Thought Control On Modern American College Campuses

After reading and re-reading this, plus the comments below this, a couple of times, I remain unsure as to what precisely can be done about these issues, without massively infringing on the rights of others, or engaging in what they perceive as an infringement on their rights.
Frankly, human beings, especially young people, are often a contentious bunch, and that's why rules and regulations exist, even in small, relatively homogenous ones like families and clans.
That leads to the problem of who gets to set and enforce them, and who is bound by them.
Now, one could argue that universities, colleges and other academic institutions, in order to provide a safe and secure learning and working environment for their students and employees need to make and enforce rules and regulations and to enforce them as vigourously as possible, including punishing those who transgress them.
The problem with that ends up being, how many rules and regulations does one make, and what sort of punishments for transgressors does one make and enforce? One could conceivably create a set of them for an academic institution that would take the old doctrine of “In loco parentis” to ridiculous extremes, and prohibit, say, any sort of associations between young men and women, gatherings, public or private, and the possession of all items deemed not to be in the best health, safety, financial and legal interests of the particular academic institution and its students and employees by those running it.
Now, this could even potentially mean, if taken far enough, a pre-selection of, and prohibition on the presence of, students of various origins and backgrounds whose presence on a university, college or other academic institution's campus could be seen as being a potential threat to the health, safety and security of those already there.
So, for instance, a historically and predominantly African-American academic institution could potentially prohibit any European-American, Asian-American, Latino, or other non-African-American student from attending it, or any non African-American from working as an employee in any capacity there.
Under current legal guidelines, one could potentially get away with such an exclusion policy, as long as it received nothing in the way of Federal money, which would then mean that the institution must comply with all Federal rules and regulations regarding these issues, and that would put an end to that.
Likewise, while universities have often traditionally regarded themselves as a “marketplace of ideas”, I do not know if community colleges, which are a relatively new form of academic institution, trade or technical schools have done so, nor if whether any of those institutions, as well as universities, could or would, outside of the First Amendment or its associated protections under Federal and state laws, have that recognised in court.
Arguments can, and have been, made that the presence of ideas on a campus, such as the advocacy of concealed-carry weapons' rights, Holocaust denial, European-American, African-American or other forms of racially-based nationalism or racial and ethnic separation, Marxist-Leninist, Anarchist or Green Left doctrines, etc, are and would be, by their very nature, guaranteed to cause undue and unnecessary division and disorder among students, academics and other employees of an academic institution, and, in the basis of maintaining a safe and orderly scholastic and working environment, be banned, so as to ensure that environment.
The same could be said for the possession of any form of weaponry, drugs, alcohol or other substances, or texts like political pamphlets or books, that, by their very presence and use on those campuses, pose the same potential threat.
While the old legal doctrine of “In loco parentis”, meaning that universities and other academic institutions have the right and duty to act in the place of parents or guardians was struck down in the 1960's or '70's(I think), there are perhaps other arguments that could be made, involving the categories I mentioned above, that can be, and are being used, by academic institutions of all types to protect themselves and their employees from potential disruption and disorder, and, most importantly, from the legal and financial fall-out that comes with such events. As the latter cost both considerable time, trouble and money, not to mention cause considerable embarrassment and bring unwanted scrutiny from outsiders, I think that one can well see where the latter two would be, and are, prime considerations for academic institutions.
As for carrying concealed weapons, whether pistols(rather hard to generally conceal a rifle, shot-gun or sub-machine gun, I should think), knives or other small, personal hand weapons on an academic campus, one can make the argument that one has the right to carry, and, if need be, use them in self-defence. However, to make the assumption that every one of those carrying such items about, whether trained in their safe and legal use or not, is going to use them exclusively in that manner is making a grave logical error, I think.
It's far too easy, particularly when one has been drinking or using drugs, or is trying to make a considerable, positive impression with one's peers, to show off a bit, or, even if the person or persons involved aren't drunk, high, or so needy and insecure as to do that, but who may have, due to problems at home, with one's dorm or roommates, with other students or colleagues on- or off-campus, or long-standing emotional problems, political, ideological or other forms of inter-personal feuds with others, or in the heat of particularly nasty disagreements or fights with others, to resort to pulling out a weapon, and, by using it, temporarily end it.
The reason I said “temporarily” is because there are a whole range of new problems that come from using physical violence to end arguments, disputes or even in self-defence or defence of others, whether legally or otherwise.
Among those are the very real potential for someone who's either related to, or a close friend of, the person killed or injured in an incident in which a pistol or other weapon was used, to come seeking revenge for that death or injury, and, at the very least, attempt getting it on the person whom they blame, rightly or wrongly, for infilcting it.

Some might say that such incidents are either things of the past in this country, are restricted to benighted backwaters like Albania or Somalia, or are confined to the inner cities of the US. Perhaps so. However, the desire for revenge on those whom one has been either injured by, or who have injured or killed those to whom one's close, is far from exclusive to those areas, and social classes.

Various cultures, including the ones have mentioned above, have, over the course of modern humanity's history, worked out various ways of arbitrating and settling disputes between others, some more successfully than others, I think. In Albania and many other parts of Europe, where law enforcement was either non-existent, or weak, biased and heavily corrupt, when and where it existed, the institution of the blood feud, in which a slight, wrong or injustice by one man against another was to be punished by a feud between the families of those involved until either a settlement between them could be negotiated or the wrong-doer was killed by a member of the victim's family, came about as such a means. The problem with its use was that families often ended up locked into generations of inter-familial feuds, in which the death of one man was avenged by the death of another, which then lead to still more deaths over the years. Women, children and elderly men were exempted from this, in the older understandings of the rules behind this. However, in post-Communist Albania, these exemptions often are no longer followed in many cases. This ends up creating a situation in which families locked into these feuds often daren't come outside of their family compounds for fear of being gunned down by those with whom their family is “in blood”, or feuding. I don't think it takes much of a stretch of the imagination to see where that ends up causing social, economic and other forms of life to end up being very restricted, if not coming to a complete stand-still, in some cases.

In US inner-city neighbourhoods afflicted by gang and other forms of inter-personal violence, where members of one gang go after and kill those belonging to a rival gang over territorial disputes, the deaths of other fellow gang members and the like, as well the simple revenging of inter-personal grudges or slurs on one's name, one can see the fear generated by such actions, and the social costs they leave on the individual members of those communities, and on those communities as a whole.

Even vigiliantism leaves such traces.

The problems as have outlined them above can end up resulting in either one form of repression or another by academic, governmental and other authorities, or in another by individuals or unofficial groups through their use of violence to enforce their wills on others.

One of the great failures of our society, I think, is that the use of violence in its various forms, and by individuals and groups, official and unofficial, has been, and remains, one of our culture's default settings, if you will. Duelling, from which Western gun-fighting emerged in the late 19th Century, vigilantilism, feuding and lynching were very much a part of our heritage from the Colonial Era on, and while many of those practises have generally gone, violence and threats of it are common as dirt in many parts of American culture and life, especially rhetorically.

Whether in the calls for an armed revolution from segments of the Right or Left, calls for “law-and-order” police repression of law-breakers and other assorted “scum”(depending on who's doing the calling, and whom they see as scum), or other such forms of rhetoric, and, in some cases, action, the wish and will to make someone good and dead is present at all levels of our culture, and has been throughout our history. This isn't an exclusively US phenomenon, by any means. But, it is one of our major failings as a people and culture.

What the dean told you, Christa, was wrong and it was wrong of her to do so. Good on you for standing up for yourself, and having others committed enough to stand with you.

However, neither repression of the type attempted against you and your group, nor untrammeled freedom of everyone and anyone to do, say, possess or carry on their persons whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it, are going to solve either this dispute, nor the underlying social, cultural, political or economic problems we have, and have had for a long time now.

Both are forms of political and social infantilism that do no good, really.

That's it for me.

I was taking you seriously up to “When is the last time swimming saved someone's life?”. You almost had me going there for a minute, buddy!

I can only speak for myself, but I really don't view carrying a firearm as such. Why shouldn't we openly exercise our right to self defense? If 1 out of 10 people open carried, I imagine the world would be a safer place.

Yuk yuk yuk! I shot a 237 with the rifle in the USMC (OLD range, obviously, because I am old), out of 250. You only need to shoot like 190, I think. It's been a while since I was serving the honorable President William Jefferson Clinton with the best of my ooh rah hard charging devil dog mad skillz. I'm glad to see you make it a general rule to be a pussy, though.

Good teachers welcome disagreement, because it shows that a student is listening and actually thinking about the curriculum.

However, if you're challenging the curriculum itself, rather than the material and ideas presented to you (i.e. “Why are we studying X but not Y?”) , then you're wasting everyone's time. Honestly, no one takes college courses to admire how broadly knowledgeable you think you are, and arguing with the instructor over minutiae rather than substance is juvenile. If you have ideas that you want to introduce, challenging the professor's authority and choice in materials is probably not the best way to go about it.

Haha! I think he still has some valid points, albeit in a harsher than necessary tone (and with comepletely uneccessary insults to religious) but hey, free speech! Anyway, he probably frustrated himself into that mistake without realizing it. Everyone gets worked up about this topic and that becomes their undoing in conversation. We need to learn how to discuss this in a rational way so that we can reach well thought out conclusions.

My brother, who is the guy entering the shoot house in the beginning of my segment of the video, often makes the point that shooting is a fun sport to teach his son & that he takes comfort in knowing that it may possibly save his life some day. Soccer on the other hand, not so much – baseball maybe. Also, children raised around firearms tend to have more self control and respect… I read a study about that somewhere. It makes sense. I'm sure the same is true of children raised to do martial arts, ballet, etc.

Funny you should say that. Dean Burns recommended mace as well. That would also be against the weapons policy.

It seems to be impossible for people to see a discussion on free speech and not equate the issue with the topic around which the speech was centered. How about this one: to illustrate my point I had asked the dean “What if I were handing out voter registration forms?” and she replied that no, that would also not be allowed on campus.

Yes, yes it would.

Want to think for yourself? Don't go to college, in a school mentality (meme) everyone in the organization is supposed to think and act as one and the powers, that be that you pay give you things to think about, so you don't have the risk of becoming frustrated searching for the right things to think about. The reason these things happen is that most people attend college so they can make sure they have enough money to survive and gain material goods, not for the sole reason of becoming an universal mind and brilliant versed in many subjects as a hobby or life goal. College is about learning a skill to make money and the procedures that allow that call for censorship and a narrowing of ideas to specialize the little human robot to make money in an specific task, and compete in the gold rush for services, commodities and luxuries that is the life of most. One can be opulent does not have to involve being filthy rich but efficient in life and handling day to day tasks, but I digress. I like technical colleges and people learning awesome skill but I find a business degree is futile. Want to think for yourself? Don't join a school, the school has a mind of its own and you will just be assimilated into it for the rest of your life. Pick the books you want to read and don't want to read and go get a degree if you want to be part of a corporation to gain access to their resources and make money their way. Does not take a genius to survive but it does take one to thrive.

The new world the we live in today is a precarious and often random existence…there is no definitive way of finding a comfortable median between two opposing viewpoints. I am not a college educated person, although I do possess a degree of intelligence…the one thing I think that is being over looked here is the constitutional right to bear arms. These are the principles that this country was founded on. And these principles have served us well in our darkest hours. Forgetting the men and women who fought and died for these rights is a travesty. Every human being has a right to protect themselves no matter where they are, and as long as the individual is in compliance with state and federal laws..that being said…what is the issue we're really discussing here? It sounds to me like someones opinion (Yvonne Burns) is taking precedence over the foundations that have kept us the strongest nation in world.

Yeah except they die in droves for every American soldier that they kill. Not to mention that they've been fighting invading countries for hundreds of years, as opposed to college kids, whose idea of fighting is some ridiculous action movie.

wow so you really think that's what self defense is about? Think of the point being made it could have saved 1 or 2 people or maybe 20. Also to get a concealed weapons permit you need 2 have never been tried of a serious crime. Thus making it a lot safer in general as they have proven to be rational at least as far as the law is concerned.