If you don’t want to debate rape or racism, you shouldn’t have come to uni

Unis are meant to be a place of intellectual debate, not groupthink

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You need a thick skin to get by in this world, but it’s not your SU’s job to give you one.

Recently, student unions have developed a habit of blindfolding those they represent to any aspects of modern life they’re worried you might find distasteful.

We’re all aware of the outlawing of Robin Thicke and the boycotts of The Sun and The Daily Star, but these fairly trivial bans are only the tip of the iceberg.

The NUS enforces a “No Platform” policy, designed to prevent extremist political parties from entering campus and converting students by the thousand (because we’re just that impressionable apparently).

In practice though, this policy has become an easy, simple way for student politicians to ban anyone they disagree with.

Bristol’s elected officers want to wrap you in cotton wool Poster photo credit: Jamie Corbin

It was used to silence feminist writer Julie Bindel for comments she made about transsexuals and gender identity disorder a decade ago.

It was used to keep George Galloway away after he made comments in defence of the rape accusations levelled at Julian Assange.

It was even used to force a debate on multiculturalism at Durham to be cancelled, because one of the speakers was from the BNP.

Closer to home, our uni has a “Safe Space” policy, which claims all students are entitled to “empowering, non-judgemental, and non-threatening discussions”.

Okay, it’s a fair enough point that nobody wants to be threatened in a discussion, but that doesn’t mean you should also have the right to not be judged.

Go through life without anyone ever challenging your opinions and you’ll be talking out your arse so often you may as well be galloping up Diarrhoea Drive without a saddle.

The Richmond Building (a.k.a. the Ministry of Truth)

Both of these policies seem motivated by a belief that we are all either too delicate to hear the views of someone we disagree with, or so weak-willed that a five minute speech by a fascist will spark an eruption of campus-wide ethnic cleansing.

To say that certain political ideas are simply too disgraceful to be aired on campus is to suppress the type of intellectual debate that we all came to uni for in the first place.

Giving someone like Holocaust denier David Irving the opportunity to speak on campus wouldn’t be endorsing his beliefs, but it would be giving students a chance to engage with a viewpoint that’s different from their own. Who knows, the experience might even help us learn something.

It’s never good when “right-on” progressives strive to shut down the debate or demonise those who stray from the accepted moral consensus, but what’s worse is that speaking out about it means having your name dragged through the muck.

Everyone assumes the only reason you could want to hear a radical Muslim speak on campus is because you secretly agree with them and want to be a terrorist.

This desire to silence the opposition got so extreme at NUI Galway earlier this year, that a speaker on Israel was shouted down mid-sentence by protesters, lest his damaging and offensive rhetoric reach an uninterrupted end.

Examples of this thought police shut-down are getting more and more absurd too. In March, UCL’s student union banned a Nietzsche reading group, because they felt it was promoting fascism. Never mind the fact that Nietzsche died before the rise of fascism.

Laughably, Derby’s SU briefly banned all members of UKIP from being on campus – because they were a threat to safety.

Talking of UKIP, the NUS have even gone so far as to agree a national boycott of the anti-EU party, meaning your elected officials will be actively telling students not to vote for Farage’s crones. This from a group of people who couldn’t even agree to condemn ISIS.

Philosopher John Stuart Mill, a champion of personal liberty, said of opinions: “…however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”

You can’t uphold an idea as untouchable and demonise anyone who says otherwise. If you reckon you’re right in what you think, you should be brave enough to justify it through the exchange of words, rather than plugging fingers in your ears and whistling.

Nietzsche was a seminal thinker who lived before fascism

All of this hand-holding and shielding us from “dangerous” views also seems to be having a negative effect on what we’re taught, with tutors increasingly wary of making their students confront a “difficult” topic.

Professor Kathryn Ecclestone from the University of Sheffield said in Spiked that: “Vulnerability claims [by students] are pressuring academics to become more lenient and less challenging”.

Her university’s online toolkit for lecturers recommends that compulsory modules be removed from the syllabus entirely if they contain a “sensitive” topic that might cause someone stress or emotional harm.

Thing is, we’re grown ups and this is higher education. Assuming we’re too emotionally feeble to read a play that contains a rape scene or study historical racism is patronising at best.

Caring for the vulnerable, ignoring everybody else

Of course there are people who have experienced terrible, unimaginable things and so they might not be comfortable with certain topics. But that shouldn’t limit what the vast majority of students are able to learn about.

This treading-on-eggshells mentality is most evident in tutorials and seminars where every opinion and argument is met with the same blithe attempt by the tutor to confirm its worth.

Nobody is wrong. Every opinion is valid. And any in-depth discussion of a provocative or disturbing issue is completely avoided.

Researchers at Aston University recently discovered that our education is actually harmed when we’re shielded from controversial topics, and that the overwhelming majority of students are capable of grappling with these concepts.

Growing up doesn’t always mean feeling safe, secure, and good about yourself, and it’s about time uni reflected that. Just because the people we elected to represent us don’t think controversial views have a place on university campuses doesn’t mean the rest of us do.