“Much ado about Nothing”
Shakespeare
With serious intellectual pursuits falling by the wayside at many colleges, small cadres of self-righteous students fritter time away identifying new social problems in need of an immediate cures. As with earlier campus protests, demonstrations and the issuance of “demands” are the principal means of drawing attention to causes.
Student activism is not a new phenomenon. It has frequently fore-shadowed momentous societal changes. During the 1960s, college idealists were in the forefront of the civil rights movement. Later, students from campuses across the nation led the protests against American involvement in Vietnam.
In recent years, drugs, bigotry, violence, Jesus and environmental causes and have been rallying points around which less dramatic battles have been waged. However, these crusades have not stirred public emotions as did those life-and-death struggles of three decades ago.
Now, however, a small splinter group of the politically correct speech crowd has latched onto a cause destined to sweep the nation. These born-again activists are now determined to protect fellow students, alumni and the public at large from perceived dangers of semantic insensitivity. Two hundred nineteen years after the Provincial Congress decreed one-third of all new regiments of the Massachusetts militia be made up of Minutemen, 30 UMASS students
have demanded the school hold a referendum to retire the Minuteman as the school’s logo, sports name and mascot.
They were quick to announce theirs was not a politically correct campaign but a concern for “social justice”. One dedicated activist has even gone on a hunger strike until UMASS Chancellor David Scott agrees to reverse his decision to cancel a formal review of the issue.
These pseudo-intellectuals determined the Minuteman portrays and promotes “sexism” (he’s a male), “racism” (he’s white) and “violence” (he’s carrying a musket). Yet, historically, all of the colonial Minutemen were white males with guns. Perhaps they’ll next push for remedial programs for the school’s alumni, whom we must presume are male-chauvinist bigots, and most likely card-carrying members of the NRA.
Carried to its illogical conclusion, schools and athletic teams, from kindergarten and Little League to colleges and the “pros” would have to eliminate all human figure mascots as well as references to conflict. Perhaps plants and animals will remain safe bets … at least until the animal activists jump on the band wagon.
Somehow, rooting for Notre Dame’s “waving shamrocks” or Cleveland’s “noble indigenous people” looses something!
While few students and even fewer alumni support this leap into cultural correctness, it should be remembered prior to 1972, the Minutemen were known as Redmen until a campus referendum presaged the change, deeming the earlier mascot insensitive to “native Americans”. Their efforts also echo those of other activists who have sought to have the Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, and other professional and collegiate sports teams dump their logos lest some group be offended.
With the President and Congress debating sending additional troops in harms way to Somalia, Haiti and possible Bosnia, the clamor over the fate of the Minuteman should have remained on the back pages of New England newspapers. However, the story was picked up by radio talk show hosts, cartoonists and editorialists whose views ranged from mild amusement to outright condemnation over another attempt to change traditional values because a few individuals had thin skin.
These increasing intrusions by individuals whose goal it is to regulate language represents a clear and present danger to every American’s First Amendment guarantees of free speech. These cultural elitists, as well as those persons who quickly give in to their, often spurious, demands have lost sight of a basic precept of this most fundamental of American liberties.
The right of free speech not only affords every citizen the opportunity to air their opinions openly and publicly … but also carries with it an incumbent obligation to respect the same rights when exercised by others, no matter how offensive or insensitive their ideas and comments may be, either to them or the mainstream, of American society.
