Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ coming to life on America’s college campuses

We’ve all heard ad nauseum about the temper tantrum at Mizzou.    Hard-left skulls of mush are dropping their textbooks and taking to the streets — making outrageous demands and trying to run off the very administrators and faculty who made them what they are.  Student activists are demanding free school, forgiveness of student debt, mandatory “diversity” and ”racial equity” training, firings and resignations of various and sundry faculty and administrators, among other things. 

This phenomenon has been spreading across the country — from campus to campus — whipping up a liberal frenzy just in time for election season. The developments have me drawing comparisons to George Orwell’s classic ”Animal Farm’‘ —  where animals rise up against their farmer masters and set in motion what they call an egalitarian, but what is really totalitarian, society.  The “revolution” takes a nasty turn and the characters in that book soon learn that “some animals are more equal than others.” 

Well, the nuttiness has reached the left-wing nuttiness capital of the world — Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Actually, I am amazed the Orange County crowd let Mizzou beat them to the punch.)  The carnival sideshow — for lack of a better, more family-friendly term — issued a manifesto called “A collective response to Anti-Blackness.”    Ooooo-kay. 

Here’s a full copy of this intellectually-stimulating masterpiece.  And here are some, um, “highlights”:

UNC Chapel Hill is an unethical institution. From massive labor exploitation across campus to the athletic industrial complex, treating Black and Brown people as less than is essential to the everyday running of UNC. In 1968 the Black Student Movement issued 22 demands to the University. Almost 50 years have passed, but if you look at the demands you realize we are still dealing with exactly the same issues: little has changed. There is no institutional will to enact a shift away from white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. There is no institutional will to recognize the anti-Blackness that stains the very roots of this University.

You include Black and Brown bodies in the institution, and mark them with the words “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “multiculturalism.” You throw us on brochures and tout us in statistics. You do this to hide the way UNC would not function were it not for the mass displacement, exploitation, slow death, and genocide of Black and Brown people. We are not trying to integrate into a violent system, while others among our people are suffering both inside and outside the University.

For this reason, it is high time that serious structural alterations be made to higher education. Our aspirations are untainted: free tuition via a University open to all, abolition of the police and prisons, free and collectivized housing and food, and more. There are many smaller steps needed to realize this, so here we set out a program to lay the groundwork for this vision. Many of these demands are not new. Hence, we honor the workers and students in groups such as Student Action with Workers, Students United for Immigrant Equality, Sierra Student Coalition, and the Board of Governors Democracy Coalition, among many others, and reiterate some of their demands to the University, too.

Okay.  Let’s make sure I’ve got this: no prisons or police, free college open to EVERYBODY, free food and housing. Anything else, gang? (It’s amazing how wise some people think they are when they’ve been hanging around college campuses for years on financial aid they’re GOING to default on and that WE’LL have to pick up the tab for.) 

MORE: 

We DEMAND that the University incorporate mandatory programming for all University constituents (students, faculty, staff, administrators, deans, chairs, etc.)  that teaches the historical racial violence of this University and town as well as a historical and contemporary look at the ways in which racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy structure our world. This will come from an ungraded course created and facilitated by a coalition of students as part of a broader task force of workers, students and staff. There is an acceptance of oppression as the norm at this University that must be called out and addressed. The program will be vetted by a University professor of our choosing.

We DEMAND equitable funding allocated to the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and the Department of Women and Gender Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. They perform a critical role at our University, creating spaces to engage in discussions and work against violent structures of privilege and oppression. In the wake of the Wainstein Report, Black Studies was scapegoated and pathologized on this campus —this was not only unacceptable, but something that was not addressed by the University at large. 

We DEMAND that standardized tests such as the SAT, SAT II, and ACT no longer be considered during admissions process, as high scores on these tests correlate most closely with higher household income, disproportionately benefiting wealthier, white students. Following in the steps of Wake Forest University, UNC-Chapel Hill must become accessible to students who are presently marginalized from attending.

 We DEMAND the University publish data on the homepage of the UNC website on the graduation rates of Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o students at UNC that account for students who drop out or transfer, disaggregating data for race, gender, and class. Currently this information is well-hidden by the administration and we believe residents of North Carolina, especially students, deserve to see this data in order to hold this institution accountable to its mandate to educate the residents of North Carolina.the admission rates of Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o students and disaggregates for race, gender, and class.

 We DEMAND that the University follow-up with all students who have decided to withdraw from the University or transfer and determine why they left and publish this data. For instance, we find that Black and Indigenous men who leave are often academically eligible, meaning the issue is more nuanced and has structural determinants that are not betng considered.

Oh, they go on and on and on. And get more and more ridiculous. They’re already calling for Margaret Spellings to be fired.   This is Obama’s America.  It’s also an excellent argument for raising the voting age to 25. 

We’re paying for this nonsense with our hard-earned money.  What are we getting in return?  A bunch of future Obamas and Barbers majoring in gender and diaspora studies demanding we cough up more money so they can hang out on campus or government offices even longer to scream about how racist and evil we are.

The animals have taken over the farm.  These campuses are no longer training our future leaders to innovate and lead our nation through the rest of the century.  (I am waiting for my alma mater to be shaken down to remove the name of that slave-owning master of Mount Vernon from its name.  Hell, the school already has a professorship named for Jimmy Hoffa.  Anything can happen.)

When this was tried in the 60s — quite a few politicians and administrators stood up to it.  Now, they’re folding and resigning and tucking tail.

I say we cut off the money spigot and let these imbeciles HAVE the campuses.  There is not much useful to the survival and growth of this nation going on in any of these places.