Print 
PDF
As American campuses become more and more Leftist, they become more and more hostile to those who believe differently than they---especially Christians and conservatives.
In fact, Christians and conservatives are forbidden to enter these "safe spaces" and in some cases are physically removed.
Is there a "safe space" for Christians and conservatives?
The Christian Post reported last week that "College administrators across the United States are coming up with more and more methods to stifle the free speech of students who dare to voice conservative political beliefs on campus."
The same could be said about the freedom to express one's personal faith in Jesus Christ.
CP says, "One technique is by designing certain areas of campuses as 'safe spaces'. But are those spaces really safe for conservatives?"
They are not.
Marcus Fotenos, who, as a sophomore, served as student body president at University of Colorado-Boulder this past year, initiated a student led effort to pass a ban on all so-called "free speech zones" by calling on the state legislature to take action and ban them.
Fotenos, working with the state legislature, has helped Senate Bill 62 become law this year.
State Senator Tim Neville, a co-sponsor of the bill, says, "Once we limit free speech to a zone, we indicate to our students that free speech does not exist anywhere beyond that zone. That is not the message we want to send to our future generations."
Fotenos was asked to explain exactly what a "safe space" is.
He said, "I am trying to figure out what a safe space is because when they have them up on campus, I go there and I don't feel very safe."
"If you are a white male, you are obviously very privileged," he said. "If you are a conservative, you are in the wrong---you don't want to help the poor people."
He explained, "You believe in the American dream. So you are not welcome there. It is not a safe place for you."
Fontenos said, "Anybody who disagrees with whoever founded the safe space is not welcome there and it isn't safe for them."
"I'm battling over the language of it and the whole purpose," he said.
The purpose is to advance a secular progressive ideology, without anyone being able to dissent. If someone disagrees, the Leftists feel threatened and "unsafe."
The purpose is to silence everyone but those cloistered in the "safe space."
"Safe space" tents have sprung up over campuses all across the country.
The LA Times reported that when far Left students set up a "safe space" tent at the University of Missouri to protest and demand the resignation of the college's president, college journalists came to interview them for news stories and were physically forced to leave the "safe space." A student photographer was shoved away from the "safe space."
A YouTube video shows Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media, telling a student videographer to leave, while inviting other protesters into the tent. She is heard asking, "Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here."
Professor Click was ultimately fired because her comments became public through YouTube, but these scenes are duplicated again and again and again on campuses across our country.
Fontenos says of these so-called "safe spaces," "Overall, they aren't helping students grow---they are only setting them up for failure."
"Safe spaces are not serving students in the best way possible," he says---"It is really a shame, especially for public institutions where tax money is going."
Evergreen State College in Olympia is not only a class A example of "where tax payers money" is being squandered, but a textbook case of how freedom of speech is choked under the guise of "protecting free speech."
Rather than safe space tents, the students, enabled by professors have made the entire campus a "safe space" for far Left ideology---but not so safe if you hold a different view.
The Seattle Times has been reporting that the campus has devolved this year to become a 3rd world ideological slum---my words, not the Times'.
The Seattle Times says, "At Evergreen State College, students have disrupted events, charged the school with racism and listed demands ever since the academic year began."
Last month the safe space students surrounded and confronted professor Bret Weinstein (a liberal--not a conservative) who has generally been considered on "their side" because he questioned a "campus wide equity proposal."
The equity issue exploded last week when students demanded that all non-black students vacate the campus for an entire day. Professor Weinstein decided to stay, because, he said, "I work here."
Marcus Fotenos from the University of Colorado rightly says of all the "safe space" nonsense, "You can walk through campus and have your zoned off areas. But when you get to the real world, it's not like that..."
Indeed it isn't.
Bethlehem, not Berkeley is the birthplace of free speech.
Everett Piper, earlier this year, writing for the Christian Post said, "Chancellor Dirks has stated that Berkeley is the home of the Free Speech Movement. I would beg to differ. Human freedom, intellectual or otherwise, was not born in Berkeley California but rather in a community called Bethlehem some two thousand years ago. The fundamental principles of higher education are grounded in the words of the Word; that Truth was made flesh and dwelled among us---In the Logos---the eternal preexistent 'alphabet', the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end."
Piper wrote, "The very freedom Dr. Dirks and all the others of his ilk claim to hold so dear finds its home not at a campus near the sandy beaches of our West Coast, but rather in a stable under the stars in ancient Israel. Free speech( at Berkeley or anywhere else for that matter) has never been achieved outside the context of the foundational admonition---dare I say biblical admonition---stated very succinctly in Berkeley's own founding motto"Fiat Lux"---"Let there be light."
Piper says, "Serious educators ought to guided by the implied objectivity of that 'Light'---by the immutable and non malleable, by the right, the just, the True, not the transient constructs of tolerance, trigger warnings, safe spaces, microaggressions, and whatever happens to be politically correct on a given day."
As Os Guninness has said: "All Truth is true even if no one believes it, and all falsehood is false even if everyone believes it."
Free speech was born, not on the coasts of California, but in a cave in Canaan. Human freedom does not find its birthright in the academy, but rather in a humble cave.
America's Founders clearly understood that truth.
It is not time for their benefactors to reclaim that same truth.
Safe space?
"And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free...I am the Truth." (Jesus)
Be Safe.