Angry in the Great White North

The Orwellian speech police are coming to Queen's University:

Your friend's new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don't call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops.

Students at Queen's University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of "homo" or "retarded" could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable.

The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive.

That means tête-à-têtes in the residence hallways may no longer be just between friends.

No one is going to arrested, ticketed, or fined.  Some well-meaning busybody is going to jump in and try to engage the speaker of the bad word in some kind of constructive dialogue.  It'll probably go like this.

Hi, my name is Antoine, and I wanted to engage you in a friendly discussion about the choice of words you just used.

Go away.

Can we explore your feelings on this subject?

Go away!

Maybe we can start by hugging?

GO AWAY!

Yeah, that'll help.

OK, the whole thing sounds stupid and pointless and is likely to be entirely ineffective, unless the goal is to create a new class of universally despised hall monitor.

But then there is another function for these thought cops:

A sampling of some behaviour that could warrant attention from university-appointed student

<snip>

If a student avoids a classmate's birthday party for faith-based reasons.

What?  These appointed busybodies are tasked to evaluate participation at parties?

OK, so let's get this straight.  A student invited to a party.  She is devout in her faith.  She likes her friend, but she also knows that at this party there will be a lot of drinking (and her faith forbids her from drinking).  She's not naive, and she knows that the general drunkenness will lead to sexual encounters (another no-no), including advances aimed at her.  Perhaps it's happened before.

So she politely declines the invitation, knowing that she's not going to have a good time, and that her obvious discomfort is just going to make other people feel bad (the ones who aren't already plastered, I mean).

She makes the mistake of mentioning that she'd feel uncomfortable with the drinking and such because of her faith, but maybe they could have dinner next week.

Uh oh, here comes the thought cop.  Mentioning religion is a bad thing.  At the very least, she should ought to keep her faith hidden from sight.  Instead, she ought to lie (another sin) and pretend she has a previous engagement.  Better yet, suggests the busybody, she should think about how irrational her faith is and whether any faith that is not inclusive of people who drink to excess is really not a religion for these modern times.  Considering something, anything, to be sinful is so archaic and judgmental, doncha know.

Here's a thought.  What if the person would normally have gone to the party, but because it's scheduled for Friday night and not Saturday, respecting the Sabbath means a Jewish student will have to pass.  Is that a faith-based reason that will earn a discussion from the thought cops?

Or what if the faith-based reason is merely that a Catholic student wants to go to the Anticipatory Mass (that's Saturday evening mass to the rest of you) because he's going to be on the road Sunday morning so he can attend the baptism of his new nephew.  He innocently mentions his plans to his friend in the presence of one of the thought cops.  Are going to mass and then a baptism faith-based reasons that "warrant attention"?

You just know there are going to be students so offended by this ridiculous program that they are going to think and speak and act in a way that will cause these thought cops to swoon with an attack of the vapours every time they're within earshot.

Just to make a point and to waste their time.  I'd almost pay money to watch it.