An effort by University of Miami College Republicans to protest the use of “safe spaces” on campus has drawn intense criticism from a number of students who felt “incredibly hurt” by the message.
A sign that read “Safe Spaces are For Children,” was reportedly posted by the UM College Republicans on the door of their clubroom a week ago.
“I was incredibly hurt by how incredibly dehumanizing it was to anyone who feels or experiences threats,” student Jeremy Penn told The Miami Hurricane. Penn is treasurer of SpectrUM, an LGBTQ organization on campus.
In a lengthy Facebook post, Penn also accused the College Republicans of “supporting a movement that wants him to die in a gas chamber like his dead ancestors.”
Another student, Earl Generato, accused the UM College Republicans of attempting to stifle diversity.
“Signs like that are for children, for people who can’t understand the ways of other people and are not willing to see the perspective of other people,” said Generato, who is also a member of the LGBTQ organization on campus.
Generato’s words are ironic, as there is a long history of liberal students and administrators using “safe spaces” to censor and discriminate against conservative students on college campuses all over the United States. Such tactics have ranged from forcing conservatives to leave their campus jobs to even creating segregated events for students of color, with no whites allowed.
UM College Republicans President Chris Dalton said he would not take down the sign, and issued a statement to The Miami Hurricane, detailing that ways in which safe spaces have been used to censor ideas of dissent.
“College Republicans in no way endorses hatred or abuse of any kind. However, the sign will stay up because the movement for safe spaces on college campuses has been hijacked and transformed from an earnest effort to protect victims of abuse into a closed-minded crusade to shut out all ideological dissent. We are proud that our campus is exceptionally welcoming and accepting of people of diverse backgrounds, rendering safe spaces from hatred superfluous. Furthermore we are disturbed that nevertheless some members of our community would attempt to abuse this idea to insulate themselves from contrary thought.
If someone does not want to hear opposing points of view and they want to be kept safe from ideas that they may disagree with there are better places to be than on a college campus. The danger of this is that universities will no longer be places where ideas can be freely exchanged and challenged. It is imperative that we do not support the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can escape from ideas and perspectives that differ from their own.
On a larger scale, this is dangerous for America because UM is not a daycare and neither is the real world; there are no safe spaces in the real world. People should be more open-minded to ideas that are not their own. Scrubbing our campus clean of differing view points is the antithesis of what a university should be. The unfounded assertion that there are no College Republicans who are gay, Jewish, black, victims of sexual assault, etc. is evidence of the distorted and dangerous worldview which arises when students willfully insulate themselves from ideological diversity. Such obvious misconceptions would long ago have fallen apart had these individuals had the courage to let their views be challenged.”
