Oregon State University reportedly plans to force all students to take a “social justice training” beginning in the fall of 2016. “This training initiative is intended to provide all students entering Oregon State University an orientation to concepts of diversity, inclusion and social justice and help empower all OSU students to contribute to an inclusive university community,” states the description of the proposed program, which Reason reports was sent in an e-mail to students earlier this week. The proposal explains that the goals of the training would include getting students to “understand that systemic and local inequities exist and that we all play a role in creating an OSU community that resists and corrects injustice” and “recognize that each OSU student brings multiple stories and identities to their OSU experience.” It also vows to teach students “how to identify bias incidents and learning how to interrupt bias in in our daily lives.” Now, as Reason’s Robby Soave points out, OSU’s bias response team has recently been spending massive amounts of time investigating pro-Trump chalk messages as if they were serious business. This signals to me the kind of tone the lessons in this training will likely take: One that teaches radical social justice ideals as facts, and requires that all students accept them as such — or else face a miserable four years of being called a racist.
