Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Speech Surveillance

The first knowledge of this came to me by way of the National Review. A simple two stage Google search got me right to the information.
Canada's Queen's University in Kingston has empowered a team of "student facilitators" that will patrol dormitories and dining halls. Their goal is to detect offensive comments on race, gender and sexuality and then on behalf of the university, inform the offenders that their speech is offensive.
The primary objective is "to create an atmosphere of inclusivity". From this I had to look up the word inclusivity, it is not in Webster's Dictionary, but the root is..
inclusive (in-kloo-siv) adjective taking everything into account
Here's the twist, if something is inclusive, doesn't that include things distasteful. Wouldn't the objective be better described as "to create an atmosphere of exclusivity"? After all, aren't the speech police of Queen's University charged with restricting speech?
This policy smacks of something we see every day in politics and the press. Criticism of President-Elect Obama is characterized as racist and stupid, while the same groups hurl insults of almost parallel meaning at President Bush.
We know that Canada in many ways is more liberal than the United States, but in my experience from business, many Canadians are to-the-point, no-nonsense people. Can you imagine two tooked men, sitting in their dorm room cursing over a hockey match or Bob and Doug McKenzie doing Great White North. If the speech police overheard and tried to stop, they would most likely have a bottle of Lablatt's Blue beer thrown at their head.
And rightly so.
Take Off!
The only people who get to tell me what I cannot say are, my parents, my wife and my employer.

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