Freshmen: Here Are the Friends and Values We Want You to Have | Minding The Campus:
"At Delaware, the “community values” being pushed by the university were, for example, this version of anti-racism:
A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system.
The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.
Fortunately, Chancellor Chopp’s ideas are more like Cass Sunstein–style “nudges” than like Delaware’s “treatment.”
In addition to requiring students to have roommates selected by the university, Chopp would support year-long “orientation programming,” perhaps mandatory, to ensure that students are having enough diversity in their contacts with others.
It may seem valuable, as Chancellor Chopp has put it, for colleges to be “cultivating social and intellectual skills in the context of community.
Let’s … think consciously about how students are developing their character and wisdom.”
But that sounds manipulative.
Asking freshmen to share a room with a roommate with a different background seems harmless. Guiding students toward values the college thinks they ought to have sounds too much like Big Brother."
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