Starnes: University president slams 'self-absorbed' students
Oklahoma Wesleyan University president made headlines for telling a student offended by a sermon that culture has taught our kids to be self-absorbed and narcissistic. We need more educators like this.
A chapel sermon on love left a student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University (OKWU), feeling “offended” and “victimized.”
But instead of capitulating to the offended young scholar at the evangelical Christian university of the Wesleyan Church, OKWU President Everett Piper pushed back with a blistering rebuke of what he called “self-absorbed and narcissistic” students in a blog post on the university's website.
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“This is not a day care. This is a university,” he wrote in a blog that has since gone viral.
Back home in Tennessee, we call that a “Come to Jesus” moment.
“Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic,” he wrote. “Any time their feelings are hurt, they are victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor,’ and a ‘victimizer.’”
Oh behalf of a grateful nation, I say, thank you, Dr. Piper.
It’s refreshing to see a grown man with advanced degrees willing to stand up to a generation of perpetually-offended nincompoops and bullies.
Dr. Piper’s brilliant take on the current state of affairs on college campuses came about after a student complained about a chapel sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 – the Bible’s love chapter.
The student felt offended because the “homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love,” he explained. “In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.”
Dr. Piper offered some wise advice for the young man.
“If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for,” he wrote. “If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.”
Hallelujah!
For weeks we’ve watched academically-castrated university presidents capitulate to the outrageous demands of students.
But finally – there’s a Christian university willing to stand up and say, “Enough!”
“The bottom line is that at the end of the day I would argue that college is not about safe spaces or being a safe place,” Dr. Piper told me in a telephone interview. “OWU is not a safe place.”
He said the nation’s universities should be ashamed for educating a culture of “selfish individuals.”
“The university needs to recognize that our obligation is to challenge bad thinking and bad ideas and not coddle individuals in their self-absorption and narcissism,” he said.
The modern-day collegian is a fragile snowflake – who needs psychological help for such atrocities as reading the works of a white author or attending Taco Night at the campus dining hall.
Humorous? You bet!
Dangerous? Absolutely.
A recent Pew Research poll revealed that 40 percent of millennials support a crackdown on offensive speech.
Dr. Piper warned that could set the stage for a problem that transcends college campuses.
“Do we want ideological fascism or do we want intellectual freedom and academic freedom,” he asked. “Because really what we have right now is an argument for ideological fascism. You must submit. You must agree. You must be one of us. And if you don’t, we will silence you. We will crush you.”
The nation needs more academic leaders like Dr. Piper – a grownup willing to say what needs to be said to coddled collegians.
It’s time to put on your big-boy pants, kids.
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