I never heard of "safe space" before the last few weeks. And I'm torn about it. I saw the report from Emory last week and was horrified that students felt threatened by a chalk "sign" merely saying Trump 2016 - saying they felt it was racist. Sorry, but I think that's insane. How are we preparing these students for the "real world" if they are going to get the vapors over some words written in chalk? I would have thought "safe space" would refer to women )and guys) being able to get from class to dorm or whatever without being harassed. I think the infantilization is coming from the people who think these precious snowflakes shouldn't have to face the idea that people think differently than they do.

I think the infantilization is coming from the people who think these precious snowflakes shouldn't have to face the idea that people think differently than they do.

So because they were drawn supposedly at night, that makes them racist? And are you saying EVERYBODY took their candidate's signs down? Lawn signs? Bumperstickers? Pins? Just because the primary had happened.

Who cares if it was trolling? Do you seriously think these students whining have a point about feeling threatened? By a chalk sign? And they're at a place that is supposed to be getting them prepared to live in the real world.

But perhaps you can explain this to me:

Rather, what we are asking for is equality and equity -- we want a streamlined, consistent method of communication to deal with instances of unrest on Emory's campus. This means race, color and economic status should not determine whether or not the University needs to be prompted to send out a response of acknowledgement of events. Secondly, we ask the Emory University Student Body and individuals nationally to fight for our right of freedom of speech the way they have for Trump supporters.

I'm not reading anywhere how the university is fighting AGAINST these student's speech (and I swear if I see another supposedly educated person misusing the phrase first amendment, I'm going to scream - the government is not stopping either side from doing anything). Who and what exactly is stopping these students from speaking out on anything?

and Emory is trying to find out who did the graffiti. And so fucking what? This is such a minor thing I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the uproar over it - on both sides.

I was introduced to the "safe space" thing about 6 months ago. It wasn't a thing 10 years ago when I finished college, but my wife is a college instructor and started showing me some guidelines flowed down to her from the university administration. Safe spaces is a pretty high priority to them, along with "trigger warnings" on the syllabus. It requires a large amount of effort just to make sure your ass is covered as a college instructor these days. My wife was 'alerted on' for the first time last semester because there was a discussion on how stereotypes are negative... someone in the class didn't like discussing stereotypes...

As you put it, good luck in the real world.

I've been out of college for 33 years and managed not to be traumatized by being exposed to ideas that were anathema to me. I swear, parents are coddling their children (and forcing the educators - from nursery school on up to college apparently) far too much. Not everybody deserves a trophy - in life there are winners and losers (especially true in sports). Just what do these parents think they're preparing their children for? It's just going to drive more teachers away from the profession.

And the writer completely misunderstands the concept of safe space. It's somewhere people of a particular disposition/gender/sexuality can meet up to talk without being attacked by trolls.

LA LA LA LA I DON'T HEAR YOU IN MY SAFE SPACE! YOUR IDEAS ARE DIFFERENT DON'T TRIGGER ME NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I know of a feminist website at a university that had to ban a lot of misogynous trolls who were just there to cause trouble. What a forum where victims of rape can meet to discuss what happened to them? Should they be insulted and demeaned?

We all have safe spaces.

Our homes, if nothing else. Even in college, there are dorm rooms. It's possible to set up a club or organization and secure space that can be rendered "safe." In some cases, the organization can get permanent space that it can customize to its needs, within reason.

DU is a safe space of sorts. Certain kinds of speech are not allowed here. It's privately owned and maintained and marches to its own drummer, but that dummer is subject to the reasoning and whims of the site owners and providers.

Safe space per se is not the issue.

The issue is public space, space that everybody gets to transit being declared safe. If I'm on a college campus and there's a safe space on the 3rd floor of a student union building for a woman's or GLBT or Xian or Muslim or vegan group on campus, meh. Not an issue.

But if the main thoroughfare is declared a mandatory safe space, then it's an imposition on everybody passing through to learn all the capricious rules about what may be a "trigger" for one person or another and to always monitor their behavior and speech to conform to another person's requirements.

In a classroom, this can go to issues of academic freedom. In society, issues of free speech and press, due process. It's messy.

you'd still expect people not to be overtly racist or sexually harass other students.

It is a pleasant surprise when they do the right thing.

I want to see people learn to use wit and intelligence to knock down assholes, not cower in fear when they spew their idiocy. The attempt at campus wide, even world wide, safe spaces gives the victory to the oppressors.

It's hardly a victory for oppression.

It is a defeat for free speech.

you're no different from any other extremist.

Your extreme view means minorities should expect to be abused every day unless they happen to be articulate enough to defend themselves. You also talk about people in the third person as if you're not one.

That's not healthy, it's more than a bit creepy.

like we have seen several times.

That is issue - people draw the line differently and what is overt to you might be a minor issue to me.

Unless you're part of a minority group you have no place judging how minor the abuse is, you just don't know.

I have no issues with the concept of "safe spaces" in regards to spaces for LGBT students or AA students to gather and talk and befriend one another; the problem I have is that all of these so-called student activists want the entirety of a college campus to be a "safe space" where everyone around them bends to their demands and suspend their opinions to protect their feelings. The world does not work like that and nobody, from the parents of these kids to the professors/administrators that coddle them, is teaching them that fact. No amount of diversity "workshops" or "trigger warnings" on syllabusses will prepare them for a world where nobody else has the time or care to hold their hands and punish others if they slight them.

I see things like "feelings" and "coddle" in reference to LGBT people and I know what's up, though. Might as well just call us "sissies."

It's kinda like using the ignore button or "trash this thread" option here.

Yeah, its satire.

But the fact that it is so damn hard to tell...... is indicative of something.

almost every single day. I turn my ipod up. I've never felt traumatized over it.

They usually come equipped with a big fucking sign that says "fornicators, masturbators, blasphemers, pot smokers, atheists etc. will NOT enter the kingdom of heaven"

I would stand there and go "check. Check. Check. Yep. That one, too. Check"

well a big part of it, was meeting others from different backgrounds, different religions, thoughts, ideas... you get my point.

to read about safe spaces where student s need to "recover from the trauma of differing opinions" is ridiculous. If you don't like what someone is saying then walk away or jump in and give your view point.

Good luck in the real world!

They can talk all they want about anything they want, they have no right at all to yell at me or to try make me listen.

and, looking back, I'm not sure how I survived the horror of encountering people whose viewpoints differed from mine. Everyone should have a safe space to retreat into when microaggressed.

We would often take the opposite side of an issue to what we really believed just to keep an argument going.

If you couldn't handle the give and take, you weren't tough enough to survive.

I'm not talking about obvious racism or things that would actually hurt a reasonable person. I'm talking about things like writing "Trump 2016" in chalk, or simply having someone disagree with your viewpoint. If you simply cannot bear the thought of these things happening, you're being an idiot.

You are an idiot because you have closed your mind to any new thought processes and opposing viewpoints, and instead have created a fortress of smug righteousness in your mind. In your mind, you are the one who is correct, and anybody who so much as disagrees with you must be a terrible person. Stop being an idiot.

Furthermore, stop looking for authority figures to deny other opinions in favor of your own. That's extremely creepy. It doesn't matter if you think you're right or not - open your mind to all opinions. Stop pretending that you're smarter than everyone else and start listening.

I'm especially pointing this to my fellow Millenials. My generation is especially smug and obnoxious. We get it - You're the savior of the world. Yes, your opinion is awesome, but it's just that - an opinion. At the end of the day, you're just another asshole who yells over others and thinks that it makes you right. If you could stop embarrassing our generation with your sniveling, arrogant demeanor, that would very much be appreciated.

Our messed up society has managed to raise up a new crop of 20+ers who function on the level of adolescents, and since many of them (due to college debt) will be living with Mommy & Daddy for a decade after college, it won't be pretty

It's really sad too, because so many young folks don't learn how to be self sufficient, and some day Mommy & Daddy will get ill and even die.. Who will take care of the kids then?

they can talk about whatever THEIR issues are without any opposition.

But a serious academic classroom is not the place for that.

The first generation that was really raised on the internet is going to college now, or just getting out. On the internet, it's easy to filter out anything you don't like. Very specific websites, or groups that are protected, subgroups within subgroups, etc, etc.

The internet is just the human mind on a screen. Our perception of reality exists in our minds. First you have a written word, then the radio, then tv, then the internet, and now it's all about phones and social networks. More and more abstract at every step.

People say well good luck in the real world. I would say that this will be the real world. Maybe not tomorrow, but as these kids get older, they will want this in the workspace. Whatever the hell the workspace will be as time goes on.

The ones who don't filter out anything and who've seen every insult possible.

Other than GD, GD P, and the Sports Group most all of the groups are heavily monitored for views that might offend the people that are part of that group.

Are we saying that colleges and universities should not have the same expectations as we do at DU. BTW, they are paying just a tad bit more to be a part of the university than we do to be part of the DU community.

Just sayin!

...is the opposite of protecting them.

We need to teach people how to me intellectually and emotionally stronger than the ass wipes. No, it is NOT easy.

A dorm room, a student group, ya...people have the right to free association. But in the classroom, in the commons, throughout the world... no, it is impossible to have a universal safe space. Trying to do so breeds counter-reaction faster than anything else, and it trivializes the true quest for respect and equality.

Safe spaces are areas where people go to discuss how shitty the world is. I was in an LGBT student group in college that was like this, we got together once a week to talk about getting called "fa--ots" on the way to class or student groups preventing us from joining. How our parents kicked us out and we couldn't afford to stay in school, or how we barely had the money for rent and couldn't afford medical treatment.

That's the real world that college students live in, and it's fucking dangerous. Setting up spaces as refuges from this danger have been crucial to social movement for DECADES. Attacks on these spaces now are just a variety of the "reverse discrimination" nonsense from sensitive privileged people who are upset about the fact they can't go to meetings of black college students and call them the n-word.

Because FREEDOM!

where women could safely make any expression they wanted without being marginalized or silenced.