Administrators at taxpayer-funded James Madison University gave student orientation leaders a list of 35 politically incorrect statements which were not to be uttered at this year’s freshman orientation.
The student orientation leaders were supposed to avoid uttering the 35 statements because the statements might cause someone to decide to become frustrated or angry — or feel sad and marginalized, reports The College Fix.
The 35-statement list takes up seven entire pages and includes 378 words altogether. The list is adapted from a book by Maura Cullen — “The Diversity Speaker” — entitled “35 Dumb Things Well-Intended People Say: Surprising Things We Say that Widen the Diversity Gap.”
The list specifically targets Christian orientation leaders — and, somehow, all “people of faith” — with an instruction not to say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
The problem, the copious notes in the James Madison list explain, is that the statement might make some gay people feel sad and confused.
“This can be said in an attempt to reach out in a compassionate manner to members of the LGBTQ community while not condoning their action or ‘choice,'” the admonishment explains.
“The two sides are not mutually exclusive as there are folks who both identify as LGBTQ and are people of faith. LGBTQ people also have a hard time making sense of the contradiction that religious people are supposed to withhold judgment and do no harm,” the comically flawed explanation of “judgment” and “religious people” — as if the billions of them are some monolith — also explains.
The statement “love the sinner, hate the sin” and the other 34 objectionable statements “widen the diversity gap” and fail to “create a safe and inclusive environment,” the seven-page James Madison orientation handout concerning Cullen’s verboten statements instructs.
Other statements about gay and transgender people which are not welcome at James Madison include “Asking a transgender person, ‘What are you really? A man or a woman?” and telling someone “what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business.”
The list suggests that many of the unacceptably politically correct statements could offend someone because of race, ethnicity or culture. For example, there is “I never owned slaves” as well as the observation that various racial and ethnic groups tend to sit together in cafeterias. Also, absolutely no queries to black people about “their hair or hygiene.”
Other statements to be banished include declarations of basic human equality such as “We are all part of the same race, the human race”; “I don’t see color”; and “I don’t care if you are pink, purple or orange. I treat all people the same.”
Still other statements that are now offensive on the taxpayer-funded James Madison campus are “You are so articulate,” “You have such a pretty face,” “People just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” “The same thing happens to me, too” and — of course — “It was only a joke! Don’t take things so seriously.”
The list by Cullen also charges that any criticism of making statements unacceptable as “politically correct” is “an attempt to shut the other person up.”
James Madison University spokesman Bill Wyatt told The College Fix that the orientation list of 35 offensive statements was “not distributed to our first-year students.” Despite the fact that student orientation leaders received the seven-page handout clearly castigating the 35 statements, Wyatt emphatically declared that the students who received the handouts were in no way “instructed not to use the phrases.”
James Madison University’s namesake is, of course, James Madison — the man who proposed the 10 amendments which make up the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Among the rights in Madison’s bill of rights is the right — in the First Amendment — against government entities “abridging the freedom of speech.”
James Madison University enrolls over 20,000 students.
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