What are college students drinking these days? Apparently the Student Union Board members do not realize that one of King’s main comrades in arms in the Civil Rights Movement was the late Bayard Rustin, a gay man whom was “out” and comfortable with it in the early 1960s. Many of you know that Rustin was one of the principal organizers of the March On Washington.
And to condemn King’s words as not contemporary and non-inclusive is a folly that demonstrates that the critics have very poor critical thinking skills and completely ignore any context that does not match their own agenda. Great men and women do have flaws; Gandhi, Jefferson, Rosa Parks, Oscar Schindler…but King’s words are not flawed. Jeez, college kids like the Student Union Board at U Oregon positively scare me.
Oh look, I found one from their student newspaper. Remarkably, it gives quite a different spin on the whole thing.
In the midst of the construction, this happened:
And it’s staying the same after they TALKED about it.
This quote discussion also came up in the mid-80s (huh? Like the time that our parents were in school? Weird!) when people wanted to expand it to include women. Again, they decided to keep it the same.
More hand-wringing by rightwing publications playing into the narrative of “THESE DARN KIDS ARE SO SENSITIVE!”
The Post certainly isn’t my favorite source of information, but unless I am mistaken, the Post story includes each of the pertinent points you identified (with perhaps the exception of the ‘womens’ angle in the 1980s). And I did read a second source after seeing the Post article. To employ a well worn cliche, ‘Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day.’
To their credit, the board members retained the King quote, but I am simply dumbfounded how apparently some of them (and the stories say their vote followed a hard discussion) interpret this particular quote in such a literal sense to believe it to be exclusionary and somehow marginalizing LGBT persons.
I’m with Romani. This is pretty blown. Some kids came up with an argument, the argument was discussed, and the the argument was rejected. That doesn’t really scream “PC college kids out of control these days!”. Especially not when they had this same basic argument back in the 80s, when most of us Millenials’s parents were in college.
I also think “U of Oregon thinks MLK not progressive” to be overly hyperbolic. A handful of student union students said it, and the student union as a whole voted it down. The vast majority of the student body wasn’t even involved, so I don’t get where the U of Oregon as a body thinks this.
And the NY Post is again spinning something much more innocuous into red meat for a certain constituency who are likely rooting for a presidential candidate who felt he had better things to do than attend a debate…
Have they found batboy yet?!!
Possibly future terrorists inclined towards using biochemical weapons and lacking any sense of moral/ethical scruples…
Both of the schools attended by my older children dropped their original mascots due to modern sensibilities. The only problem is, they never officially replaced them and as a result just use their team colors rather than an animal or alternate person. IMO, it’s very hard to rally around something so nebulous as “the Big Green.” Tradition is tradition, and is seldom PC. So, if Amherst eliminates Lord Jeff, then I hope they come up with a very good replacement.
I’ve always found the whole Keggy saga hilarious, particularly the “kidnapping” with photos of Keggy bound and gagged.
The brilliance of "creating a mascot that ‘wasn’t racist, biased or sexist, yet [was] entirely unacceptable.’ "!
The problem with Keggy is that he is so funny and physically endearing that the chances of the school ever adopting a respectable mascot are slim, LOL.
On a side note, one of S’s classmates who wrote for the Jack’O Lantern now writes for The Onion.
Keggy may not be respectable…but judging from comments from many Dartmouth alums I know…he certainly epitomizes the Dartmouth campus culture they remembered from their undergrad years with some fondness.
LJ was never an official mascot at Amherst, and was hardly rallied around, but has meaning for some. A moose wandered onto campus last year, I like that idea. They plan to make a committee to suggest a new one.
My high school’s mascot was the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam and the HS football team are known as the “Peglegs” after the peg leg he was well-known for.
My undergrad recently adopted the Albino Squirrel as its athletic mascot:
