Army of Dog

Michelle Malkin highlights this story from the campus of Marquette University.

The whole exchange got started with a class discussion of supposed “over criminalization,” the notion that government outlaws too many things, resulting in a lack of respect for the law. It then moved to a discussion of how police supposedly abuse their powers, using traffic laws as a “pretext” to stop drivers in order to, for example, search for drugs.

At this point the student, Greg Karge, chimed in to point out that police often bear the brunt of this disrespect for the law, mentioning an incident he had seen. An Hispanic who was pulled over proceeded to abuse the cops, calling them “racist.”

In spite of the fact that race was explicitly part of the context of the discussion, Snow objected to the mention of the driver’s ethnicity trying to, according to Karge, “stop me in the middle of my comment, trying to give me a wave” and then saying “why did you bring that up?” Another student remembers Snow saying “Greg, this is offensive, we have a diverse group in the room.” Another student said of Snow’s response “it surprised me because I personally didn’t find his response offensive.”

So a philosophy professor begins a discussion that most likely devolved quickly into a slightly more highbrow version of “Fuck tha Police.” One of her students, who is presumably not of the leftist, all-cops-are-racist-pigs, “Free Mumia” school of thought, had the unmitigated temerity to suggest that perhaps the cops have a very difficult and dangerous job that the vast majority of them do very well and with and incredible amount of patience and restraint. The racist little bastard was, of course, forced to apologize.

After class Snow took Karge aside and told him that his comments “could have been interpreted as offensive,” mentioning especially offense to black students. She “suggested” to him that he should write an apology to the black students. Instead, he wrote the apology to the entire class. It read as follows:

I would just like to apologize for any of my comments that I said today that may have offended anyone, that was not my intention by any means. I did not articulate my argument the way that I wanted to, but that is no excuse if I did accidentally offend anyone I would like to explain myself [and] deeply apologize.

I’m going to give Mr. Karge a break on his use of the non-apology apology because he should never have written the damn thing in the first place. In an ideal world, the professor would have been told, publicly, that no such apology was necessary, none was forthcoming, and if she found that unsatisfactory, she could kiss his ass. Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of the cavalier attitude towards one’s academic well-being that I managed to master during my college years. So, in light of the fact that he was forced to apologize by his tenured toad of a professor, I would at least have hoped for something that went a little more like this:

I am profoundly sorry that my statements during today’s classroom discussion did not reflect a proper sensitivity for the feelings of criminals and lesbian college professors. I realize now that my lack of proper perspective no doubt caused grievous harm to the tradition of academic homogeneity to which the esteemed faculty of Marquette University have devoted their careers. In the future I will purpose to maintain, at all times, an attitude of humility and shame for the millenia of oppression that my white male ancestors have wrought upon the downtrodden of the world, and remember that all representatives of authority, no matter their race, are simply tools of that oppression.

In all seriousness, if you have kids approaching college age, just remember that you’ll be paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of subjecting them to this shit. Meditate on that as you munch your corn flakes.