Angry in the Great White North

Remember that program at Queen's University where specially trained students would monitor student conversations and intervene to correct politically incorrect speech?  As being reported in the media, the professional busybody program is being terminated, effective immediately:

Calling it "incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech," Queen's University in Kingston yesterday scrapped its controversial "dialogue facilitator" program.

It caused a scandal last year when it was revealed the six student "facilitators" were mandated to intervene in private conversations to encourage discussion of social justice issues and discourage offensive language.

In a report to the administration, a panel of experts expressed "strong reservations about unsolicited interventions into the lives of students" because of the risk of "making students feel unsafe or under surveillance because of their opinions."

But none of the media reports focus on the part of the report in which long-term recommendations are made:

Non-academic programs in the university should undergo scrutiny and evaluation similar to those applied to academic programs both before they are established and afterwards.

Although the Senate Residence and Educational Equity committees were informed of the development of the program, there is no evidence that the matter was discussed by them or that it was approved.  No other university body, except the staff of the Student Affairs division, was, to the best of our knowledge, involved in its design and creation and no other agency was assigned a role in the review process.

The Student Affairs division, subjected to this slapdown by the university; is devoted to empowering students:

Student Affairs is a division whose staff champion the student experience by supporting and empowering students.

Our departments provide and connect students with the support, services and facilities they need to maximize every opportunity for learning and living on campus and in the community.

So it would seem that the administration at Queen's University is only too happy to accept a report that says the busybody program crept in under the radar because of a lack of oversight being exercised on the Student Affairs division.

Oversight by the grownups, you might say.  The kids need to be disciplined.

It'll be interesting to see if student organizations, especially those that are accustomed to a lot of autonomy to pursue quasi-political agendas with little or no connection with the academic mission of the university, will remain quiet in the face of a report that says the university needs to remember that the job of the university is to teach:

The paramountcy of the academic role of the university must ever be maintained.

Everything in the university must serve its academic mission and its academic and professional faculties, schools, centres, and institutes.  As other parts of the university grow and proliferate, this is sometimes forgotten and even denied.  The potential danger to a climate fostering the full expression and exchange of ideas, even if it is remote and well-intentioned, as in the case of the IGD Program, is a good example.

Yeah, members of student organizations who seem think the point of a university is provide a place where student organizations can form are in for a rough ride, I think.

This report is about so much more than one program that caused too much controversy for the university to tolerate.  It calls on the university to take a large measure of control back from the students.  That is going to be controversial itself.