Fisking the idiots at The Wellesley News

Many members of our community, including students, alumnae and faculty, have criticized the Wellesley community for becoming an environment where free speech is not allowed or is a violated right.

And your premise is going to be that all of these other people are wrong and you are right, correct?

Many outside sources have painted us as a bunch of hot house flowers

Hothouse is one word. A little more education and a lot less “activism” might help.

who cannot exist in the real world.

You’re writing this from a safe space, correct?

However, we fundamentally disagree with that characterization, and we disagree with the idea that free speech is infringed upon at Wellesley.

“Any comments that we disagree with will be removed.”

Rather, our Wellesley community will not stand for hate speech, and will call it out when possible.

“Calling it out” is not what you do. You decide which speech is to be shut down before the speech even occurs based on the person who will be doing the talking.

Wellesley students are generally correct in their attempts to differentiate what is viable discourse from what is just hate speech.

“Generally.” I love that admission.

Wellesley is certainly not a place for racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia or any other type of discriminatory speech.

Facts about race, sex, homosexuality, Islam, and transgenders will be characterized as hate speech if it makes us uncomfortable, and it will be shut down.

Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech.

The unintentional meaning behind your garbled sentence structure is pretty ironic. You’ve written, “shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is hate speech.”

I agree.

The founding fathers put free speech in the Constitution as a way to protect the disenfranchised and to protect individual citizens from the power of the government.

Yeah, they “put it in.” You’re saying the founding fathers, by putting it in, are protecting the rights of people who have been stripped of their rights?

The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed,

No, it’s not. The 1st amendment guarantees no one’s speech WILL BE SUPPRESSED. You’re the suppressors.

not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable, no matter how hateful and damaging.

You do not get to decide what is hateful or damaging. There are many, many people who believe pornography is hateful and damaging, yet it’s protected by the 1st amendment. I am protected by the 1st amendment when I say I do not believe that Muslim refugees should be resettled in America. You, and your ilk, will shut me down before I even get a chance to explain why. That is not what the founding fathers had in mind. They would be disgusted by you.

This being said, the tone surrounding the current discourse is becoming increasingly hostile.

“I need some muscle here!” – Professor Carrot Top, Missou

And now, for the most Orwellesleyian part of this essay:

Wellesley College is an institution whose aim is to educate. Students who come to Wellesley hail from a variety of diverse backgrounds. With this diversity comes previously-held biases that are in part the products of home environments. Wellesley forces us to both recognize and grow from these beliefs, as is the mark of a good college education.

Digest this.

Wellesley’s vision of education is to cattle prod young students away from previously held beliefs that they might have learned at home until they become products of Wellesley approved indoctrination.

And we are to believe that they aren’t the totalitarians who strip people of their rights. Hokay.

However, as students, it is important to recognize that this process does not occur without bumps along the way.

On your head.

It is inevitable that there will be moments in this growth process where mistakes will happen and controversial statements will be said. However, we argue that these questionable claims should be mitigated by education as opposed to personal attacks.

We attack you, you don’t attack us.

We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society. Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley

Controllers and handlers.

in a productive way. It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control.  While it is expected that these lessons will be difficult and often personal, holding difficult conversations for the sake of educating is very different from shaming on the basis of ignorance.

Try and be compassionate Nazis.

This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.

You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, you know what I mean?

If people continue to support racist politicians

Like Keith Ellison.

or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others,

Like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions. It is important to note that our preference for education over beration

And our education includes making up words like beration.

regards students who may have not been given the chance to learn. Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so. Paid professional lecturers and politicians are among those who should know better.

And they will not be afforded any 1st amendment rights because we’ve deemed the speech unacceptable based on our biases, learned in the classroom by an indoctrinating pony-tailed Marxist professor.

We at The Wellesley News, are not interested in any type of tone policing. The emotional labor required to educate people is immense and is additional weight that is put on those who are already forced to defend their human rights. There is no denying that problematic opinions need to be addressed in order to stop Wellesley from becoming a place where hate speech and casual discrimination is okay. However, as a community we need to make an effort to have this dialogue in a constructive and educational way in order to build our community up. Talk-back, protest videos and personal correspondences are also ways to have a constructive dialogue.

Not Wellesley… yet.

Let us first bridge the gap between students in our community before we resort to personal attacks. Our student body is not only smart, it is also kind.

“if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.”

Let us demonstrate that through productive dialogue.

“hostility may be warranted.”