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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (25559)	4/15/2008 10:27:57 AM
From: Ann Corrigan	Respond to of 224729

College student stands up for police, forced to apologize By Michelle Malkin • April 14, 2008 Welcome to “higher learning” on a typical American university campus. This PC 101 lesson comes out of Marquette University. The bottom line? If you are a terrorist who has targeted law enforcement officers, academia will welcome you with open arms (see Ayers and Dohrn). If, however, you are a student who simply voices support for police officers being attacked as racist, you will be…forced to apologize for making “offensive” statements. Marquette Warrior reports: That there is a racial double standard in academia is not news, so when a student who is a police intern defends cops against charges that they are racist, what would we expect to happen? Exactly what happened last Thursday in Marquette’s Philosophy 151 (“History and Philosophy of Crime and Punishment”) class: the professor (one Nancy Snow) “suggested” that he apologize. Coming from an authority figure who has the power to determine your grade, such a “suggestion” is more than just a casual piece of advice. The whole exchange got started with a class discussion of supposed “over criminalization,” the notion that government outlaws too many things, resulting in a lack of respect for the law. It then moved to a discussion of how police supposedly abuse their powers, using traffic laws as a “pretext” to stop drivers in order to, for example, search for drugs. At this point the student, Greg Karge, chimed in to point out that police often bear the brunt of this disrespect for the law, mentioning an incident he had seen. An Hispanic who was pulled over proceeded to abuse the cops, calling them “racist.” In spite of the fact that race was explicitly part of the context of the discussion, Snow objected to the mention of the driver’s ethnicity trying to, according to Karge, “stop me in the middle of my comment, trying to give me a wave” and then saying “why did you bring that up?” Another student remembers Snow saying “Greg, this is offensive, we have a diverse group in the room.” Another student said of Snow’s response “it surprised me because I personally didn’t find his response offensive.” The professor extracted an apology from Karge: After class Snow took Karge aside and told him that his comments “could have been interpreted as offensive,” mentioning especially offense to black students. She “suggested” to him that he should write an apology to the black students. Instead, he wrote the apology to the entire class. It read as follows: I would just like to apologize for any of my comments that I said today that may have offended anyone, that was not my intention by any means. I did not articulate my argument the way that I wanted to, but that is no excuse if I did accidentally offend anyone I would like to explain myself [and] deeply apologize. It is obvious from several accounts of the incident that Karge articulated his position in a perfectly reasonable way, but then caved to pressure from the professor. A student in the class told us “Since Greg wants to be a police officer one day, he’s been working closely with other officers. He was simply relaying these experiences to us in class, and telling us what he saw and heard during these experiences.” In the wake of this apology, two students from the class e-mailed him to insist that he had nothing for which to apologize. Other students, responding to our e-mails, said they saw nothing offensive in his comments, one saying “I personally didn’t consider the comments offensive. I could possibly see that some might be offended at the example he chose, but the point he was trying to convey is what I was focusing on.” And another: “From my perspective, when Greg was called upon, he was explaining that it is not as though the police officers are the bad guys, but that they are only doing their jobs.” Thus looking at police/community relations from a “minority” point of view is perfectly alright, but looking at it from a cop’s point of view is not. And saying that minorities often show hostility toward the cops is also out of bounds. Diversity, as always, is only skin-deep in the campus grievance echo chamber.