Right Opinion Back to School: Let the Left-Wing Indoctrination Begin

It’s no secret that our nation’s public universities want to transform American young people into a bunch of hyper-sensitive, intellectually neutered cream puffs.

But now they’re trying to deconstruct gender identity by parsing pronouns.

Across the fruited plain, institutions of higher education are turning their taxpayer-funded fiefdoms into gender neutral zones where free thought is outlawed. I’ve got several incidents to share with you — so pour yourself a glass of iced tea and prepare to be dumbfounded.

Consider what happened to Moriah DeMartino, a 21-year-old conservative student at Maryland’s Hagerstown Community College.

College officials turned down her request to establish a campus chapter of Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s most influential student non-partisan conservative organizations. Instead, the college suggested she join the political science club.

“I have determined that both Republicans and Democrats, as well as any other political parties, are able to be fairly represented as members of the currently existing club, without the creation of any additional clubs,” Dean of Student Affairs Jessica Chambers told Campus Reform.

Chambers touted the political science club as a “non-partisan, but inclusive” group that exposes students to “the principles of political science in a true objective manner with respect to all student rights.”

But Miss DeMartino tells me the advisor of the club is an “extremely liberal professor.”

“He’s the man I approached about my club and he instantly shut me down,” she said. “I’m really frustrated right now and I’m really upset.”

For the record, the college does maintain clubs for women’s rights and LGBT students, but not conservatives. No surprise, said Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk.

“More times than not administrators and deans are using their positions of power to block conservative viewpoints on campus,” Kirk told me. “We have seen this time and time again. Administrators have been trying to silence the conservative point of view.”

But when it comes to imposing draconian liberal ideology on students, no one can come close to Washington State University.

Campus Reform reports a number of professors have told students they will be punished if they use words like “illegal alien,” “male,” “and "female.”

It’s a good thing I didn’t attend Washington State University. I would’ve flunked out during roll call.

The syllabus for a “Women & Pop Culture” class warned students that using any “oppressive and hateful language” could result in a failing grade.

Oh yeah, the professor has a problem with white folks, too.

“Students will come to recognize how white privilege functions in every day social structures and institutions,” the syllabus outlined.

Another professor told white students they are expected to “defer” to non-white students. That’s just a fancy way of telling all the pale faces to shut their pie hole.

Last week I reported on the University of Tennessee’s quest to introduce gender “inclusive” pronouns into the Big Orange lexicon. Instead of he and she, students and professors were encouraged to use words like ze and zir.

“We should not assume someone’s gender by their appearance, nor by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems,” wrote Donna Braquet, the director of the university’s pride center. “Transgender people and people who do not identify within the gender binary may use a different name than their legal name and pronouns of their gender identity, rather than the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth.”

I receive correspondence weekly from parents and students who are troubled by the influence of liberal ideology on university campuses.

And it’s not just happening at public schools. Get a load of what the kids had to endure at American University, a private school in Washington, D.C.

Incoming freshmen were instructed to introduce themselves by name, hometown and “gender pronoun,” according to Young America’s Foundation (YAF).

“I found that this school has an obsession with political correctness,” Freshman Tristan Justice told The New Guard. “Despite being informed that American University was a very liberal campus, I went to orientation with high hopes that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded, but I was wrong.”

Welcome to an education system operated by the tolerance and diversity crowd, Tristan.

I really feel bad for American moms and dads — I really do. They send off their kids to college as decent, freedom-loving people. But they return home as gender neutral, secular progressives who can’t figure out whether to leave the toilet seat up or down.

Our institutions of higher learning need a courtesy flush, America.

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is “God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values.” Follow Todd on Twitter @ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.