Safe space violations on college campuses are beginning to sound a lot like breeches of zero tolerance policy in elementary schools.
A recent example of the latter to appear in these pages was the prohibition of a student’s bringing a cane to school out of fears she could use it as a weapon. The likelihood of the child’s doing that was diminished by the fact she is blind.
Now a similar offense at an institution of higher learning has made headlines. The offender, Imogen Wilson, was threatened with ejection from a meeting of Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA). Her offense? She raised her hand!
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The Telegraph notes that “Wilson, 22, was subject to a ‘safe space complaint’ over her supposedly ‘inappropriate hand gestures’ during a student council meeting.”
But Wilson doesn’t believe it was just her inappropriate hand gestures that drew the ire of fellow association members. She explains:
At that meeting we were discussing BDS, the movement to boycott Israel. I made a long and passionate speech against us subscribing to this, on the basis it encourages anti-Semitism on campus. It was only after I made that speech that someone made a safe space complaint. I can’t help but think it was a political move against me.
The article notes that an ad hoc vote on whether to send her out of the room (to the principal’s office?) went in her favor, 33 to 18, though “she was later threatened with another complaint after shaking her head while someone was speaking.”
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