I was going to post about E. E. “Doc” Smith today, but I was just scolded by a shrew about something on the bulletin board outside my office.  So instead I’m going to vent.

For some time now, I’ve had the picture on the left tacked up on the bulletin board (my bulletin board, not a public one) next to my office door.  Every once in a while, someone will remove it.  I put it back up.  Life goes on for a few months until someone takes it down again, and I replace it.

After the last time that happened, I put the picture shown below up directly above the first one.  And until this week that has always been the end of it.  No one has continued to take the picture down, said anything, or complained.

Sounds like good advice to me.  There are tons of things I encounter everyday that I find offensive.  Do I throw a hissy fit?  Remove other people’s signs, pictures, or posters?  No, I do not.  I am an adult.  I choose to ignore it and move on.  To do otherwise would be censorship and quite likely some type of criminal act such as vandalism.

After all, universities are supposed to be places where the exchange of free ideas and different viewpoints can occur.  Environments where people are free to express their thoughts and opinions, even if not everyone shares them.  Or even is some find those opinions offensive.  Right?

Apparently not.

I came in Tuesday, and noticed the first picture was missing.  I replaced it.  It was missing again yesterday (Wednesday).  I replaced it yesterday afternoon.  Only I put a second picture behind it.  The one on the left.

About 3:30, while I’m waiting for an international Skype call, there is a pounding on my door.  Not a knock.  A pounding.  At first I was going to ignore it, thinking it might be a student.  There are several who are unhappy about some grades, and I’ve given my final answers regarding their situations.

Instead I answered the door.  I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do or not.  (My blood pressure says not.)  A short woman I’d never seen before was holding both pictures in her hand, creased.  She asked if they were mine.

I replied in the affirmative.  She introduced herself as someone from another department who was teaching a class in the room across the hall.  (We have this wonderful scheduling software that results in a large percentage of each department’s classes being taught in other buildings.)  Some of her female students were offended by the first picture (she claimed).  I was basically told that other people, probably humor impaired, didn’t find it funny.  The woman also took exception that I had put the second picture up.  How dare I do such a thing!  Magic words were used, such as “hostile work environment”.  At the end of the conversation, which didn’t go the way she wanted, because I admitted no wrong and argued with her, she started to walk away my property, i.e., the pictures.  I told her to give them back.  She did, although I discovered later when I went to put the picture below up, she’d taken my thumb tacks.

Lewis was a wise man, and he’s completely right. Today’s fainting couch culture is exactly that, moral busybodies who have to have safe spaces, can’t see/hear anything that might offend them  or make them uncomfortable, and regard any opinion different from their own as a personal attack from the -ist du jour.

I’m thinking about putting some other pictures up, although I probably won’t.  Examples are shown below.

This one is quite applicable.

 

 

 

 

And this one is a favorite.

 

 

 

 

I have issues with some of the positions Menkin took, but here he’s spot on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the wisdom of Master Yoda cannot be refuted.