just a bit more of the sort of things i take to be obvious about the t-shirt wars (like say a student ends up on that post and is puzzled about my orientation). (i tried to comment on the original dickinsonian piece with a link to the blog post. well, been a couple of days and it hasn't made it through 'moderation'.) in my actual lifetime, colleges have banned socialist slogans on campus, alright? advocating communism could lose you your tenured job, get you expelled, get you pilloried in a congressional hearing, etc. try flying a malcolm x shirt at tcu in 1964, alright? i tell you this in absolute sincerity: if someone was proposing that, say "you can't change a corrupt system by taking its money" was hate speech (and at least, unlike 'make america great' it has some content, and so, unlike 'make america great,' it could possibly be offensive to someone), violated policy, and so on, i would try as best i could to rip them a new asshole in precisely the same way on precisely the same grounds.
the first thing i thought about doing was getting a trump hat and parading around campus. but however, i talked myself down because i agree with you that trump is terribly wrong. i would not vote for him in any possible world. (i might just add that i think socialism is terrible idea, and i wouldn't vote for sanders either.) but the rules you purport to be applying, or that you would like to see instituted, can be turned on you with remarkable swiftness. i'm not sure what sort of restrictions on speech we might be dealing with after, say, the 8-year donald presidency followed by ivanka's two terms. but whatever you say, it better not be in arabic. what is politically correct at liberty or oral roberts? what if you were an atheist or leftist? and in all these cases the restrictions are just flatly incompatible with the educational function of these institutions, and the one you are proposing or purporting to identify in existing policy, is specifically and explicitly contrary to the declared mission of dickinson college. you might ask john dickinson or benjamin rush about this. no one learns anything by only hearing a chorus of unanimous voices. we are beginning to prove that by concrete experiment.
