When Ben Shapiro’s says that “facts don’t care about your feelings,” his words should be recognized as a universal truth. But on college campuses these days, feelings trump facts with disturbing frequency.
If you hurt someone’s feelings on a college campus, you’re in for a world of actual, career- or future-harming hurt. It does not matter if what you said should have been easily shaken off or forgotten. The offense need not be “pervasive” or even objectively offensive anymore, as long as it hurts the feelings of the most delicate among us.
In an article otherwise trying to defend precious college snowflakes, the New Yorker’s Nathan Heller accidentally reveals another example of the power that social justice crowds have created for themselves.
An Oberlin theatre and dance professor Heller spoke to named Roger Copeland recounted a story about how he was investigated for violating Title IX because he once hurt the feelings of a female student. Copeland was coordinating rehearsals for a play, and “spoke sharply,” according to Heller, to a female student, who ran out of the room. Copeland wanted to make things right and meet with the student and the department chair. The student requested he leave the room so she could speak to the department chair.
Copeland was later called to meet with the school’s dean of arts and sciences. Copeland had allegedly created “a hostile and unsafe learning environment” because he “verbally berated” that student. He was told he couldn’t be told which students complained or the specifics of the complaints. He was asked to sign a document acknowledging the complaints.
“I’m thinking, Oh, God! I’m cast in one of my least favorite plays of all time, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller!” Copeland told Heller.
Copeland gave the dean a list of students that could confirm he never “berated” anyone. The dean brushed it off, apparently telling Copeland: “What matters is that the student felt unsafe.”
Get that? It didn’t matter what the facts were, what matters is that someone’s feelings were hurt.
And because Copeland is a man and the complaining student is a woman, the issue was going to be investigated under the anti-sex discrimination statute known as Title IX. Because colleges, thanks to the federal government, can’t possibly imagine a scenario where a man and a woman would disagree without it being caused by sexism.
Luckily for Copeland, the Title IX investigation was eventually dropped. He had hired a lawyer, but the original inquiry into the complaint was ongoing. Copeland said the dean told him that if Copeland refused to meet without his lawyer then he would have to face the Professional Conduct Review Committee. Copeland said he and his lawyer eagerly agreed to them making good on that threat. The school never responded.
A similar situation occurred with Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis, who criticized the school’s approach to handling campus sexual assault and sexual harassment. She was investigated, under Title IX (even though she’s a woman talking about women) for creating a “hostile environment.” She was eventually cleared, but not before getting a firsthand look at what students have to go through.
Students have not been as lucky as professors. A student going through a Title IX investigation receives almost no substantive due process and no presumption of innocence. A professor might be seen as an asset to a school, but it’s far easier these days to just railroad a young male into expulsion than face the consequences in the media of allegedly harboring a “rapist.”
Until colleges start standing up to the federal government, the most sensitive of students will continue to run the show. And we’ve all seen what happens to a school when the hurt feelings get so big they make national news — admissions drop. No one wants to send their son or daughter to a school that doesn’t take truth and education seriously.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
