U-Delaware: Indoctrination Program teaches all whites are racist

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University of Delaware Requires Students to Undergo Ideological Reeducation
October 30, 2007

FIRE Press Release

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.


“The University of Delaware’s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional.”


The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”


The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”


According to the program’s materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain “competencies” that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of “citizenship.” These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,” “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,” and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.”


At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”


In the Office of Residence Life’s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as “treatments.”


In a letter sent yesterday to University of Delaware President Patrick Harker, FIRE pointed out the stark contradiction between the residence life education program and the values of a free society. FIRE’s letter to President Harker also underscored the University of Delaware’s legal obligation to abide by the First Amendment. FIRE reminded Harker of the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), a case decided during World War II that remains the law of the land. Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the Court, declared, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”


“The fact that the university views its students as patients in need of treatment for some sort of moral sickness betrays a total lack of respect not only for students’ basic rights, but for students themselves,” Lukianoff said. “The University of Delaware has both a legal and a moral obligation to immediately dismantle this program, and FIRE will not rest until it has.”


FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process rights, freedom of expression, and rights of conscience on our campuses. FIRE would like to thank the Delaware Association of Scholars (DAS) for its invaluable assistance in this case. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty at the University of Delaware and elsewhere can be seen by visiting www.thefire.org.
 
When I was in college I took a class that taught that all people are racists regardless of skin color. I actually argued against this view during class on the grounds that it skews and dilutes the traditional view of racists thinking, which is when someone thinks his/her race is superior. The basis for teaching all are racists is that we all stereotype based upon misunderstandings about race and ethnicity. Accordingly, to some degree we are all racists.
 
I love the part about the "benefits of dismantling systems of oppression" when the program creates a system of oppression. I would never go to a school with a program like that and I dont know why anyone in their right mind would
 
I love the part about the "benefits of dismantling systems of oppression" when the program creates a system of oppression. I would never go to a school with a program like that and I dont know why anyone in their right mind would

I thought the same thing. Of course, students age 18 don't have the benefit of our experience or critical thinking. They don't really even have an intelligent identity yet, especially if they've been brought up in government schools. Face it, most kids going to college don't know the difference between what's truth and what's untruth.
 
Well I'm only 19 and currently going to college... But I do know what you are goin for. Most kids my age are still pretty impressionable.
 
When I was in college I took a class that taught that all people are racists regardless of skin color. I actually argued against this view during class on the grounds that it skews and dilutes the traditional view of racists thinking, which is when someone thinks his/her race is superior. The basis for teaching all are racists is that we all stereotype based upon misunderstandings about race and ethnicity. Accordingly, to some degree we are all racists.

I don't understand the title.


A friend of mine attends this school and states that they teach this lesson just as Mac explained in his post.

Its not that they teach that all whites are racist, its that they teach that everybody has racial issues. He does say how ever that some of the teachings is a bit unethical by calling students out constantly and almost humiliating them on terms of being racist no matter what the view is or what race the student may fit under.

May result in some racial conflict you ask me.
 
UDel responds:

Here's an excerpt from a letter UDel published today:

"There is in fact a program within the residence halls that engages students in self –examination of the roles they hope to take in society. This effort is consistent with the mission of the University which states, “Our graduates should know how to reason critically and independently…communicate clearly in writing and speech, and develop into informed citizens and leaders.” The program is designed to encourage students to think about and to consider a number of issues, but all make their own decisions about the outcome of this reflection. FIRE’s assertion that students are told what to think is inaccurate. In common with FIRE, our institution values free speech, active voice, and open dialogue. We believe that students learn and grow in part by engaging in significant discussions on both sides of the classroom door.

I do acknowledge that there have been some missteps with the implementation of our program. This is a new effort involving over two hundred staff. As with any University educational endeavor assessment and feedback measures have been established to identify issues or concerns. Each of the issues FIRE presents are currently under review. In fact, we recently became aware that students in several residence halls were told their participation is mandatory at these activities and we have taken steps to clarify this misconception and to notify students of their rights in this area."


So they acknowledge that FIRE's assertions are correct, but "we didn't know about it!" Yeah, right. Wonder where the RA's got the idea that the participation is mandatory? Hmmm? I also found out from a student there that there are points that students can accumulate to cash in on goodies there at the school. How do they accumulate these points? Why, just participate in our non-mandatory activities, of course!

Furthermore, this is happening at the RESIDENCE of the school. What more intrusion can there be than an indoctrination program implemented at your RESIDENCE? Stalin would be proud.

FIRE's website has more detail proving that the program is mandatory: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8557.html?PHPSESSID=a810bbbbba2237d489f491cb31ea2459
 
The world has always been a competitive dog eat dog place.
College is a place of idealism and not reality.
Of course we think we would all like to live in a euphoric egalitarian Shangra La society
but even the LSD fueled hippie children of the 60's eventually gave up on communes and trying to change the world and decided to go after their piece of the pie by whatever means nessesary.
We all like to pay lip service to equality but the truth is this country and society is founded and runs on the success of the individual and not the collective.
The cut throat world of business is a much better teacher than colleges led by people who have never succeeded in accomplishing
anything of real value.
Obviously it is better to be born smart than feebleminded.
Jew's have been discriminated and run out of countries for centuries
to the point of earning a special racial designation of antisemitism which ultimately is based on envy.
However that has not stopped them from enriching humanity way beyond their numbers in science and knowledge.
How come they are able to rise above the prejuduce of racism and accomplish so much in comparison to other races that are discriminated against.
The answer is the truth no one wants to admit because it blows the racism as holding people back arguement out of the water.
The thing speaks for itself and one should draw the obvious conclusions.
The best most successful individuals should be running our society
and not those pushed forward because they belong to some group.
This is only my own opinion of course.
 

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