Top 10 PC Campus Offenses of 2016 College campuses descended further into politically correct madness in 2016, drawing constant attention to the increasingly bizarre behavior of politically correct administrators, professors, and students across the country. Through it all, Young America’s Foundation, and its chapter affiliate Young Americans for Freedom, empowered thousands of conservative students to fight back and stand up for their beliefs. Join us as we count down the craziest campus controversies of 2016.
10. “The Chalkening” After students at Emory University claimed pro-Trump chalk messages made them feel pained, unsafe, and fearful, conservative students went to work chalking phrases like “Trump 2016” and “Build the Wall” on campuses across the country to shed light on the ridiculousness of crying over chalk. This movement, dubbed “The Chalkening” on social media, elicited dramatic responses from liberal students who actually received support from administrators at many schools. The Chalkening revealed to a national audience exactly how censorious American institutions of higher education have become.
9. Clemson Asks Christian to Leave Campus for Praying Outside Free Speech Zone In late August, an administrator at Clemson asked a man who was offering to pray with students on campus to leave because he was not in a designated free speech zone and was not permitted to “solicit” outside of one. Clemson YAF member Kyra Palange caught the entire exchange on camera. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOzUhkk6ygI”] After YAF
broke the story, it went viral, catching the attention of Fox News, the Drudge Report, and other top outlets.
8. Leftists Protest Conservative Campus Lectures Apparently one conservative speaker is too many on campuses around the country. For instance, students organizing Lt. Col. Allen West’s
Fred Allen Lecture Series speech at Saint Louis University (SLU) were targeted a number of times by the campus PC police. First, the school would not allow them to use the phrase “
radical Islam” on flyers advertising the event. Then, the university president spoke out against Lt. Col. West, calling him “distasteful,” and a “provocateur.” The student government sent a campus-wide email to label Lt. Col. West “
uninformed.” Finally, hundreds of leftist students
walked out of his lecture while others took the opportunity to heckle him from the audience. Gonzaga University shut the public out of Dinesh D’Souza’s YAF-sponsored lecture on campus last spring, finally caving after public pressure mounted. Professors held a “poetry circle” to counter D’Souza’s speech. Ben Shapiro’s YAF-sponsored campus tour was met with protests at nearly every school he visited. At the
University of Wisconsin and
Penn State University, where he spoke as part of the
Fred R. Allen Lecture Series, large groups of leftist protestors banged on walls outside the lecture and screamed expletives to disrupt the event. Senator Rick Santorum also encountered hostility from protestors at
Vanderbilt and
Cornell who shouted over him and worked to silence his conservative message. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOBIqeUM3QQ”]
7. University of Michigan Debuts New Pronoun Policy In September, the University of Michigan announced the creation of a new mechanism for students to “designate” their preferred gender pronouns on class rosters. National YAF chairman Grant Strobl decided to
have some fun with the politically correct administrators who instituted the policy and changed his pronoun to “His Majesty.” Grant’s story went totally viral, inspiring countless other students to make creative changes to their personal pronouns. His masterful trolling was covered everywhere from
USA Today to the
Washington Post. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F43kaxT3698″]
6. Hampshire College Stops Flying the American Flag In the aftermath of the presidential election, Hampshire College in Massachusetts
announced it would no longer fly the American flag in order to address “racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors.” This prompted national outrage and even a protest that drew 1,000 veterans to the campus. Hampshire resumed flying the flag shortly thereafter.
5. Leftists Vandalize 9/11: Never Forget Projects Hundreds of conservative clubs nationwide participate in Young America’s Foundation’s
9/11: Never Forget Project annually, placing Americans flags in the ground to represent each victim of the attacks. This year, a professor at Saddleback College was
caught on camera tearing down posters meant to memorialize the victims and angrily confronting YAF members creating the display. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFLcQ2DIV1I”] Even worse, leftists at Occidental College took it upon themselves to tear the flags out of the ground and
toss them in the trash.
4. Campus Liberals Have Post-Election Meltdowns In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the November election, college campuses
devolved into bonafide daycares, with universities canceling classes, postponing exams, and offering students counseling services to cope with the trauma of Hillary Clinton’s loss. Liberal students also staged
mass demonstrations, walking out of high school and college classes to protest President-elect Trump’s win.
3. University of Kansas YAF Targeted By Mob of Protestors Video of a YAF meeting at the University of Kansas went ultra-viral after a mob of leftist protestors
cornered the YAF students in a small room and shouted expletives in their faces about white privilege, gender pronouns, and other bizarre concepts. The next week, the protestors did the same thing and
yet another video went viral, this one showing a massive group of unhinged protestors bullying a small group of YAF students trying to conduct their meeting. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWZ5LF77oHs”] Videos of both meetings have been watched hundreds of thousands of times since being published.
2. DePaul University Bans Ben Shapiro, Threatens to Arrest Him In late July, DePaul University rejected its YAF chapter’s request to bring Ben Shapiro to campus, citing safety concerns. The implication, of course, was that DePaul couldn’t trust its own liberal students not to harm Ben Shapiro or their peers. Determined to bring Shapiro’s message to their campus DePaul YAF announced he would be a
special guest at a lecture they organized, with sponsorship from Young America’s Foundation’s Wendy P. McCaw Freedom Lecture Series, featuring Christina Hoff Sommers in November. In response, the university forbid Shapiro from entering or speaking at the event. The night of the lecture, Young America’s Foundation
live streamed Shapiro attempting to step foot on campus and then being threatened with arrest by university security. Shapiro then Facetimed into Sommers’ lecture and invited the audience to a backup venue the Foundation had secured to ensure every interested DePaul student had the opportunity to hear from Ben. The crowd followed Shapiro and Sommers through the cold fall night to the new location where both speakers delivered powerful remarks on free speech. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2iIAXp5KRo&t=7s”] Immediately following his lecture, Shapiro appeared live on Megyn Kelly’s primetime Fox News program where she played the footage and exposed this story to millions of viewers. Even the editorial board of the
Chicago Tribune sided with the YAF students, writing “DePaul missed another chance to play the role of enlightened teacher.”
1. CSULA Descends Into Riot Over Shapiro YAF Lecture California State University Los-Angeles (CSULA) was probably the worst public school for free speech in the entire country in 2016. In February the school caved to demands from campus leftists and banned Ben Shapiro from delivering a lecture days before it was set to take place, then unbanned him when YAF announced he would be coming anyway, and then allowed the campus to descend
into a riot with leftist protestors pushing and kicking conservative students simply attempting to hear Shapiro speak. The security situation was so serious, students had to be escorted by police into the lecture in small groups through a side entrance. Protestors essentially trapped people in the lecture hall, forcing Shapiro to be escorted out by police as well. In the aftermath of this remarkable situation, CSULA held a “
healing space” meeting where the university president denounced Shapiro and a professor called him a “neo-Nazi” and “neo-KKK.” Young America’s Foundation, Mark Kahanding, CSULA YAF leaders, and Ben Shapiro
filed a lawsuit with the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom over the entire situation. [tbc_video_embed url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ituZ2aIzE0Q”] The scope of CSULA’s offenses in 2016 is massive. A liberal professor threatened to
wrestle students over Shapiro, black YAF activists were called “
coons” for hosting a lecture by Star Parker (which they disrupted), angry feminists
tore down YAF posters advertising a lecture by Christina Hoff Sommers (which they also disrupted) a number of different times and attempted to “
shut down” the event, a professor called CSULA YAF’s 9/11 memorial “
disturbing,” YAF activists were
accosted at a speech CSULA hosted by Angela Davis, and perhaps most notably, the school also instituted
racially segregated student housing. And
that’s why CSULA YAF earned
chapter of the year.
