P.C. police at UConn

From the turmoil being contrived at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, you might think the Ku Klux Klan had descended on horseback, burning crosses, shooting people, and setting fire to dormitories.

The offenses are only that two drunk white students walked across campus at night shouting vulgar words, eventually getting around to a racial slur; that two people in an apartment complex heard the racial slur; and that a student says she was insulted with a racial slur at a fraternity party.

But everybody knows how easily college administrators are intimidated by racial grievances, no matter how exaggerated, and how such grievances can be used to grab power. That’s what’s happening at UConn.

The university’s new president, Thomas C. Katsouleas, obediently showed up at a rally of aggrieved students this week and lamented what he called “an egregious assault on our community that has caused considerable harm.”

But the only harm done by the drunks was to themselves, since, having been tracked down by police from security videos, they were arrested, charged with “ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality, or race,” confessed, and apologized. Despite all that “egregious harm” they were released without bond and in court the charges probably will subject them to no more than “accelerated rehabilitation.” But they also may be expelled from the university and become unable to gain admission elsewhere for a long time — if they’re not lynched by social justice warriors.

Charges of breach of peace or disorderly conduct might have been plausible, but the racial slur of the drunks was not aimed at anyone in particular and any civil libertarians remaining in Connecticut might note that, despite the First Amendment, “ridicule” has become a crime here. Years ago at the outset of the era of political correctness UConn briefly adopted a speech code that tried to penalize “inappropriately directed laughter,” but criminalizing ridicule opens great vistas of P.C. repression.

Black students at the rally said such racist incidents make them feel unsafe on campus. But they can’t feel

unsafe, since there have been no reports of racial assaults and no one claiming to feel unsafe has left campus. An aggrieved student said that every time she goes to fraternity parties she hears the “N word” and “it’s just exhausting,” but no one asked her why she keeps going to such parties. Asking would have been politically incorrect.

Sociology Professor David Embrick attended the rally wearing a Tshirt reading “White supremacy is terrorism.” Maybe “Drunks walking across campus shouting vulgarities at night are annoying” wouldn’t have fit.

The power grab here is the demand by the aggrieved students and the UConn chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that a supposedly offensive fraternity be closed, the university’s conduct code be toughened in regard to “hate speech,” the university hire lots more black people, and all students be required to take a course in diversity.

Of course nothing might engender more racial resentment than to tell the great majority of students who behave decently that they need such P.C. indoctrination any more than they need a course telling them not to steal cars or rob banks. But indoctrination and intimidation now rule in higher education, and UConn’s new president has just agreed to jump through hoops and dance for the P.C. mob. There may be no end to it until he tells the kids to calm down and grow up.