Across the country, our students have been trained to believe that it’s fine to use violence to prevent someone from speaking. While years ago, a riot to prevent a speaker was major news, now they’re so common that even local newspapers hardly consider it worth covering.

The reason we have these riots is our schools are populated with, well, non-students. The reason our schools are populated with non-students is because the administration of those schools don’t care: they’re paid based on butts-in-seats, and the butts need not even be in seats, merely registered as students.

A very basic idea to stop the riots is to get rid of the rioters, but, across the country, admin just doesn’t have the spine/integrity/intelligence to do the right thing.

Back in April, Heather McDonald tried to give a speech at Claremont College, and protesters attempted to prevent people from hearing what she had to say. This was not simply holding signs, they were physically blocking the doors and access to the venue.

Other schools have sought to placate the protesters, giving them boons for their thuggish behavior. Claremont wisely decided upon a different tactic:

Claremont McKenna College completes Student Conduct Process on April 6 blockade

To be fair, only 7 students (of approximately 170 rioters) received disciplinary action based on their inappropriate behavior but….YES!

The College followed a full, fair, and impartial student conduct process before the determination of findings, sanctions, and the resolution of appeals. Efforts to politicize and interfere with this process had no influence on timing or decisions. Students had an opportunity to be heard, pose questions, ask for further investigation, and raise objections throughout the process. The independent panel of three (one panelist each from the faculty, staff, and student body) determined their findings of responsibility on a preponderance of video and photographic evidence and a limited amount of witness testimony. Sanctions were based on the nature and degree of leadership in the blockade, the acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility, and other factors.

—emphasis added.

As per the emphasis above, the students here were allowed to speak—I wonder how many refused to speak, since such a refusal would demonstrate they honestly believe people should not be allowed to say what they will. I really wish I could learn this about these students, because knowing these students are intellectually honest about their beliefs would lead me to reconsider the possibility they are wrongheaded. Too bad, and ultimately we should pay attention to the people running the place anyway.

The people running our schools call themselves “leaders” but they really should be stewards. A steward protects and cares for the school and that’s why I cheer the actions of the self-proclaimed leadership at McKenna College. By showing the student base there that violent opposition to opposing ideas will not be tolerated, the administration is taking an action that will help to preserve the school’s integrity, and thus the school.

Compare to Mizzou, which has a policy of endless appeasement of rioters. Instead of teaching rioters that such behavior will be punished, the rioters instead learned that violence and threats of violence will get rewards. The end result of Mizzou’s leadership? Their student base is dropping, as nobody in their right mind wants to go to a school notorious for riots and with a reputation for anything but education. They’re closing their dorms for lack of students, and may well close the school in a few years if the appeasement continues. Mizzou has leaders, not stewards, so I’m sure they’ll get massive golden parachutes for their leadership when the school closes.

Back to Claremont. Only 5 students were removed from campus for their anti-civilization behavior, and then only suspensions; seeing as nobody was physically hurt, I’m not about to argue with the fairly light penalties. It’s at least something, and will do far more for education at that school than additional appeasement.

The Left-wing Hate media naturally will not respect Claremont’s ruling:

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf complained that the school’s punishment for the student protesters was “overly harsh.”

He quoted Nana Gyamfi, a human rights lawyer based in Los Angeles, who said Black Lives Matter was “justified” for shutting down conservative events because they felt their lives were “threatened.”

An example from Gyamfi was that once in 2015, an “anonymous figure” posted a death threat on a Google document that was created by an alumnus of the school to promote racial diversity.

Friedersdorf said he wouldn’t go so far as to describe Mac Donald as a threat to students’ safety, but he still thinks the college should have promoted a culture of free and open debate instead of clamping down on the students without proper warning.

Wait, what? You need to warn students that they’ll be punished for engaging in violence and threatening behavior? I’m sorry, I know they’re still sort-of kids, but a year’s suspension (the heaviest sentence, on three of the 170 students involved) won’t end their lives, and might give them a chance to re-dedicate themselves to education…instead of more violence.

The Atlantic ran a full on hit piece against Claremont, trying to make it look like admin was coming down on the wrong people. It’s an embarrassingly bad representation of events at Claremont; I won’t even dignify the piece with clarifications. The gentle reader should note carefully: there’s not a single comment regarding this piece of “journalism.” From this we can gather how many readers take The Atlantic’s coverage seriously. Much like with CNN, many Left-wing Hate media sites have lost considerable readership due to being caught being unarguably wildly dishonest on so many occasions.

In any event, we now have something important: Claremont is taking a completely different response to the riots. Now we just have to sit back and see if the riots continue. If they do, then the “leaders” who continue their policies of appeasement will at least have some defense for their spineless behavior.

This is exactly why we need to allow opposing points of view. If all our institutions all had no choice but to think the same way about everything, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to see if maybe there’s another solution to rioting besides appeasement followed by further appeasement.

I suspect the riots will end at Claremont, and then, I hope, I won’t be so alone in holding the appeasers in such contempt.

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