Social justice warriors dislike many types of speech, but none more than humor. As progressives have gotten a greater hold on the institution of higher education, they’ve been able to weed out any attempts at disrupting their safe space.
Benjamin Sweetwood found that out the hard way when a joke about being handsome sent him through Columbia’s social justice re-education program.
“Now I’ve graduated from Columbia University, I am finally ready to reveal a dark and shameful secret I have kept buried for almost two years: I am the living manifestation of the evil white male cis patriarchy,” Sweetwood published in The Tab on Saturday.
The Columbia grad explained that he was in Chinese class back in the Fall of 2014 and made a joke about being handsome in the foreign language. “Wǒ hěn shuài, I uttered in my unchecked malevolence and without care for cultural norms or general moral principles,” Sweetwood continued.
People were aghast and the teacher asked him to stay after class the following day and told her that one of her other students remarked how they were very upset at his joke. Sweetwood has been reported to the Gender-Based Misconduct Office — yes, that’s a thing!
While the teacher insisted that she was not offended at all, but had to report him out of fear for her job.
The advising dean e-mailed Sweetwood about the compliant and demanded they have a meeting the following day.
“I met with my dean the next afternoon. She told me the same thing my professor had: I had called myself handsome and this was unacceptable. My dean tried to make me agree that I would never do this again,” he continued. “I flat out refused. I laid into her about how upset I was about the situation and I said something along the lines of: ‘If you’re asking me to not be myself, then I guarantee I will end up back in your office again.'”
Sweetwood got the impression that the advising dean also agreed with him but was unwilling to fight against Columbia’s extreme politically correct environment.
The university set up a “re-education” meeting the following week. Sweetwood said he was the only one in the office and his case manager informed him that his white privilege was the reason he couldn’t understand why his joke was offensive.
Unrelenting, Sweetwood told the same thing to the case manager that he had said to the dean and the teacher. Columbia was going after the wrong student in a quest for inclusion.
Like the teacher and dean before him, the case manager also said that he was unable to do anything even if he agreed with Sweetwood.
“This experience taught me one thing more than any other: the human toll of ‘triggered’ culture is a serious matter,” Sweetwood said. “I cannot help but feel for those who are deeply embedded in it, or rely on it for food and shelter. Furthermore, by reporting my innocuous statement, serious matters like sexual harassment and assault are trivialized and victims end up neglected. That is unacceptable.”
