The old liberal adage that "any protest is a good protest" is rearing its ugly head this semester, as this campus endures demonstrations, both in person and through the written word, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Vietnam war.
Before this year, loud activism existed, but only in isolated spurts. When Tufts fired its long-time janitorial service a few years back, professors and students marched at Ballou every Monday afternoon in a failed attempt to garner sympathy for the suddenly unemployed. People once protested against sweatshops, tobacco companies, and for better treatment of minorities. In each case, the rallies were isolated incidents that quickly faded from public view.
This year, however, there have been five protests, and it's only the middle of the first semester: the rally on social life, take back the night, anti-discrimination, Dewick TVs, and Middle East violence awareness. This striking statistic, along with the topic of the gatherings, is eerily reminiscent of the movie PCU, which details political correctness gone awry.
More than a humorous film, PCU makes audiences laugh at the ridiculousness of an overbearing, politically-correct culture. It makes a point that is all too applicable to recent events at Tufts, one that should taught to the reactionary zealots currently engaged in an unending drive for attention. In the film, a bitter, man-hating dean hates anything fun on her campus, and makes rules that clearly discriminate against the male sex and their leisure-time activities (i.e. meeting girls, drinking, partying, etc.) At the behest of campus activists, she pushes the PC envelope further and further, until finally her foolishness grows old and the trustees remove her.
If rally organizers continue to be so careless in the number and quality of the battles they fight, the very same fate will fall upon them. The Coalition for Social Justice and Non-Violence has already lent its name to four issues: the Middle East rally, the annual School of the Americas protest, the anti-discrimination rally, and the Dewick TV saga.
It isn't totally the fault of these activists that they have become organizers-for-hire, and that the same people speak at every rally. Some blame belongs to the administrators who placate griping students at every turn. While it is hard to believe that Dean of Students Bruce Reitman is thoroughly bamboozled by so many transparent arguments, he and others inexplicably submit at the first sign of discontent. "We understand your concerns," they say (hopefully with a subtle sense of irony), "and we're trying to try harder to try to fix things."
This year, as in the past, protests have mostly been a tool of the Left. But now people seem to care less about the message and more about being seen as part of the crowd. At the anti-discrimination rally large amounts of student congregated to speak against "hate" and decry the effects of the TCUJ ruling. If someone took a random sampling of 20 people in attendance, however, it's likely that no two of them would have been able to give a consistent breakdown of the actual TCUJ findings.
And, like in PCU, organizers here rarely think before leading large group chants. The organizers of the "anti-discrimination" rally asserted that groups should be punished not only for their actions, but that the University non-discrimination policy should be re-written to legislate against "hateful" thought.
When chanting, however, they opined time and again, "hate is hate, crime is crime," seemingly undermining their point that hate, in and of itself, is a crime. They surely didn't mean to separate the two. Yet this rally, forever more known as "generic rally number three, generic message number three million," was good enough to attract 400 participants.
The Dewick TVs saga, moreover, could rank amongst the silliest campaigns known to Tufts in recent memory. When dining services put entertainment in Dewick, the Coalition loudly protested that major corporations put the TVs there to brainwash college students.
Some even argued that the TVs took away from the social experience of the dining hall. Although, the first thing most people do when going over to a friends though is turn on either the TV or stereo.
But the lamest contention was that the TV's were sexist because women in music videos were portrayed in bikinis. That claim is so clearly a stretch that it wreaks of unabashed PC-clouded reason. With such rationale, Tufts should stop supplying cable to dorm rooms - after all, Howard Stern can be seen once a week across campus.
Viewpoints, letters to the editor, posters, and chalkings have proven that the thought police are once again hard at work. The same group that organized the above-mentioned anti-discrimination rally is quick to call any disagreement "unsafe." And when people try to discuss sexuality and religion, many are quick to say that the discussion itself is offensive.
Anyone who isn't passionate about the issue of minority hiring practices immediately is marked as being insensitive to race. Anyone who doesn't vote simply cannot understand civic responsibility. Herein lies the scariest progression in the chain reaction that will lead to a thought-policed campus, like the one in portrayed in PCU.
If unchecked activism endures and politically correct rallies provide the catalyst for a PC snowball effect, protests will soon become prosaic events. At that point, when a real issue comes up, like patent discrimination, no one will listen to the people who served as broken records for any and all left wing causes. It's called credibility, and foolish causes like Dewick TVs eliminates this necessary component of successful activism. Lately, one wonders if these people have ever heard of the word.
