Next in the line of white men who feel victimized by students who express feeling victimized, Oklahoma Wesleyan University president Dr. Everett Piper wrote an angry blog post on the university’s website, wagging his finger at all those pesky students who have become “self-absorbed and narcissistic.”
It’s hard to add this veritable grandpa-scolding to the current necessary debate on “the coddling of the American mind” (wherein two white men tell us that we’re all overreacting), given that the blog post itself — titled “This Is Not A Day Care. It’s A University!” — reads like a seventh grader’s diary rant, and the university is a small haven for conservative evangelicals. But Piper’s affronted response is right up there with the administration at Yale, Missouri, and the rest of the ol’ white dudes who think that student activists are trespassing on their intellectual estates. There is undoubtedly some hypersensitivity in the age of microaggressions and trigger warnings, but a quick scan around the Internet will show you that the most offended and defensive responses are from white people in positions of leadership who take student accusations of discrimination as a personal attack, rather than an opportunity to receive an education themselves, on the experience of the underrepresented student.
Piper also doesn’t have a particularly good record on social justice issues and activism in the first place. He’s contributed an op-ed for Fox News, hosted Senator Ted Cruz on campus, and perpetuated transphobic and anti-LGBT rhetoric.
In his tirade written last week, he said, “If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for.” Raise your hand if you agree with him wholeheartedly.
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