Blackwhite: “…this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.”: George Orwell, 1984
What you just read was Orwell\’s bizarre, unsettling vision of what, at the time he had it published (1949), was an upside-down world, where people could be programmed to believe the exact opposite of what was right in front of their eyes.
By contrast, what you are about to read below, excerpted from Arlette Rojano\’s article for The Oklahoma Daily, was not written in 1949. It was written this week. And, instead of referencing some dystopian existence in the distant future, it details what is actually about to happen at the University of Oklahoma.
Please read on:
OU plans to construct a new study lounge for LGBTQ students in the Union to help build community as its movement for campus-wide inclusivity continues.
A group of students called Queer Inclusion on Campus came together in late February to discuss the issues that the LGBTQ community faces at OU. Women and gender studies and English senior Alexander Ruggiers, who is a member of the group, said it is a group of students who came together to try to understand the needs of the LGBTQ community. The members wrote a 20-page report which included the many things that LBGTQ students wanted to see changed at OU, he said.
One of the things the members wanted was an LGBTQ resource center. However, after talking to OU President David Boren and other university officials, they agreed to start with a study lounge, Ruggiers said.
Kasey Catlett, the assistant director of LGBTQ and health programs at the Women\’s Outreach Center, said that the study room will help build community and allow students to come together to meet people in a safe space. He also said it will allow students to hang out and be themselves. Catlett said that details like its appearance and its opening date have not been determined yet.
Ruggiers said that even though the LBGTQ lounge represents a big step towards social change, members of Queer Inclusion on Campus will keep fighting to reach other goals like safe and inclusive housing, diversity training for faculty and staff and a resource center.
Are you as floored by that first paragraph as I am? Building a student lounge which is specifically segregated by gender orientation – with the ultimate objecive of a “resource center” that is similarly segregated – is being done in the name of “campus-wide inclusivity”?
Am I imagining things, or isn\’t a lounge and resource center which specifically segregates students by gender orientation an act of exclusivity?
Look, I don\’t have a PhD in philosophy. Maybe someone who does can explain to me how that is anything but the newspeak George Orwell referred to in “1984”.
Asking David Boren, the former Govenor of Oklahoma and U. S. Senator who now heads OU: what other “inclusive” plans do you have? How about a lounge and resource center for White people? Black people? Latinos, regardless of color (or maybe you can squeeze in separate facilities for White and Black Latinos as well)? While you\’re at it, how about males-only and females-only curricula?
It has often been said that in politics and, more recently, in political correctness, if you go far enough to one side you eventually wind up at the other side. This is a classic case of just that.
Somewhere in the ether, what is left of George Orwell must be smiling broadly….
