much they quack that line. Hiding behind a dictionary definition they wrote is one of the ways they attempt to make their movement unassailable. If they were truly for equality, they would try to dismantle the biases in every place where there is not equality. But they don’t. They push for more biases, more segregation (what they call ‘safe spaces’), more power, more control. You can argue against this if you like, but the proof is quite visible. Although I’m sure you’ll either ignore this or throw out a one-line insult that has no bearing on the argument I’ve presented.
These people do not hate men. This is a lazy stereotype, betraying a closed mind.
This isn’t feminism. It is exactly about equality. And I am a white, cis-gendered male
“Unfortunately they’re studying (and likely supporting) a movement where the most vocal members hate men (including those men who support it)”
I don’t understand why you choose to live in this fantasy universe you’ve made up, sounds awful.
Stop cucking here.
What was Tracy Fullerton trying to accomplish by denying a group of industry leaders from presenting at USC due to possessing the wrong genitalia?
The article says: “There was no perfect choice here,” Director of USC Games Tracy Fullerton said. “There was only the choice to stand for one set of values or another. So, I chose the path I believe in. You all are free to disagree, but I think it is the right side of history.”
It is my understanding that Tracy Fullerton’s job is to advance the USC games department, not to be a social advocacy leader. She may believe she is on the right side of history, but she is certainly on the wrong side of her job description. She should transfer to another department if her highest priority is a social agenda she wants to impart on the world. As the article correctly points out, she deprived a whole lot of women (and men) games majors from making connections and advancing in the field. This is an embarrassment for such a highly regarded program.
Best comment by far. Bravo.
“It is my understanding that Tracy Fullerton’s job is to advance the USC games department, not to be a social advocacy leader.”
You’d be wrong. Fullerton is quoted in a googleable article as saying:
“That was part of a huge push,” said Tracy Fullerton, chair of USC’s
Interactive Media and Games Division. “That has been on my agenda since I
became chair.”
She sounds like a raging bigot.
Sounds like she might be on the wrong side of the law as well. The article can be found on the AAUW site.
That’s not as clear as you might think it is.
Who put [having more female than male freshmen] on her agenda, her employers at USC, or herself?
In either case, it’s public knowledge that she considers it her job. If her employer disagreed, it’d have put a stop to it by now.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, I am hopeful it can clear USC’s games department of the cancer and fungus that is @kinojabber.
Class of 82.
Ah, back when USC was far less academic.
Social advocacy is of course the first priority of almost every teacher and administrator today. They have been marinated on politically correct nonsense for their entire lives, so any actual education that occurs in the process of indoctrination is a bug, not a feature.
This is factually not true. Have you attended a university?
It is factually true. Clearly you are the one that is lacking in understanding.
As someone who has and does work in various universities, this is definitively not true. It’s paranoid nonsense.
You are part of the problem.
So that’s a “I know nothing about this but I have a paranoid and ideological worldview so I am going to continue spouting nonsense despite direct evidence from someone who knows”. Bravo. Thank you for confirming every stereotype. Why are you SO scared to think for yourself?
You made a claim. That’s not evidence. The irony is, that while asking him to believe what you say, you say he’s scared to think for himself. Yet the alternative is to blindly believe…
The evidence of our claims is in this very article. It’s exemplified in the Mizzou staff, and UC Santa Barbara professor of Feminist Studies, Mireille Miller-Young. Portland Community college’s ‘whiteness’ event.
The advocacy is in the very claims that they make. 1 in 5 raped or sexually assaulted on campus. The fun-house mirror view they promote of the wage-gap. Patriarchy and privilege theory. It’s professors giving students course credit to attend protests.
“Mr. Huish, a Dalhousie professor, is perhaps the first university instructor in Canada to award 20% of his students’ grade on “active protest”
“Professor Beth Lueck at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (UWW) sent a memo to her freshman English class offering students extra credit for attending an organized rally to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin System.”
“MU’s Peace Studies chairman John Galliher and other faculty in his department have publicly recommended students skip classes to protest the “arrogant and stupid” war in Iraq.– and are willing to give extra credit to those who go – and to remember those who do not. An MU Biology professor even gave students extra credit to protest a David Horowitz speech.”
David Rolfe Graeber is a London-based anthropologist and anarchist activist. He is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
His activism includes protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan, “We are the 99 percent”.
~~~
Administrators, including Minow and Harvard President Drew Faust, said they’re committed to making the Ivy League college a more inclusive place. Last year, the school created a working group on diversity and inclusion. It recommended more diversity at the college and better support for affinity-based students groups on campus and in multicultural centers, among other proposals.
~~~
Academiamatters dot com
In the 1960s, they began to reflect society at large. The humanities and social sciences expanded rapidly. Women, minorities, immigrants and working class Canadians came to campuses in record numbers and, later, showed up at the front of the classroom. With some exceptions, faculty members and administrators stood behind student radicals and protestors. Many faculty members used the classroom and their writing to support hitherto unpopular causes.
Faculty members, graduate students and undergraduates routinely pressed at the boundaries of conventional debate, often taking their commitment to causes, principles and policy matters into the public realm. The public pressed back, complaining about Marxist teachers, feminist “propaganda,” pro-Aboriginal courses, and overt advocacy for causes from environmentalism to homosexual rights.
While professors probably devoted too much effort to their university affairs and too little to broader societal debates and issues, the reality was that universities were leading a social revolution, one that had profound implications for Canada and much of the world.
In some instances they get paid (and often paid very well) for this work; in other instances, particularly with community and not-for-profit groups, their contributions are pro bono, with some pay-off in terms of peer-reviewed publications and merit pay. With so many applied researchers and teachers on campus—from engineering to accounting, from nursing to marketing—it only follows logically that the campus life would tip away from “pure” research to more practical, externally connected activity. The idea that universities are now (if they ever were) places where faculty members and their students explored the world of ideas unfettered by interference or influence from external agencies and organizations has been sharply diminished.
While it is wrong to idealize the “old days” into some form of intellectual paradise, the reality is that there used to be a greater connection with the world at large, less preoccupation with collecting the accolades of the international academic profession, and (but only for a few decades) more willingness to speak truth to power, or at least to the powers out of favour with the academy.
This was far too long but David Graeber is great. His book on Debt was wonderful and really destroyed Menger’s theory on the origins of money and Austrian economics writ large.
the problem with social advocacy is it attempts to teach us hate in the name of love. Jesus, Buddah, Muhammad, Gandhi, MLK, you name it. would all be rolling over in their grave. THE POINT HAS BEEN MISSED.
Very silly
The Students should be demanding her resignation. She clearly cares more about her diversity agenda then the students.
These are not at odds.
She cancelled an event, just hours before it was set to begin, that could have provided students with important insight into the games industry and the potential to make connections because the event didn’t have any female panelist. I’m sorry, but it’s pretty clear that Tracy Fullerton desire to see diversity overrides important educational opportunities for students.
Since gender is a now considered to be a social construct, couldn’t they have just gotten one of the men to check off the “transgender” box and one ahead with the panel?
Dumb
Yes you are, and your replies clearly show it!
Take your hateful transphobia somewhere else, bigot.
Clever. If he self-identifies as a female, it’s all good.
Oh wait. None of the men would do such a thing because it would mean a life of being hounded by SJWs.
If one or more of the male attendees had only self-identified as a woman after the cancellation was announced, then the panel could’ve proceeded as planned.
Dumb
I’m sorry, was that a rebuttal of some sort?
You’re like a child who wanders into a conversation….
Dumb
Clearly, there is no diversity among the faculty. Demand that the no teaching continues until the faculty is fifty-percent conservative.
and yet this seems to be the only diversity you care about…. Strange that!
I don’t care about diversity. At all.
White man, amiright?
“Diversity,” in the academic context, is usually a euphemism for affirmative action, itself a euphemism for discrimination–variously racial, ethnic, gender or sexual preference based–in favor of groups viewed as disadvantaged. In the employment context, a diversity hire is someone hired in part because he is black, or she is female, or …. .
What I find particularly irritating about this usage is that those who adopt it are typically opponents of actual diversity. In the academic context, what matter are ideas. Two professors with different gender or skin color but the same views provide less relevant diversity than two professors of the same gender or skin color but sharply opposed views.
Supporters of “diversity” try to obscure this by arguing that a different racial or gender background leads to a different viewpoint. There may be cases where this is true, although it is hard to see its relevance to most academic fields. But in such cases, favoring prospective hires whose work shows a different and original viewpoint is surely more sensible than favoring members of minorities in the hope that they will turn out to provide a different viewpoint.
In fact, at least in my observation, the people and departments most inclined to favor “diversity” in the conventional sense are among those least likely to want to hire professors whose viewpoints differ from the consensus. What they want are people of the desired gender or skin color who agree with them.” – David Friedman
Yes, this is precisely the point I have been making in my posts. There is nothing special about sitting next to someone from a different race or ethnic background who views and experiences similar to your own. Only someone who is permanently stuck in 1965 would not understand that there are millions of black Americans or Asians or Hispanics out living in the suburbs with the rest of America, whose life experience differs very little from their neighbors. Consequently, someone who is white from South Africa, educated in England or France could add diversity to a faculty to someone from a minority group who is a second generation professor for example. Real diversity is based on one’s experiences, education, thoughts and philosophy, not on skin color or ethnicity.
“Under the guise of “diversity training,” the intolerance of the political Left has penetrated corporate America. Initially implemented to both insulate companies from lawsuits while fostering a more harmonious working environment, corporate diversity training has turned the twenty-first century workplace into a war zone. Throughout the last decade, corporate diversity departments and well-paid external “diversity consultants” have instituted training programs specifically designed to enforce political correctness in corporations.
The demand for conformity inherent to these programs is undeniable. Despite their stated purpose, corporate “diversity” departments have demonstrated a fundamental lack of tolerance for any diversity in employee thought and have made basic decency in the workplace a matter of swallowing political correctness. Employing behavior modification techniques popular with totalitarian regimes, they have spent the last decade intimidating and indoctrinating employees.
Before many corporate diversity programs begin their campaign of employee behavior modification, a workshop facilitator often attempts to identify the employees most in need of re-education. For example, the opening exercise from a diversity program used by AT&T, Chevron and Nabisco works as follows. When the workshop begins, employees must sit in a circle and give an immediate “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” response to statements provided by a workshop facilitator on subjects such as affirmative action, inter-racial marriage and AIDS in the workplace.
According to the program’s creator, the statements are designed to provoke a “gut” response, so that the facilitator can essentially gain insight into each employee’s susceptibility to the message of political correctness. If any employees’ responses “indicate confusion or bias” or seem incompatible with the ideology being presented by the workshop, facilitators are urged to “waste no time in seeking help from a diversity consultant, corporate attorney or other human resource facilitators.”1 In other words, Maoist self-criticism circles have come to the office.” From: “The Corporate Diversity Scam”
By: Ryan O’Donnell
“White man, amiright?”
Must you really stereotype everyone, @jon?
Yes, because of of course on the most vile and pernicious racist actually believes that one’s skin color, ethnicity or racial origin dictate the way one thinks or the content of their character. True diversity comes from one’s thoughts, one’s views, one’s own experiences, none of which one’s outward characteristics determine, unless one is of course an adherent of some sort of discredited racial determinist ideology from the 1920s.
Most of who live in the real world, the world of 2016, in Southern California, Paris, London, New York, Seattle or other places I have landed in my life are surrounded by people from every racial, ethnic and civilizational background imaginable. They are all just people.
There is nothing neither negative, nor positive that accrues to a workplace environment, nor an educational one by being surrounded by people who have varied physical characteristics.
There is a shop I go to when I am in California that has about eight employees, the owner is of Japanese descent, there is a girl of Laotian descent, white female, a Mexican-American male, a white male who is Jewish and a young black man. No, to someone reptilian, this absolutely random assembly would be a diversity specialist’s wet dream, a model for the rest of the world to follow. But in reality, despite their varied racial and ethnic backgrounds and the representation of the two sexes, there is little diversity at all, because all of them grew up in the same, small ring of suburbs, went to the same public schools and the same public universities. So, in terms of life experiences, educational and cultural background, they are all quite similar and so you could have the same number of people, all white, all Asian, all black from a variety of backgrounds and actually have a much more diverse workplace.
Only a stone cold racist, one who should be wearing a pointy little hat believe that one’s surface characteristics create diversity, determine what one believes or how one acts.
Tl;dr
Your a credit to your costume.
It’s “you’re”. “Your” is a possessive.
@jon: “Tl;dr”
(laughing) You can’t make five paragraphs? That about says it all.
It’s pretty glaring. The usual number is 0%.
“You can’t have an academic panel unless at least one of the panelists is a woman”.
Explain to me how this maxim applied generally and not selectively leads to anything but disaster.
So in the name of diversity, it’s OK to be sexist against men? Suppose the conference had been about hip hop and all the panelists where black and male, would that get cancelled? I doubt it. Diversity is the enemy! Diversity destroys people’s ability to think as individuals.
“Diversity is the enemy! Diversity destroys people’s ability to think as individuals.”
And diversity reduces social cohesiveness. At least, it does according to research by Robert Putnam, at Harvard. This idea that diversity ought to be a primary goal anywhere in the university environment, is mostly just a tool of manipulation and guilt relief among the Kumbaya crowd.
Yeah, as much as people like Al Sharpton anger me, the white PC class are even more infuriating. Did you hear the story of the white kid who got attacked for wearing dreadlocks? The irony is that kid is a huge liberal, majoring in Environmental Science, but some black woman got offended over his hair. Really? I don’t get offended when black people dye their hair blond, or use hair straighteners, or bleach their skins. I’m not a fan of white people going to the tan salon, but it’s none of my business, it’s not my skin after all.
I don’t know how or when PC will end. It’s just too bad that the people with positions of power are PC. That’s why I’m voting for Trump, maybe he can make political incorrectness popular again.
I don’t think you understood Putnam.
“I don’t think you understood Putnam.”
There’s no question that Putnam’s results showed that diversity damages social cohesion, especially among particular groups.
Making broad statements like yours is a political tactic, not an intellectual comment.
Well he talks about bridging and bonding capital. Both are to be encouraged. He also blames TV for a precipitous drop in social capital. Would you expropriate Time Warner Cable?
It is diversity of ideas that matter, not some surface characteristic or whether the person has male or female sex organs. Only the most primitive creature thinks that there is some great benefit to seeing faces that don’t look like theirs. These people are all living in the past, in Selma, in 1963, not in the real world the rest of us live in.
Precisely, Johnathan, it’s the diversity of ideas that matters, along the ability to evaluate them.
Thanks for the thoughts Mr. SellingTheSecondAmendment, but unfortunately nothing about this is sexist against men so you’ve just wasted my time.
Really? A panel discussion can’t be held because there’s no woman to validate the men, and that’s not sexist? Pretty sure it is.
No, I’m sorry, you might be pretty sure but not validating men when they dominate the industry is not sexist.
Chicken goes CUCK!
This “joke” wasn’t funny the first time. Some people just don’t get humor; you’d do better just to stop trying.
Another self-hating white man, or a woman pretending to be a man. Lowest form of scum.
Hopefully all the game devs who were going to attend this event end up backing out of this train wreck now. I wouldn’t attend if it were me.
Did you hear that sound? It was the value of your gaming degrees at USC falling. Do you think these panelists will ever come back to USC again? Never, after such an insult. Also do you think these Legends of gaming will ever anyone now from USC and risk getting some SJW like Tracy in their rank?. Nope.
She just did immeasurable dame to her department and to the students. If you guys were smart, you would demand her resignation.
Your coursework WILL be gender studies. I don’t care if you want to program video games. Check your privilege!
Stupid
Don’t use ableist language when talking to me, cishet scum.
You are not as funny as you hope you are.
Boohoo. Write a Tumblr about it.
Don’t use Tmblr. Thanks for playing.
“You are not as funny as you hope you are.”
I thought it was pretty funny. The only problem, is that this is USC, which means its hard to tell whether @metroid is lampooning Political Correctness, or practicing it. It’s a sad statement about how far USC has fallen.
As satire, it’s pretty funny, though.
Usc is the highest ranked it has ever been. The bums lost, Lebowski
Ah, you’re @jon… that’s why….
Lost what, exactly? Do you even know?
At the same time, are you under the impression that another embarrassment at USC making the national news is somehow “winning?”
“You all are free to disagree, but I think it is the right side of history.”
No, wrong, I am not free to disagree. This is the problem. If I disagree, I potentially put my career and my livelihood at risk due to people like _you_ who have no compunction against using social shaming and no platforming tactics against people who _do_ disagree. People like _you_, who make disagreement impossible, make violence inevitable.
Get some therapy for that paranoia there.
Brandon Eich would like to have a word with you, and Timothy Hunt is waiting in the wings, as is the European Space Agency guy who wore the wrong shirt while landing a probe on a comet.
It isn’t paranoia, people have lost their jobs over speech, and it is just going to get worse.
I think it’s Brendon Eich. But your point is well-taken. The SJW mobs are destroying careers left and right.
Cuck cuck cuck! Goes the SJW chicken!
You are a fool of the highest order.
Says the cuck.
Not as funny as you think it is.
Poor baby.
Stop flirting with me.
People like Tracy Fullerton are all for tolerance and diversity until someone has an opinion that differs from theirs.Then their hypocrisy kicks in and you feel the wrath of their bigotry.
Will diversity be applied to emergency medical treatment?
Harrison Bergeron, is happening now.
I hope the program director is left to bleed out at a hospital because they cannot find a staff that is “diverse” enough to treat her.
Wow.
I wanted to include cancer going from stage 2 to stage 4 because the onocology staff was not diverse enough.
Shall I?
I will mock her as she is dying in hospice then make sure her death is pure agony as the pain mangement team is not diverse enough.
Well, if we are lacking a moron, we’ll give you a call.
They’ve got you fam. They’re never running out.
There should be a comma after “you” and before “fam”. Moron.
Not really darling.
And a comma before “darling”. Geez.
I don’t see it honey.
Wow Tracy Fullerton sounds like a total self righteous asshole to pull this kind of stunt. The gender of the experts makes this event problematic?!? So we are invalidating their presence because a woman expert couldn’t make it. What a totally sexist view of what is considered the right side of history.
I hope this person apologizes for putting their personal agenda/ politics/ feelings before the success of their students.
I hope she is injuried in a car accident and they can cancel the emergency surgery because the surgical team is not diverse enough.
You really are a blittering idiot.
Is blittering like blithering but with added glitter?
Found the cuck!
If a hip hop event was cancelled because Eminem, Macklemore, or Vanilla Ice couldn’t make it, you’d be pissed off and you know it.
We already have Dr Dre
That is not the point. The point is that events shouldn’t be cancelled just because they don’t have enough diversity. The football program for example doesn’t have diversity, they’re all jocks. Get it? Diversity is stupid.
Perhaps instead she should refuse to take any medication that were not developed by a diverse enough company then?
There is no medication for “stupid”. You should give up now.
Well written Tiana!
I’m with you … as a two time graduate of USC in the STEM field, I always enjoyed the opportunities that USC gave me to learn … after all, isn’t that why students attend college. It is disheartening that this event was cancelled due to a singular person’s view of the “right side of history” … I’m sure that 20 years from now Tracy will realize that she over exaggerated this concern and that she took away an opportunity from her colleagues to learn. I’d even bet that the three Gents who were going to take time our of their busy schedules to promote their industry aren’t evil … only trying to enhance other like-minded individual’s growth … to those individuals, I apologize for the cancellation … USC is not sending the right message here.
Good to know that anyone ANYWHERE can simply say “I’m on the right side of history” to justify their actions/decisions. What a fucking moron.
Right back at you, Sparky.
You have a problem with what Block posted? Exactly what?
I’m not a part of his echo chamber. SJWs don’t like outsiders.
BECAUSE IT’S 2015!
Well, it worked for those first fascists didn’t it? Their thousand years of world domination lasted what, twelve, years, but they all knew they they were on the right side of history until the end. These “administrators” and the “Social Justice” lynch mob is bringing a once great culture to its knees. The rejection of someone, their ideas, their inventions, their art, their literature, based on their sex, their ethnicity, their racial characteristics, is always evil, no matter whether its fascistic practitioners claim the moral high ground or not. They are noxious, vile and evil creatures who want to poison all discourse, to pit race against race, sex against sex and ethnicity against ethnicity.
Hitler said the same thing.
i just can’t anymore man, i just can’t
The most innovative indie game in recent time is Superhot, and that was developed by an all white, all male team from Poland who never had to take a single class on diversity. In contrast the people behind Sunset were as diverse as you can imagine, and all it got them was a trip to bankruptcy court.
Diversity has become a racket. Shit devs make shit games, shit journos praise the shit, and Gamers are left holding the bill.
This exactly. I unfortunately gave Gone Home a chance and it was one of the worst gaming experiences I’ve ever had in my life. There are free to play games like Modern Combat 5 that are 1000x better than that trash. I’ll stick with AAA and some Android/handheld games from now on.
I’ve come to the same conclusion. Diversity has become a social justice billy-club to “remind” us plebes who is in control. The Japanese had the right of it.
It always has been, there is no particular value at looking across a boardroom table and seeing a black face, a female face or a Hispanic face, over a number of similar faces.
It would take the reptilian brain of an activist to believe that a number of people from different racial or ethnic groups bring something special to the table because of their surface characteristics, right? These markers do not make us thing a certain way, do they?
I could assemble a group of all white males or females from eight different countries, regions and backgrounds that would be much more diverse than a group of eight people of different racial and ethic groups that all grew up in Southern California or London or some other area with lots of ethnic and racial diversity.
There is simply no provable advantage, nor disadvantage to having a “diverse” work force or educational institution, none. It is only the malformed, maladjusted among us, especially the guilt-stricken young white person who has been marinated in Diversity and other myths, who must constantly pat themselves on the back for knowing people of different backgrounds. For those of us, like myself who grew up with a wide range of friends, whose friends and families have married across old racial and ethnic lines, its part of life, nothing to get excited about either way.
True diversity comes from a diversity of experiences and opinion, something that is sorely lacking in the modern university.
It’s not. There is a lot of diversity of thought in the modern university. One reads everything from Burke to Marx and everything in between.
and then protests in favor of Marx, or is silenced.
Utter tripe
Ahem. UMass Amherst.
I am not writing about a reading list Professor Drive-By, I am wiring of the ones who direct the courses. There is copious evince of a steady leftward drift in liberal arts education. There are even a number of professors and administers from across the political spectrum who have formed Heterodox Academy to combat the new orthodoxy.
American universities have leaned left for a long time. That is not a serious problem; as long as there are some non-leftists in every field and every department, we can assume that eventually, someone will challenge claims that reflect ideology more than evidence.
But things began changing in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation (which had a fair number of Republicans) retired and were replaced by the Baby Boom generation (which did not). In the 15 years between 1995 and 2010 the academy went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. (The 12% in 2014 who were more conservative were mostly made up of professors in schools of engineering and other professional schools; the percent conservative for the major humanities and social science departments is closer to 5%. For more data on these trends and the rising imbalance:
The dangers of orthodoxy to the academy are many:
We do our colleagues students a disservice by not challenging their cherished beliefs. We fail as colleagues and as scholars when we allow unjustified dogmas or simply insufficiently justified claims go unchallenged.
We fail as teachers to teach students the most important skill — how to think. When we shield them from strong counter-arguments on the issues they care most about, we set them up for confusion and anger when they later encounter people who think differently.
By failing to contest inadequately justified dogmas, we risk advancing solutions that have no effect. For example, if a particular inequality does not result primarily from prejudice, and we engage in prejudice reduction efforts, we will fail to reduce that inequality.
Promoters of these orthodoxies often create an environment of intolerance for diversity of ideas and dissent in the very institution in which free exchange of ideas is its raison d’etre. Free speech and the exploration of unsettling ideas is threatened on many campuses If you think that goes too far, look at this post regarding the extent to which people have been intimidated by
The dangers of orthodoxy to the academy are many:
We do our colleagues students a disservice by not challenging their cherished beliefs. We fail as colleagues and as scholars when we allow unjustified dogmas or simply insufficiently justified claims go unchallenged.
We fail as teachers to teach students the most important skill — how to think. When we shield them from strong counter-arguments on the issues they care most about, we set them up for confusion and anger when they later encounter people who think differently.
By failing to contest inadequately justified dogmas, we risk advancing solutions that have no effect. For example, if a particular inequality does not result primarily from prejudice, and we engage in prejudice reduction efforts, we will fail to reduce that inequality.
Promoters of these orthodoxies often create an environment of intolerance for diversity of ideas and dissent in the very institution in which free exchange of ideas is its raison d’etre. Free speech and the exploration of unsettling ideas is threatened on many campuses If you think that goes too far, look at this post regarding the extent to which people have been intimidated by political protests.
The notion that the fact that Edmund Burke, Adam Smith or John Locke are part of a reading list or readings from their copious work are included in a Political Science class is immaterial. The fact that roughly 12% of the professors self-identify as “Far Left” and .04% as far right, tells you a lot. As the professors move far and farther left, they will of course move many of their students in the same direction.
This is an assumption. And you know what people say about assumptions? I’ve been taught Robert Nozick, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke (not to mention Nietzsche, Rousseau and other hard-to-classify thinkers) without knowing the politics of the professor involved. The point is the ability to convey the tools and the critical thinking ability to be able to watch Fox News or MSNBC and be able to critically evaluate what is being said rather than taking all dubious assertions as fact. USC students are particularly good at this.
To add: if the Republicans and others could invite actually smart conservatives rather than the usual array of outraged rodeo clowns, they’d have a better shot at getting students to think harder about the conservative worldview.
Yeah right, is that why Ann Coulter has to bring security when she visits a campus? Assuming they let her in? Universities have a minority of radicals making problems for everyone. I hope someday you add Ayn Rand to that reading list, maybe then you’ll learn how to think as an individual.
Ayn Rand is someone who it has been my profound misfortune to read. Terrible derivative, fifth-rate thinker. Inverted Marx mixed with ripping off Neitzsche doesn’t make for anything particularly insightful to anyone beyond the age of 13. Ann Coulter has been to USC recently, alas, and then her clown show left again. This is exactly the point- it would be GREAT to have some thoughtful, interesting conservatives on campus. But too often these attention-grabbing shills get the invites rather than anyone with something interesting to say.
Funny, I feel the same way about Marx. Marx and his central planners, do you really believe some government bureaucrat knows how much milk we drink a year and what type? They know nothing, and even when they poll people, people will lie about what they need. They will tell newspapers they want more international news and more serious pieces, and in the end it’s the sports pages and obituaries they read the most.
Besides, I doubt you’re interested in any conservatives. I think the only “conservatives” you like are RINO’s and liberal Republicans. It’s the same reason the anti-Israel people love it when they find a Jewish professor that hates Israel.
What a bizarre set of assertions. Firstly Marx said pretty much nothing about central planning. You should read his corpus again. Secondly, there is a world in between thoughtless libertarianism and complete central planning. Lastly, I am both a zionist and someone who has enjoyed a great deal of conservative thought. Your use of RINO suggests that you might be a bit of an ideologue, though, rather than someone interested in ideas. For example, de Maistre, Neitzsche, Machiavelli, Burke, Oakshott and others are all interesting conservative thinkers. ‘The Leopard’ is one of my favorite novels. But then I don’t live in some weird Manichean world with goodies/baddies.
Interesting contemporary conservatives to invite? Ramesh Ponnuru, Avik Roy, the people from the American Conservative, Pat Buchanan, Ross Douhat, Robert Barro, Greg Mankiw, Martin Feldstein, Sean Trende, Harvey Mansfield, Max Boot…. So many interesting conservatives beyond the morons on Fox and talk radio.
The only one I know from that list is Pat Buchanan. I prefer Horowitz, Breitbart, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Tammy Bruce.
You’re a zionist? Well, you finally said something I like. Good for you. I’m glad you’re not part of the Israel Apartheid Week crowd. Yes, I’m a ideologue, as Ayn Rand teaches, one side is right, the other side is wrong, but the middle is always evil. There’s nothing wrong with making a choice, even if it’s the wrong one. What is wrong is refusing to think, refusing to make choices, embracing relativism and thinking that everything is the same. I wouldn’t call Machiavelli a conservative thinker, he’s more of a nihilist. The reason I embrace libertarianism and objectivism is because both the far left and the far right believe in some sort of collectivism. For the left, it’s economic collectivism, for the right, moral collectivism. The left wants to force you to buy insurance and make your tobacco illegal, the right wants to wage war on porn and make abortion illegal. Since I want neither North Korea nor Christianistan, I choose the most sensible of philosophies. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant, objectivists aren’t second-handers, we do not live nor seek approval from others.
Yes, I love false equivalence, let’s compare a successful game made in a 90-something percent white country with an unsuccessful game to prove my nonexistent point.
You can literally do that with anything, you’re still an idiot.
dude, go white knight somewhere else
I would be white knighting if I expected people to praise me for these comments, but I’m just angered by stupid people.
Angry about stupid people? Then do something about it: stop being stupid.
I’m not the one making up conspiracies about video games
Neither am I. I simply called you stupid on the Internet.
Tale of Tales were trying to repeat the success of Gone Home, a shit game made by shit devs that got a ton of praise by shit journos, and a lot of Gamers got tricked into buying shit.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…
Thanks to movements such as GamerGate, we are on to the tricks Social Justice Warriors play on Gamers to get our money and ruin our hobby.
Nobody believes this except the deluded saps in GamerGate. For that matter Gone Home was a very solid experiment that mostly worked extremely well. Your attempt to polarize issues with gaming as some kind of imaginary crusade against “SJWs” is only working against you and I’m sorry but you are a minority and THANK GOD. Hopefully you’ll dwindle away, society doesn’t need your toxic presence.
Airport’s Law
Every day another goony beard-man gets the impression that a rainbow haired she-twink might let him cum in her if he attacks gamergate.
Fun fact, it’s called thinking.
Are you of the opinion, then, that minorities should dwindle away and die?
The virgin is strong in this one…..
Unfortunately not, sorry. However, virgins will always continue to contribute great things, whereas you will always be a limp dicked little rat no matter how many people pretend to enjoy sex with you to keep from hurting your feelings.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much…..
Methinks you’ve never read Shakespeare.
Methinks you know I have……
Aww, poor Cameron, little crybaby.
I’m sure Hitler and the Nazi party thought they were on “the right side of history” too. What a horrible excuse for a dumbass decision.
And Stalin, and Mao, and Pol Pot. If she had read Karl Popper she would know there is no such thing as the ‘right’ side of history.
Karl Popper is pretty terrible.
How would you possibly know that? Oh right, because he was a white male.
No. Because I had the misfortune to read him.
It is preposterous to evoke Godwin’s Law when one is discussing fascistic practices, especially ones where speakers, panels or curriculum are being canceled or erased because of the inconvenient fact that the panel, speaker, author or composer being banned is white, or male of European descent.
Shutting down speakers or debate because of someone’s sex or race is fascistic on its face, proof of course that even the Social Justice mob can take a page from the original brown shirts marching in Munich or Berlin in the 1920s.
You don’t know what fascism is. Read Gentile.
Their hypocrisy is cast in stone. the narrative likes to insinuate that ALL whites are racist or guilty of racism, that ALL men are rapists or potential rapists, but at the same time demands we are careful not to judge ALL Muslims based on the behavior of the deviant few. That third point is correct, but somehow they feel to see the logic fallacy of claiming all of the above.
GODWIN’S LAW
Yup, because one man’s once-amusing aphorism is enough to rule-out consideration of one of the most important periods in all human history. I feel sorry for Godwin that his trope’s become a cosh in the hands of fools.
No, simply modern day fascists who hate people based on sex, ethnicity and skin color, which is and always will be reprehensible, no matter how the practitioners of racial and ethic hatred cloak themselves.
Agreed, fascist, you are reprehensible.
NO U!
This ignorant, strawman bit of paranoia is the top rated comment on this article. Please examine yourselves if you agree with this, because your thought process is deeply broken.
so are in some way supporting the canceling of the event?
Fascist ideologues. Noone wins, everyone loses.
We Bobs are legion!
We Bobs do not forgive!
We Bobs do not forget!
Lol
It’s disgraceful. I hope those developers refuse to go. Talk about wasting their time, to keep a bunch of people happy who probably were on a different course and weren’t invited to begin with.
/hug #GamerGateHugPatrol
Stop it with this “snowflake” B.S. I know that you have to have a point of view when writing a column but lifting a whole lazy cliche from Fox News is dull.
So was that your only takeaway or are you just being flippant?
jon is just trying to join “the right side of history”
The only takeaway that I thought merited a comment, yes. It’s a poor column on an interesting subject. Not sure how it got past the editors.
Whats wrong? A column written by a woman not “diverse” enough for you?.
Looks like you are in the wrong side of history.
You REALLY need to do better than this.
How is it a poor column?
I found a snowflake!
bless. Almost funny.
When I went to USC it was pretty expensive, I suspect it’s more so now.
I’d be absolutely fucking incensed if an event and speakers like that were cancelled at the last minute over such trivial bullshit.
Not only is it a horribly lost opportunity for all students interested in gaming, but who the hell is paying the transportation and hotel bills of the speakers who game only to be turned away?
In the meantime, keep fiddling.
It’s not trivial, though, is it? USC should hope that there is some diversity in whom it invites to campus.
They did invite women, it says there were none in attendance due to scheduling conflicts.
Then clearly they didn’t invite enough.
Scheduling conflicts are a tool of the patriarchy to oppress wimminz.
This was dumb.
Agreed, patriarchy theory is dumb.
Holy shit you’re stupid
Look at Socrates here with his debating skills. Are you really very intelligent? Do tell us your resume.
I didn’t pretend to try to debate you. You’re clearly an idiot.
I make it a point to never argue with goats. You’ll never change their minds.
I lol’ed! +1
Well with that rhetorical and intellectual firepower, I am sure we’re all glad, “CoryInTheHouse”.
Yeah no one really cares what you think about anything.
Apart from you. Who keeps replying. You’re not fooling anyone, big shot.
I wasn’t aware that calling someone an idiot online amounted to “caring what they say”.
I would say you’re wrong in that regard.
Anyway you probably are really busy standing on the right side of history. I won’t take up anymore of your bizarrely self righteous time.
Another reply? I am touched.
That would be interesting if anyone cared what you think about anything which they don’t. Go enforce diversity somewhere since that apparently your job.
Yet ANOTHER reply. I might have to start charging you for tuition.
It’s completely trivial.
The time to fix this problem, if there is a problem, is not when the speakers are about to go onstage, but at the next conference.
What a huge fucking travesty.
There IS a problem. We constantly get people moaning about not having enough conservative voices on campus (on this I have a little sympathy, although not when the USC Republicans invite morons rather than smart conservatives), but they can’t find any sympathy for countless all-male panels? There should be diversity of all kinds on campus and role models for everyone to look up to. Half the world are women. You can find ONE woman to be on a panel if you try hard enough.
Millennial nonsense, women don’t automatically deserve to be on a panel of “legends” because VAGINA.
I don’t think you understand the argument. It’s not that women should “automatically” be on any panel. Just that almost every panel at USC (apart from our men’s football team!) could find two women to be on a panel if they tried. They would give different advice to men about how to get on in the industry.
What is more valuable to a graduating student, different advice from a diversity quota or solid advice from a highly successful and respected member of the profession you are studying for?.
False dichotomy.
Typical.
You typically make that mistake?
What about hadicapped people? Or gays? Native American? Muslims?
Where does this maddess end?
They brought in a female panelist, she had to cancel out of time constraints. After that, they canceled the entire event. Asinine.
Found the snowflake.
weird
And the snowflake ought to be more careful…salt melts snow *☆˚°◦☃☆*ヾ(@°▽°@)ノ☸*☆˚°◦☆⛄*
@ moonsugarlily ♡
Oh look. A troll. How quaint.
Your mom’s first words when presented to you by the doctor.
Nah you’re just an idiot.
Sorry if I hurt your precious feelings. They’re so important after all.
Way to prove the point of the article. You’re the problem Snowflake. . Get over yourself and Stop Whining.
You’re a moron. Stop being so sensitive and engage what brain you have.
Here we have a SJW using critical theory.
You don’t know what critical theory is. I have read much of it but I have not used it here. PLEASE engage your brains rather than be talk radio ditto heads.
Just give it up. The regressive left lost the battle by allowing free speech to become a right wing issue. And then to make matters worse they decided to make enemies with the only group who are immune to shaming tactics aka. Gamers.
And you know why Gamers are the worst enemy you can get? Because not only can we grind, we enjoy it.
Ding, ding. In the upper left corner we got a social justice warrior with several mental illnesses and a ton of student loans he can’t repay. In the opposite corner we got a Gamer with 1000+ hours of experience fighting evil. Don’t place your bets, we all know how this will end.
Deflection is the primary tool of SJWs.
Did you graduate college?
“I have read much of it”
… this admission surprises nobody
You don’t read?
I only read such BS for fun, and not much of it.
This explains why you don’t understand it.
I not only understand it, perfectly, but I guffaw with laughter at its every concept, and its every practitioner. It gives me endless mirth.
I highly doubt that. My guess is that you have read very little and that novels at the airport with gold letters on the front cover is more your speed.
Well you’re wrong, and ha ha ha to you.
Google “critical theory” and do your best to prove us all wrong, champ.
Already done.
You can “Google”? No wonder you think you should determine who is on an academic panel. Jog on, sunshine.
Wow. Your personal website says that you admire Ayn Rand and the Unabomber. And you are not a 15 year old boy. You fail.
Wow. Your personal website is a goat.
That’s definitely a good comeback to admiring a known murderer and arguably the worst “philosopher” and “novelist” ever.
Why, I’ve moved onto critical theory now. Hey comrade, when’s the next meeting?
No meeting. Just try reading some. And perhaps some basic philosophy of science. Popper is very passe. Try Kuhn and Lakatos for a start. But even then positivism is very limited too. Basically just try and get beyond sophomoric libertarianism. It’s intellectually vapid.
Hey, you didn’t get “passe, limited, sophomoric, and vapid” into alphabetic order, like you weren’t really trying.
Critical theory is the academic equivalent of Scientology. Lol.
Who have you read?
I do not respond to goats…except for this response to inform you that I do not respond to goats. To be clear, this will be my only response to you Jon goat.
So that is no one. Good to know.
Would you prefer the word pussy or wussy? Snowflake is a polite term for sensitive PC Nazis.
It shows a lack of any intellectual capacity to think.
The term special snowflake comes from Fight Club back in 1999. The fact that you think this is a Fox New cliche and don’t understand the meaning shows a lack of depth.
It’s existed previously to that. It is regularly deployed by sad middle-aged men who feel like their achievements don’t match up and blame it on mysterious forces of “political correctness”
No, many middle aged men actually have achievements, that is why they despise political correctness, because of the paralysis it induces. We would like to see young people of merit succeed, regardless of sex, race or ethnicity, not see talented people like these shunned because they are inconveniently members of the wrong sex or race. You don’t end discrimination, nor ameliorate its legacy through the imposition of a new regime of discrimination.
Unlike economics, collegiate admissions and hiring are zero-sum games, so when a person is given a spot because of their race or ethnicity, even though they would not qualify for the same spot or position if they were for example a white or Asian, then they have deprived the more qualified applicant of the spot. While this clearly pleases the racialists and ethnically-obsessed, it penalizes others for their race or ethic origin, which of course is racism and prejudice plain and simple.
“Positive” discrimination is simply the other side of the coin from negative discrimination and it penalizes those it is designed to “help” as much as it does the more qualified people who are cast aside, for it stigmatizes the minority members who do qualify on merit and often promotes the unqualified to the level at which they will fail. All racial and ethnic discrimination is a pernicious evil.
HAHAHA, no one uses it to point out failures of their own achievements. Do you even English bro? The context of the word doesn’t even come close. That’s like saying stop drop and roll is about Elvis.
Reading comprehension fail
Hey snowflake, why not try addressing then points raised in the article if you have a problem with it? Crying about semantics is a fox news deflection tactic, stop acting like fox news, snowflake.
If the snowflake fits…
You say you have a problem with lazy cliches, but then play the Fox News card. Make up your mind!
The snowflake meme is getting a bit old, but of course the reason it exists is because of the ever increasingly infantilization of the modern college student. To those of us who are older, who have thirty or forty years of live experience under their belts, the modern college student looks rather pathetic.
We are intelligent enough to know that for every member of the Social Justice mob who spends their days on Tumblr and Twitter, tweeting and twitting away about “White Privilege,” and storming into the dean’s office with a list of demands, there are others who are actually taking a course load that may lead to actual employment and a positive contribution to society.
On the other hand, through the pernicious efforts of the left, the modern educational system, the college campus has gradually been turned into a leftist seminary where people are thoroughly educated in the left’s world view. There is virtually no range of opinion in the liberal arts any more, with almost every university faculty ranging from left to far left, a ratio of ten, twenty, thirty to one, left versus conservative. This myopic world view is not healthy for the nation, nor the students, that is why even some left of center professors and educators, serious people, feel it has to be changed.
Once this left world view is instituted, it then creates this type of world, what people are calling “special snowflakes,” students who simply will not tolerate opposing views, who cannot handle being opposed. The “safe spaces,” where these overly sensitive bullies (that is one of their accomplishments, creating people who will shout others down and then run for a safe room, the “Crybully” meme) go hug plush toys when confronted with an idea they don’t like. This movement has gone so far as to label ideas they don’t like as “threatening” and “violent,” when they are of course nothing of the kind.
So, yes, this snowflake meme is endlessly repeated, but it sums up a very real movement that is seen on campuses on a weekly basis, whenever someone comes to speak in opposition to the left world view. They want to prevent speech they don’t like, to speak over others, to drown them out, to block doors, entrances, roadways, rather than engaging in debate. The free exchange of ideas was the goal when the modern university was evolving during the 19th century, not the prevention of debate, but that is where we are at now.
This is both totally inaccurate and displays a serious paranoia that demands medical intervention. Get help.
Yes, another leftist shill, incapable of intelligent thought or debate, you have proved my points, bravo!
Seriously, though. Do get help. You are so easily threatened by people different to you.
“Threatened?” Sorry, that is one of your leftist code words, none of you people intimidate or threaten me, I can take care of myself. The left is the ones who are generally threatened by free and open debate and who attempt to keep opposing ideas out.
Not true. I regularly read conservative thinkers and columnists. This is more often not the case with conservatives. Indeed studies have shown that they are prone to cognitive closure when they come across inconvenient facts. You are threatened by me in this comment section as you can tell by how defensive you are getting. The lady doth protest too much.