Inquirer Finally Reports on Delaware Brainwashing Program

The Philadelphia Inquirer--my local fishwrap--found room to report the story about the University of Ddelaware's "diversity" program. You may have read about it where they forced students to be indoctrinated in all the feel good rhetoric of the left--white people are oppressors, questions about ones sexual preference and habits and race relation.

You would think that any big story in the Inqy's backyard was news but they did not report on it until today--albeit on he front page and with the understated headline "University of Delaware cancels diversity program".

How invidious was this program? This post by the group FIRE is what got the ball rolling, explained what the program was and got the program canceled:

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.

...The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

Once FIRE got the word out, the blogosphere hit the story hard and thanks sites such as LGF, the school stopped the program. In other words, the blogosphere beat the Inqy in their own back yard and the only reason can be that the Inquirer chose not to run with the story. I guarantee if it had been a course teaching white power and homophobia, it would have been non-stop coverage as would have been warranted.

This was good work by FIRE and I'm disgusted that U of D even allowed such an Orwellian program to be instituted.

This is a portion of another story on the issue that carries the same title but contains different content as written on the Inqy's website:

"There are question (sic) about [the program's)] practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and borad-based (sic) review."

Jan Blits, a (sic) education professor who spoke out against the program, said he welcomed Harker's decision but said the program should be completely eliminated.

Note that there are three spelling errors in three sentences. Perhaps our universities ought not push brainwashing programs and get back to teaching people how to write on a higher level than a fourth grader.