Quote:
|
Originally Posted by djtestudo
It's the same thing if they were requiring every student to attend church and take religion classes.
The point of a public university is to be open to as many students, and therefore as many viewpoints, as possible.
|
I'd take both of these points of view with a huge grain of salt. Firstly, ecology and social justice are not religion, and they're not really in the same category as religion -- because they aren't protected by the Bill of Rights. I'm not going to disagree that this program (as depicted) is some pretty strong ideological medicine that only represents the far extreme of a partisan spectrum, but that doesn't make it akin to the establishment of religion.
Secondly, the point of any university is patently NOT to be open to as many viewpoints as possible in the sense that you seem to mean. Universities are open to a multitude of perspectives, but that doesn't mean that they'll tolerate anti-semitism, racism, sexism, or other discriminatory practices. While they may have student groups on campus that are based on religious identification, that doesn't mean the biology department will be teaching intelligent design or creationism.
A more realistic objection (and just as powerful, IMO) is that education and indoctrination are NOT the same thing, and that mixing them up at an institution that receives public funding is inappropriate.
I worked in this field (higher education administration and even specifically residence life) as a full-time salaried professional. My experience doing so makes me extremely curious about this story... Many schools have programs in their residence halls that are intended to be educational, and the focus of almost all of them is on exposing students to points of view and people that they may not have encountered yet. Admittedly, social justice and diversity, which are typically "progressive" standards, are typically the core of these programs. And, as with any other thing in the world, people interpret the limits in different ways. Some are so aggressive about it that to them, the difference between exposing and indoctrinating is one of degree.
SO, based on my experience working, knowing these sort of people, and going to multiple professional conferences, I could actually believe that there is a large grain of truth to this story. Of course, it's hard to know what's going on here since only one side is really talking about its perspective. It would help (but in another way, is sort of telling) if the university would elaborate on how they feel their program has been mischaracterized.