A curveball from Weasel Zippers. I’m stunned. Since when do Canadians overreact to thoughtcrimes?
And on a university campus, no less.
I love the name: Facilitators. Bureaucratic, innocuous, yet vaguely menacing. Much like that Star Chamber office Ezra Levant was interviewed in.
Students at Queen’s University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of “homo” or “retarded” could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable.
The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive…
“If people are having a conversation with offensive content and they’re doing it loud enough for a third person to hear it … it’s not private,” said Jason Laker, dean of student affairs at Queen’s…
“Having a program like this in place could stifle public discussion if people are worried their private conversations are being monitored,” said Angela Hickman, managing editor of the Queen’s Journal, a campus newspaper. “For a lot of people, their opinions get formed in conversations and so stifling that is dangerous.”
And if students feel uncomfortable about a “facilitator” butting in and getting in their face? “I would say it’s a beneficial tension,” says Laker. Provocative exit question: Isn’t this just the university’s version of blog comment moderation? Only now does the terrible possibility occur to me: Dude, am I O’Brien?
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