November 25, 2008, - 4:05 pm
Canadian PC Police Get More Insidious: Big Brother College Conversation Monitors
By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
If you’re Canadian, you might wanna think about going to school in the States . . . unless you want your conversation monitored and reported upon by the junior block captain.
Queen’s University (in Kingston, Ontario) prof Judith Irwin exposes and decries this latest Big Brother, Eh! development. Sounds like the Nazis or the Communists, or both:
As a Queen’s University faculty member, I was embarrassed to hear of Queen’s new “conversation cop” program, euphemistically called the “Intergroup Dialogue Program.” To hire students to co-ordinate and lead racial awareness seminars or make presentations on bias and prejudice may have some benefit. But to encourage them (that is, pay them) to intervene in private conversations between other individuals, is not only bumping up political correctness to new heights, but is liable to have an effect that is opposite to the goals of acceptance and respect that are desired. Queen’s students should not have to live within an atmosphere of surveillance. And they should not have to worry that their animated, perhaps slightly too loud or slightly too aggressive private conversations will be overheard by spies.
Yet another thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day: that we don’t have this here . . . yet.
**** UPDATE: Reader “c_f” differs with me on this:
I think this is going on here too — e.g. in the workplace there are diversity managers, etc., and there are, at least, informal diversity and PC monitors running around patrolling speech & actions in the workplace. Probably goes on to some extent on campuses, etc., also.
c_f, great point. You are right. It is, indeed, already here.
“Yet” … that’s the key word here! But as my Canadian friends would surely say:
Tanks for telling us a’boot what are going on up dare in Canada, eh! If I were up dare I’d tell’em ta “Take Off! eh”
Jimmy Lewis
SCS, Michigan
Blog: http://rougerevival.blogspot.com/
Jimmy on November 25, 2008 at 4:36 pm