High depravity, social agendas, and political correctness in America’s colleges and universities

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Inside American Education. Chap. 7. Ideological Double Standards.

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Social Agendas

Assistant Dean Alice Supton has been prominent in promoting the idea of "getting in touch with your sexuality." However, she is not alone, either at Stanford or in the academic world in general. Expressing one's sexuality takes many forms. At Northwestern University's Women's Center, a picture prominently displayed in the living room is "an artistic rendering of the female genitalia." At San Francisco State University, movies in one class showed humans having sex with animals. More organized expressions of an avant-garde view of sex appear in so-called "sex education" material, routinely passed out to students as part of their normal registration for courses.

In college as in the public schools, so-called "sex education" is not so much a matter of conveying biological or medical information as it is a matter of changing attitudes toward sex— in an avant-garde direction. Stanford's sex education kit, for example, contains a booklet entitled "SAFE SEX EXPLORER^'S ACTION PACKED STARTER KIT HANDBOOK,^" which says:"MUTUAL MASTURBATION IS GREAT— but watch out for cuts on hands or raw genitals." Among its other advice:

USE CONDOMS FOR FUCKING: with several partners, ALWAYS CLEAN UP AND CHANGE RUBBERS BEFORE GOING FROM ONE PERSON TO ANOTHER!

These so-called "sex education" kits are passed out routinely to young students, away from home for the first time. It conveys not merely biological or medical information but a whole set of attitudes, fundamentally in conflict with the values with which many, if not most, of these students have been raised. Further challenges to these values are made through such things as Stanford's annual condom-testing contests, where students are urged to use various brands of condoms—supplied free—and then vote on which brands and types they found most enjoyable. An accompanying booklet says: "Try out the condoms by yourself, with a partner, or partners. Be creative! Have fun! Enjoy!" Included is a ballot on which various brands and types of condoms are to be rated for various characteristics, including taste and smell. Condoms weeks are also common events on other campuses, such as Berkeley, San Jose State, Virginia Tech, and the universities of Iowa and North Carolina.

Like Stanford's sex-education kit, condoms are routinely distributed to students—in this case, by The Stanford AIDS Education Project. To the outside world, the name suggests an organization trying to fight a deadly disease. In reality it is an attitude-shaping effort, under a lofty title, and whether it is likely to increase or decrease the incidence of AIDS is very problematical. Nor is Stanford unique in using AIDS-prevention as a cover for attitude-changing material. At the University of Puget Sound, the Northwest AIDS Foundation took out a full page ad in the student newspaper, showing two cartoon individuals, with little hearts around them, and the message:

WHEN IT CAME TO SAFE SEX, I THOUGHT HE'D BE LIKE ALL THE REST .... QUICK, BORING AND THEN LONG GONE. HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN THAT HE HAD BEEN TO THE WORKSHOP? HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN HE WAS ABOUT TO GIVE ME THE MOST SEARINGLY ROMANTIC NIGHT OF MY LIFE? AND HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN HE WOULD WANT TO STAY? HE GAVE ME. . . . A DOZEN RED CONDOMS.

Dartmouth's sex education kit has an accompanying form letter, saying that its booklet is "educational," that it "is not intended to moralize or be judgemental," but the actual contents of the booklet are in fact promotional, in the sense of favoring a particular set of attitudes, very much like those promoted in high school "sex education" courses. For example, sex is a matter of "how you feel" and it is a decision "too important and personal" to let "someone else" decide for you. It is all a matter of "your feelings and expectations" and sexual relationships "can be heterosexual or they can be homosexual." You might "clarify your feelings by talking to friends," but parents are not included in the list of people who have any clarification to contribute. Only after a sexual relationship turns out to be "devastating," are parents included among those to whom one might turn for emotional support."

Any "negative" attention to homosexuality can only be due to "prejudice and hostility," according to this Dartmouth pamphlet. Any "derogatory terms" are to be avoided and the "acceptable name" of "gay" used. Although homosexuality was once considered an illness, "the American Psychological Association no longer considers it a mental disorder." This last statement is misleading because it neglects to mention that this change did not result from any new scientific evidence, but from a threat by homosexuals to disrupt the American Psychological Association's meetings, when they were held in San Francisco. But whatever the merits or demerits of the pamphlet's reasoning or conclusions, it is clearly a brief in favor of a particular attitude—despite its "non-judgemental" claims.

Being non-judgmental in one direction is part of the double standards surrounding the "politically correct" social agenda on many campuses. For example, homosexuals are free to publicly proclaim the merits of their lifestyle, as they see it, but anyone who publicly proclaims the demerits of that lifestyle, as he sees it, is subject to serious punishment. At Yale University, for example, "Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days" have been an annual event celebrating homosexuality. A sophomore with different views put up posters parodying the homosexuals' posters. For this alone, he was suspended for two years. The dean of Yale's own law school called the decision "outrageous". In the face of this and other outcries, Yale reduced the punishment to probation—with a warning that anything like this again would mean expulsion.

At Harvard, a freshman named Samuel Burke inadvertently got into trouble in December 1985, merely trying to help some strangers find a table on which to eat lunch in a crowded dining room. Spotting an empty table, he removed a sign that read: "Reserved HRGLSA," and invited them to sit there. It turned out that those initials stood for the Harvard Radcliffe Gay and Lesbian Students Association—which made this an ideological offense against one of the "in" groups. Sam Burke was taken to the Freshman Dean's Office. According to the Harvard Salient, a student publication:

Sam offered to apologize publicly to the GLSA for his thoughtless act. But according to friends, he was nonetheless pushed to the brink of tears by the official inquisitors who questioned his motives at every turn and threatened him with severe punishment.

Heavy pressure on this young man, at an institution where deliberate disruption and even violence have repeatedly gone unpunished, was all the more remarkable because the Freshman Dean's Office knew that Samuel Burke was already burdened with personal problems. A high school football star, he had just been told by a physician that he could not play football in college. Moreover, his father had recently been killed in an automobile accident. But no humane considerations tempered the zeal of those determined to do the politically correct thing. Sam Burke was hit with disciplinary probation just before the Christmas holidays.

He did not return from the holidays. He committed suicide.

Being "politically correct" means deciding issues not on the basis of the evidence or the merits, but on the basis of what group those involved belong to or what ideology they profess. Many colleges and universities have become blind partisans with no sense of proportion, or principle, or of fairness. Objections to the special privileges which are created for some groups in the name of equal rights are treated as betraying malign attitudes toward those groups—"racism" or "homophobia," for example—which are to be rooted out by "re-education" campaigns and punished severely where brainwashing fails.

As regards homosexuals, almost never is the issue one of whether they should be left in peace to live as they wish. Much more often, the issue is whether others must be subjected to a steady drumbeat of strident propaganda by gay activists. As a group of students at the University of Massachusetts said in a jointly signed statement in the student newspaper:

I am not homophobic and I do not endorse homosexuality but I accept it. I am just tired of having the issue continually in my classrooms, in my paper, in my building, on my campus.

A Wesleyan University student reported a similar situation here:

It is nearly impossible to enter the campus center without being inundated by propaganda about gay men, lesbian women, and bisexuals.

"Re-education" is a common punishment for those judged guilty of such ideological crimes as "homophobia." At the University of Vermont, a fraternity which rescinded an invitation to a pledge when they learned that he was homosexual, had among its punishments attendance at workshops and lectures against "homophobia." Homosexuals are only one of a number of special groups about whom students are no longer free to have their own opinions, nor are free to choose not to associate, even though such groups remain free to be as separatist and exclusive as they wish.

When one of the ordinary frictions of human life happens to involve a member of one of these special groups, such incidents are immediately inflated into a cause célèbre, even when there is no clear or present danger of any larger problem on campus. A homosexual student at Amherst College admitted to the student newspaper "that he had not experienced any other forms of hostility while at Amherst beyond 'a look that said stay away from me.' "Yet he expressed fear of homophobic violence because one student had written anti-homosexual words on the door of two other gay students. Both the administration and the campus gay organization made a public issue about this one incident and the student newspaper made it a front page story.

This hypersensitivity to their own interests has not led homosexual activists to be at all sensitive as to the rights or feelings of others. On the contrary, intolerance by vocal activists has become as common among homosexuals as among other groups given special privileges on campus. Lesbians at Mount Holyoke College objected to a campus lecture by James Meredith, the first black man to attend the University of Mississippi, because he was promoting the traditional family. As with other intolerant people, disagreement did not imply debate but suppression. For themselves, however, Mount Holyoke's organized lesbians claimed not only freedom but license, chalking up the sidewalks with slogans like "lesbians make great lovers" and "try it—you'll like it." At Cornell likewise, homosexuals have chalked up the sidewalks with slogans like "Sodomy sucks but we can lick the problem" and have removed the American flag from a university building, replacing it with a flag containing a pink triangle, the symbol of homosexuality. Although campus security people were present, the chalkers were neither stopped nor punished. At Harvard, pictures of individuals engaged in homosexual acts were posted all around campus by a homosexual organization.

Disregard of the feelings of others extends far beyond words, or pictures. Students who use the men's toilets on some campuses encounter sexual solicitations from homosexuals, or become unwilling witnesses to the homosexual activities of others. College toilets have become sites for homosexual activities to such an extent that a book of favorite places around the country for such gay encounters has been published and updated annually. It lists three buildings at Georgetown University, for example, as well as libraries at Howard University, the University of Maryland, and Catholic University, and the student center at George Washington University. Homosexuals from off-campus can often gain access to these places to meet young male students.

At the University of Florida, middle-aged gay men from as far as 40 miles away are among those who gather in a college library toilet for "oral, anal or hand sex." So-called "glory holes" have been drilled in the panels between toilet stalls there, to facilitate anonymous homosexual acts. Maintenance workers have had to line these panels with stainless steel to prevent these holes from being drilled again after they have been closed up. Dartmouth, Georgetown, and the University of California at San Diego have also had to seal up "glory holes" drilled in the panels separating toilet stalls. Numerous complaints about homosexuals soliciting sex in the men's toilet at a library at San Jose State University led to the arrest of two men—one of whom was a professor at the university.

While some academic institutions take some precautions against the worst excesses of homosexuals' publicly forcing their activities into the lives of other people, other institutions actually promote the introduction of homosexuality as a subject to be brought to the attention of students. At Stanford, the university has explicitly advertised for homosexuals for the job of resident advisers in the student dormitories. The Stanford Daily of March 7, 1990 carried an advertisement from the Office of Residential Education which said: "Because a residence staff which includes lesbian and gay RAs helps to raise discussions about sexuality and sexual orientation and works to combat homophobia at Stanford, gay and lesbian students are encouraged to consider applying for RA positions". These "discussions," incidentally, can hardly be free exchanges of ideas, since those who oppose homosexuality are subject to punishment under restrictions against "harassment"—very loosely interpreted. In short, dormitories are to become "re-education" camps.

While mere words of criticism of homosexuality are enough to put students in jeopardy of punishment at Stanford—and at many other institutions—outright threats against the conservative Stanford Review by a homosexual university employee not only went unpunished but even un-investigated, even though the editors of that publication supplied the name and university phone number of the employee in question." Homosexuality is clearly one of those issues on which double standards are "politically correct."

Colleges and universities have often proclaimed that they are no longer in the business of regulating sexual behavior, or of acting in loco parentis in general. This is a half-truth, at best. Many of the colleges which have abandoned any control over the sexual activities of their students nevertheless require their students to live in the dormitories, regardless of how individual students or their parents feel about the behavior or atmosphere in those dormitories, and regardless of whether an eighteen-year-old away from home for the first time wants to sleep in a room with a stranger who has sexual interests in people like themselves, or in a room where other people are having sex. Moreover, colleges are actively promoting a particular set of attitudes toward sex.

One of the dormitories at Stanford University has a coed shower, for example, and the Stanford Daily of October 18, 1990, featured a front page photograph of four people of differing sex having a shower together. The resident assistant in another dormitory promoted a swap of room mates, so that male and female students could become room mates for a week, in order to demonstrate that people of opposite sex could share a room in a platonic relationship. Another front page photograph, on the Stanford Daily of December 5, 1990, showed a male student holding a plastic model of a penis while a female student was putting a condom on it. They were fulfilling a requirement in a psychology course.

Whatever the merits or demerits of any of these activities, they represent behavior actively promoted by institutional policy and institutional personnel. In short, many colleges are not following the hands-off policy they claim to be following. They are being permissive in one direction, and even inciting in one direction, but they are not permitting students who do not want to be part of the avant-garde scene to live in a single-sex dormitory, to live off-campus, or to refuse to sleep in a room with someone who is sexually attracted to people like themselves. Penn State University, for example, has made explicit what is only implicit on some other campuses—that objections to being housed with homosexual room mates will not result in room changes. Georgetown University has punished a student for not attending what was billed as an "AIDS awareness" session in the dormitory, but which also included promotion of avant-garde sexual attitudes.

The claim is that colleges are treating students as adults, when in fact they are treating them as guinea pigs. Moreover, It is precisely because students are so young, so inexperienced, and so vulnerable that they attract the attentions of brain-washers.

The vision of a brave new world of ultra-rational attitudes toward sex, which is promoted by advocates of the sexual revolution, is in painful contrast with soaring pregnancy and abortion statistics on many campuses across the country. At Brown University, for example, the campus health service reports about 40 to 50 pregnancies per academic year—slightly more than one a week—and virtually all of these end in abortions. This rate is characterized as similar to the rate at comparable institutions "like the Ivies and other coeducational, non-religious schools." Stanford University has had more than a hundred positive tests for pregnancy annually, Auburn University two hundred and Indiana University several hundred. Moreover, not all pregnant students are tested on campus, so the total numbers of pregnancies may be even higher. U.C.L.A. and the University of Maryland are among the institutions reporting that at least 90 percent of their pregnancies end in abortion. Altogether, nearly one-third of all abortions in the country are performed on women in schools.

Because pregnancies and abortions are so widespread on so many college campuses does not mean that they have little impact on the individuals involved. A young woman at Indiana State University, who became pregnant soon after she arrived as a freshman, recalled:

I knew I had to tell my boyfriend. When I told him, he just started crying. We both cried.After she had an abortion, the two of them split up —- couldn't take it. I can't say that I blame him. He carried a lot of guilt, and my state of mind didn't help much. He needed to try to forgive himself and have me forgive him, but I couldn't even forgive myself. All I could do was cry about it.

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I find all of this really shocking. I am eighty four years old. Apparently it has been going on since the late 60s or early 70s. It has long been obvious that America was really sick but I had no idea that it was this bad. America has really hit the moral bottom. Colleges and universities across the country are deliberately trying to destroy the morals of the youth. This is what is called high depravity. It goes hand in hand with all of the acceptance of homosexuality.

If, when I was young, I had gone to college and found the kind of situation described above I know what I would have done. I would have simply walked out. Putting up with that kind of thing would have been too stressful.

This is all pure evil.

This all sounds like the outlook, mind, soul and spirit of Satan to me. Do you think the modern liberal intellectual can identify with the spirit of Satan? The Bible teaches that Satan rules this world.

1 Apr 2024