• Can you imagine what the leaks to the media will be like from a Trump White House? Trump will probably be one of the biggest leakers.
• As we call remember last year Yale University melted down over . . . Halloween costumes. This month the University of Wisconsin is taking steps to make sure no such thing happens on their campus, so the university’s Ethnic and Racial Studies Department is offering a “costume review” to see whether your costume is racist. How helpful of them. Here’s a suggestion for a brave student: show up for inspection in a fat suit, and present the censors with the dilemma of being called “fat-shamers” if they object to it.
• Related to Scott’s post yesterday about the language proscriptions at Princeton, I note that what used to be called “orientation” for new faculty and staff at major universities is now called “onboarding.” I don’t have any authoritative source for this, but I suspect “orientation” has been abandoned as a label because, well, you know why. Incidentally, should the program for new gay staff be called “outboarding”? Just wondering.
• And updating John’s post celebrating the inventive student at the University of Michigan who chose “His Highness” as his preferred pronoun, the predictable reaction has happened:
Friday afternoon, a University of Michigan statistics professor threatened to “punish” anybody in her class who used the school’s new pronoun designation tool to change their pronoun to “His Majesty” like YAF Chairman Grant Strobl did earlier this week.
According to student sources, the professor, identified as statistics lecturer Nadiya Fink, told her class they would be punished if they changed their pronoun to something “disrespectful” to students who are “different” than “us.”
Fink remarked, “People who do what that kid did will be punished.”
Naturally. I suggest students demand to use Imperial, Klingon, and Romulan personal pronouns, like Darth, Grand Mof, Zantei, Epitai, and Sub-Commander. That’s just for warmup. Then we roll out personal pronouns from Dungeons and Dragons. Blow the whole stupid thing up.
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