November 20, 2008

Canadian university pays busybodies to make student conversations more PC

From the National Post of Toronto:

Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has hired six students whose jobs as "dialogue facilitators" will involve intervening in conversations among students in dining halls and common rooms to encourage discussion of such social justice issues as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability and social class.

"If there's a teachable moment, we'll take it," said assistant dean of student affairs Arig Girgrah, who runs the program. "A lot of community building happens around food and dining."

She gave the example of a conversation about a gay character on television as a good example of such a moment.

"It is all about creating opportunities to dialogue and reflect on issues of social identity," Ms. Girgrah said. "This is not about preaching. It's not about advice giving. It's about hearing where students are at."

Jason Laker, dean of student affairs, said their activities will also include formal discussion sessions, perhaps after controversial incidents in residence, and open discussions of topical books or movies.

"They're not disciplinarians. They're called facilitators for a reason," he said, adding that such a program is of particular value now that so much communication by young people happens over the Internet.

"It's not trying to stifle something. It's trying to foster something," he said. "We're not trying to be parental."

Like dons, who serve as student authorities in residence, the six facilitators will receive full room and board and a stipend for the full-year commitment, and will receive regular training....

Daniel Hayward, a 46-year-old Master's of Divinity student, applied to be a facilitator believing the role would offer him an opportunity to connect with many different students.

Yes, there's nothing today's coeds look forward to more than the creepy 46-year-old Divinity student who is paid to chat them up about white privilege!

"It's an opportunity to interact with lots of people, hear their stories, about the experiences they've had, hear the questions they're asking," he said in an interview yesterday. "It's not like we roam around the halls looking for people having conversations. If somebody is yelling something across the dining hall that's a racial slur, yes, we will intervene in that situation.

"We are trained to interrupt behaviour in a non-blameful and non-judgmental manner, so it's not like we're pulling someone aside and reprimanding them about their behaviour. It is honestly trying to get to the root of what they're trying to say - seeing if that can be said in a different manner."

Touting the Intergroup Dialogue Program as "unique among Canadian universities," but modelled on programs in the United States, an administration newsletter says it will promote "a lasting experience of inclusive community and shared humanity."

It is just one of many recent efforts to promote diversity - such as gender-neutral washrooms, prayer space, and halal and kosher food service - at a school that is still smarting from a report on systemic racism two years ago that criticized its "culture of whiteness."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why don't they just leave it up to the liberal professors as it's always been done? Maybe they want to monitor what's outside the classroom as well as in?

Anonymous said...

Nice parody, I almost fell for it.

Anonymous said...

Truly stunning.

I'd like to say something clever, but I'm speechless.

Anonymous said...

The most basic human right is freedom from mind control. Why is that Canadians are spearheading the effort to abrogate that right?

Anonymous said...

Please, please, PLEASE tell me that this is a joke...

Anonymous said...

I once read a film review in a Canadian magazine that bemoaned the fact that orcs did not get a democratic voice in the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy. I read another that took director Mike Leigh to task for making a movie (Topsy-Turvy) about the "shamefully racist" opera, The Mikado.

Ten minutes in Canada, and I'd turn into a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

--Senor Doug

W.LindsayWheeler said...

Just think, Europeans threw off the light yoke of Roman Catholicism. State and Church was too much. It seems now that they are re-inventing the wheel. They are making themselves an even greater, bigger, more intrusive overlord searching out any hint of politically correct heresy and burning heretics at the pyre of PC MC.

The hypocrisy is so surreal.

Anonymous said...

Whether it's Islamization, or the PC brigade, though probably one feeding off the other, Canada is set to be the most crushingly repressive regime in the Western world.

The problem with the PC people is they just don't get it. Are they hoping by stifling debate on Islamisation that somehow when Muslims get the upper hand they are going to respect their feminism and gay rights and legalised abortion?

Weirdly enough, they just might. I suspect that as the already burgeoning and confident Canadian Muslim population grows in size and confidence, anything that's perceived to harm the khuffar, including sodomy, abortion, etc. will be positively encouraged amongst that population, including the PC framework that stifles any expose of the harm caused.

And that is how Militant Islam and the pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-feminist, anti-family, relativist Canadian PC lobby will get on just fine and dandy!

B322 said...

I really have no idea how they deal with complaints from nonleftist students. Is there just a policy that they ignore the complaints of conservative students? "I'm feeling confused by your constant emphasis on racial equality and the assertion that the races don't exist; also your undying love for leftist dictators who have killed millions of my people makes me uncomfortable." ?

What if a black conservative complained? Would that be like an open-faced peanut butter sandwich, strapped to a cat's back, pushed off the dining room table?

SYNTAX ERROR IN "BLACK CONSERVATIVE"
???
PLEASE CHOOSE BLACK *OR* CONSERVATIVE.

Anonymous said...

Ah, another "Bash Canada" sesh!

To my ever-critical American friends who seem to have reading comprehension issues, let me provide one quotation: '"unique among Canadian universities," but modelled on programs in the United States'

Like every atrocious idea of the last half-century: feminism, PC, mass 3rd World immigration, the "dialogue facilitator" is an American beast.

Please, save your obloquy 'til we elect PM Obama and God deliver us from the perniciousness of American "ideas".

Anonymous said...

In case anyone was still doubting whether the Canadians are a race of fags...

Anonymous said...

That whirling you hear is Orwell spinning in his grave.

Stopped Clock said...

ag: hey, it says right in the article that this idea was invented in American universities, and I believe it. Don't blame Canada.

Anonymous said...

I concur with the other Canadian. This is a U.S. import.

Honestly, I don't see major differences between my country and the U.S. In Canada, group conformity tends to be voluntary and reflects a desire to avoid rocking the boat. In the United States, conformity tends to be enforced by groups and individuals who act pro-actively.

From my experience, Americans are much more likely than Canadians to raise their voices and get angry when they hear opinions they don't like. Canadians will change the subject or, in the event of serious disagreement, ostracize the other person.

Anonymous said...

Is the expression "Piss off" widely understood in Canada?

Black Sea said...

Reminds me of a woman whom I worked with years ago. In every discussion, on every topic, issue, or idea, she would repeat -- mantra like -- "I hear what you're saying . . . I know where you're coming from . . . I hear what you're saying . . . I know where you're coming from."

She was eventually, thank God, fired.

"This is not about preaching. It's not about advice giving."

"It's not trying to stifle something."

"We're not trying to be parental."

"We are trained to interrupt behaviour in a non-blameful and non-judgmental manner."

If they're not going to preach, and they're not going to give advice, and they're not going to stifle, and they're not going to be parental, and they're not going to blame, and they're not going to judge, then WTF ARE they going to do?

I hear what you're saying . . . I know where you're coming from . . . I hear what you're saying . . . I know where you're coming from."

Anonymous said...

To the Canadians who blame this on the US, we may come up with the bad ideas, but you and the Europeans implement them so well you put us to shame.

Anonymous said...

Single women and gays are ground zero for PC and this is exactly an example of PC mind control.

Group conformity and herd mentality are part of that social dynamic, whereas men to succeed in the mating game have to stand out, strongly, particularly if they lack wealth.

What this says is these societies that adopt PC (regardless of where it was invented) do so because they are dominated by women and gays in terms of social elites and culture. Islamists ally with women and gays because they have a common enemy: the average Straight White guy and the Western Nuclear family with monogamy and restrictions on both men and women.

Of course later there will be a reckoning, but women and gays stupidly believe that if they are just "nice" everyone will get along and hold hands singing Kumbayah. Like that guy who thought he had some magic to make Grizzlys like him, and got eaten along with his girlfriend when he camped on one of their trails in Alaska.

Anonymous said...

To "Watertight Compartment"

"unique among Canadian universities," - care to speculate on how long it remains that way?

"modelled on programs in the United States" - Bull***t. It may be an American idea, but I'd be willing to bet that it hasn't actually been implemented anywhere. The people who imposed this crap just said that to sell it - "hey, it's no big deal they're doing it in the U.S."

- "Please, save your obloquy 'til we elect PM Obama" - OK, you've got me there. I'd gladly take Steven Harper as president, if you guys are willing to swap. But I'll still bet that Obama is no wore than Trudeau, and at least Obama didn't run around in a Nazi uniform.

Anonymous said...

If this isn't bad enough, these world-improvers at Queens decided to nuke homecoming for the next two years:

http://www.nationalpost.com/rss/story.html?id=970017

Maybe they should have deployed armies of student conversationalists against the drunken mob on the streets of Kingston.

Anonymous said...

"But I'll still bet that Obama is no worse than Trudeau"

Trudeau ruined our country. If the best you can hope for in Obama is not being worse than Trudeau, then you guys are screwed!

Anonymous said...

....."intervening in conversations among students in dining halls and common rooms to encourage discussion of such social justice issues as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability and social class."

=PC "spies"



Folks, I had a history professor back in college whose class I dropped after two sessions. This guy yelled and screamed (literally) about George Bush the Elder and Reagan and about what a lousy-non-Marxist nation this was, and how we were the fault of all the hurt in the world. He assigned some very left wing-outside reading assignments, and after a mere two classes (I had a great Tuesday night time), I decided to drop it, and hope for a sane professor the next time.

Here is the point folks: Professors like that one know that you can simply nod your head up-and-down as if in agreement with them while you pursue your management/physics/law degree. They know you can nod in agreement and write the papers with the points of view they want to hear regurgitated back to them and get your "A" for the course. What these sorry-beings detest is that they know x-amount of us did this and will vote Republican and lead normal married-lives-with-white-children-anyhow and they abhor that. What better way to find out who to "fail" or grade "harshly" than to have spies all over campus telling them who the conservatives are?




My idea for the vocational university that only taught you the subject you were majoring in will not be seen as so "out there" in 30 years I'll bet. The university can make-you-or-break you as far as your life's chances at this point, and that is too powerful folks. There has to be another way to get accreditation in your field than to be beholden to Marxist professors who will be biased against you if they cannot alter your basic social and political convictions. People like me foreseen stuff like this coming years ago (just like I was warning people back in 1991 that Hispanic migration was going to be encouraged by the democrats to tilt the country leftward and was told that I was being "alarmist" back then. My same friends dont laugh now).




Tip of the iceberg, and will be implemented, er'....tried, elsewhere. Just you watch.



M

Anonymous said...

t99 said:


"Islamists ally with women and gays because they have a common enemy: the average Straight White guy and the Western Nuclear family with monogamy and restrictions on both men and women."

I actually laughed out loud at that. He's projecting that stuff on MUSLIMS! Of all the groups he could have chosen to project that on... And remember when he said that the Saudis were behind the global warming hysteria?


"It is just one of many recent efforts to promote diversity - such as gender-neutral washrooms..."


That got me thinking about what a conformist bunch of sheep the young are, were and always will be. This would have never flown at my job. There would have been a revolt. You can't brainwash a sane grown person to THAT extent. But someone apparently did it to those college students.

I bet that if the voting age was at least 25, Obama would have lost the election.

Anonymous said...

Yes, there's nothing today's coeds look forward to more than the creepy 46-year-old Divinity student who is paid to chat them up about white privilege!

Mmmmmmm...divinity. My grandma's favorite dessert.

Creepy 46 year old divinity students? You have no idea. Here he specifically mentions Ian McKellen as the star of his favorite movie - you know, gay Ian "Margaret Thatcher was a fascist" McKellen. In the updated version of Richard III, which truly sucked.

Looking at all the profiles I still can remember my dad's issue of The Atlantic sitting on the coffee table back in my early high school days, with an article about just how bad our modern divinity students are - that was 20 years and a major pedophile scandal ago. People today go into the ministry profession wanting to be people's friends, or else to push their lefty politics. Old time reverends/priests/rabbis didn't want to be your friends - they were the voice of God on earth.

Anonymous said...

Consider:

1) The current blacklisting goinf on in California in the aftermath of Prop 8, including the theatre director who lost his job.

2) The controversy 2 years ago about several education programs (incl. Columbia and Washington State) that were essentially requiring oaths of loyalty to the concept of diversity and multiculturalism. Ed students who didn't approved were threatened with expulsion from teh programs.

3) The announcement today that eHarmony, a religiously oriented matchmaking business, would be forced to provide mating services for gays (first 10,000 to sign up get 6 months free!)

4) The publication on the internet of 10,000 members of the BNP, inluding their addresses and employers. At least one police officer will lose his job, because Britain does not allow policemen to belong to the BNP.

This is way beyond the usual multicultural insanity we are used to. These people are starting to get serious. Authoritarianism is not far behind.

Anonymous said...

I sure hope the USA vs. Canada irritability dies down. Makes me sad every time I see it. PC multicult stuff is happening everywhere. Members of politically incorrect political parties are being fired in the UK and arrested in Belgium. A 10-year-old was arrested near Manchester for allegedly using racial slurs (against an older boy who had used anti-white language against him).

No conservatives have been assassinated in the Netherlands for over a year. Does that count as good news?

It may sound cliche but this is not a country vs. country thing. It is a left vs. right thing, a Progress vs. Civilization thing. Canadian conservatives and realists are fighting as hard against PC as anybody. You got Phil Rushton at your university? You try keeping him alive.

Anonymous said...

Single women and gays are ground zero for PC and this is exactly an example of PC mind control.

Laugh at the self-righteous women who spout something PC - after you've shagged them, if you must. But laugh down all their silly theories. You'll be doing yourself, them, their parents, and the whole wide world a favor.

I once read a film review in a Canadian magazine that bemoaned the fact that orcs did not get a democratic voice in the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy.

I'm not at all aware of Peter Jackson's political leanings, but one has to give him full credit for his faithfulness to Tolkien by not including a single minority in the human cast. It's hard to believe he didn't face pressure from one group or another to have a "diverse" cast.

In watching some of the special features on the disk I noticed one academic interviewee note that LOTR was a thoroughly multicultural work - you know, with hobbits, elves and men substituting for various races. If they were races, then what race did the orcs, Urukhai and Southrons represent, I wondered? Tolkien's work was exceedingly European, and northern European at that. Hobbits, elves, men and wizards represented different peronalities, with hobbits standing in for the English countryfolk.

Anonymous said...

"I really have no idea how they deal with complaints from nonleftist students. Is there just a policy that they ignore the complaints of conservative students? "I'm feeling confused by your constant emphasis on racial equality and the assertion that the races don't exist; also your undying love for leftist dictators who have killed millions of my people makes me uncomfortable." ?

What if a black conservative complained? Would that be like an open-faced peanut butter sandwich, strapped to a cat's back, pushed off the dining room table?
"

As someone who goes to a leftist university that does these kinds of things, let me tell you, the kids just aren't paying attention and don't care. I've sometimes been horrified by the feminist/PC brainwashing that goes on in the course, until I look at my fellow students and see that the vast majority are too stupid and/or indifferent to be affected.

Anonymous said...

...a school that is still smarting from a report on systemic racism two years ago that criticized its "culture of whiteness."


According to the Government of Canada 2006 census, 94.2% of the population were Caucasian; of the visible minorities, 1.7% were Chinese, 1.2% were South Asian, and 0.8% were black.
-- Wikipedia on metropolitan Kingston

Like every atrocious idea of the last half-century: feminism, PC, mass 3rd World immigration, the "dialogue facilitator" is an American beast. --Watertight Compartment

I used to think, as Peter Brimelow does, that Pierre Trudeau invented "multiculturalism". But then I read about Jamestown.

Anonymous said...

If they're not going to preach, and they're not going to give advice, and they're not going to stifle, and they're not going to be parental, and they're not going to blame, and they're not going to judge, then WTF ARE they going to do? --Black Sea

Collect a paycheck.

Anonymous said...

They don't call that place Queens for nothing.

Anonymous said...

Canada has no big private universities, so there are no real class distinctions in where you go to school, no SATs either, just your grades. (Fewer students study liberal arts, as well). Anybody can get into the University of Toronto. Queens is one of the few selective schools in Canada, and because it has a good business school, it's where the jocks want to go. That's probably why it's considered the whitest school in Canada.

Anonymous said...

And here I was thinking that my native Australia was the most PC country in the Western world.

Congratulations, Canada, for proving that there is no limit to PC insanity.

Evil Sandmich said...

They just have to give PC enforcers like that ball bats and machetes and the transformation of our society will be complete.

Anonymous said...

The gender neutral [like, is there a war going on? --ed, Yes, but assymetrical to the point only one side know it] washrooms are , writ small, the Sailerian principle that internal diversity leads to external homogeneity, or is it that external diversity requires internal homogeneity , or something like that.

Anonymous said...

As a LOTR fan, I had to comment. The Gondorians reminded me of the East Romans (more commonly known by their derogatory Western name of "Byzantines"). Just look at the costumes, architecture and the attitudes of the people. I don't think that was entirely Jackson's imagination. I think Tolkien seems to have intended it at least in part, and Jackson was faithful to the books in most respects.
The Rohirrim seemed distinctly Nordic/Germanic, even more so in the books.
As for the Haradrim (Southrons), they reminded me of Indians or Arabs.

Anonymous said...

Here is a list of the assistants to the dean of student affairs. Scroll down a bit and you will see Arig's profile and picture.

Anonymous said...

"She has impressed her staff, students, and colleagues with her impressive analytical acumen, compassion, multi-cultural skills, and project management expertise."

I assume Arig wrote this herself. It's curious that somebody this ambitious (and with such multi-cultural skillz!) would land in the backwater of college residential management. A case of Sailer's mulatto elite, and like Obama, the mulatto international elite.

Anonymous said...

one has to give him full credit for his faithfulness to Tolkien by not including a single minority in the human cast. It's hard to believe he didn't face pressure from one group or another to have a "diverse" cast.

Even on the lowest levels, this pressure exists. I wrote and cast a low-budget film and was persistently told to replace white characters with non-whites. "This movie is TOO WHITISH," was one comment (spoken in a tone of personal disgust). "The movie is TOO WHITEBREAD," was another. "Why are you so interested in race?" I asked one of these people. The reply: "I'm not, distributors want to see diversity" - said by a neophyte who had never spoken with a single distributor in his life. One guess as to the ethnicity of the two people pushing this "get rid of Whitey" agenda.

No, Truth, they weren't Irish. Or Black.

Anonymous said...

In case anyone was still doubting whether the Canadians are a race of fags...

It's hard to believe there are people in the US who have never heard of ice hockey.

Anonymous said...

Of course later there will be a reckoning, but women and gays stupidly believe that if they are just "nice" everyone will get along and hold hands singing Kumbayah.

Does anyone else think it's ludicrously "racist", or just plain ludicrous, to spell the title of this song "Kumbayah" when the song is in English, and the relevant lyrics are "Come by here", pronounded with an ENGLISH accent?

Anonymous said...

I really have no idea how they deal with complaints from nonleftist students. Is there just a policy that they ignore the complaints of conservative students?

What do they do with complaints from conservative students? Why, they use them as evidence in the subsequent prosecution.

Anonymous said...

Testing99,

Single women and gays are ground zero for PC and this is exactly an example of PC mind control.


Yeah, ooookay, '99, and race isn't?