Queen's copies Quebec

The university has hired its own language police - although, to the best of my knowledge, even the Office québécois de la langue française doesn't butt into people's private conversations:

Your friend's new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don't call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops.

Students at Queen's University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of "homo" or "retarded" could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable.

The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive.

That means tête-à-têtes in the residence hallways may no longer be just between friends.

"If people are having a conversation with offensive content and they're doing it loud enough for a third person to hear it ... it's not private," said Jason Laker, dean of student affairs at Queen's.

"If you're doing anything that's interfering with what other people need to be doing, that's not cool."

[...]

Under the new program, six student facilitators live and work within campus residences. Their mission is threefold: to engage students "spontaneously" by talking to them about an issue that has arisen, for instance, on campus or in the media; to hold movie nights, book readings or discussions on a range of social issues; and to step in when conflicts arise.

And if students become uncomfortable when a facilitator calls out someone on an offensive slur, it shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, Mr. Laker said. It means they're forced to think about their choices.

"That is an acceptable tension to have," he said. "I would go further. I would say it's a beneficial tension."

"We are trained to interrupt behaviour in a non-blameful and non-judgmental manner," one budding young commissar tells the National Post. Are there places in Canada less free than her institutions of higher learning?

Damian P.

Posted by damian at November 19, 2008 10:53 AM