Perhaps the college craziness has subsided, and students are no longer seeking to elevate every stupid thing that’s said to the level of “violence” or “oppression.”
Sure, just today I wrote about a Canadian college suspending free yoga classes because the most precious of student snowflakes felt the practice of stretching and breathing was “cultural appropriation.”
But here in America, the two weeks of protests, in which there were numerous claims of anonymous students saying and doing racist things, seem to have ended. The obvious explanation is that students are returning from the sheltering cocoon they are demanding from their colleges to the sheltering cocoon of their mommy and daddy’s house.
So perhaps that is the reason there are no protests over the words “YSU supports ISIS” being painted on a rock at Youngstown State University in Ohio. The rock, which is routinely painted on by students, also contained the words “France deserves destruction” and “We are coming for you” along with possibly Arabic writing and what appeared to be the Islamic State flag.
The school’s administration sent students a text alert early Monday morning saying that the messages contain no credible threat to student safety. No students protested the administration’s wording, and no one demanded a safe space.
Classes weren’t even cancelled.
Police did say they took the graffiti very seriously and had notified the FBI. They are also looking through campus surveillance video to try and identify the suspect.
The (non)reaction from students is a far cry from what has occurred in the past few weeks at colleges and universities across the country. There, students have demanded that university officials acknowledge their bad feelings, even though most of the accusations of racism they presented included no evidence. The situation culminated last week in students at Smith College demanding that any journalist covering their protests discard their integrity and say they are supportive of the students’ cause. Remaining neutral, one student argued, amounted to complacency.
I sincerely hope the reason there are no protests over the Islamic State rock is that students see it for what it is: Just a stupid painting from a troll. The more likely reason is that students are away for the holiday. But even if they weren’t, the Islamic State would take a backseat to safe spaces and microaggressions.
