Comment by kaitai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaitai | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't look like Bloomberg knows what he's talking about. We all need safe spaces and many of us have them. My living room is a fine example -- it's a place where I can moderate the amount of s*(^ I get, and it's useful in providing a buffer against the rest of the world. I love my living room in part because I choose who I invite in, and because I can ask people to leave if they're jerks or I just don't want to listen to them. The point is the rest of the world is not this way -- but I have great discussions in my living room that would not happen elsewhere due to all the yelling. We all need those places.

To argue that this makes people "soft" or uncompetitive in the world economy is ludicrous. We all know the rest of the world isn't safe; that's the point of the contrast. But why should college be just like the rest of the world? Sometimes you want to have a discussion about history that doesn't involve a yelling match about current Israel-Palestine relations. Just because that is unlike the real world doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

> We all need safe spaces and many of us have them. My living room is a fine example [...]

That's not quite the same thing; your living room is your private space, in property that you either own or rent. I don't think that's under any debate; you don't need the notion of "safe space" to control who can enter and what can be said inside. The discussion is more centered around safe spaces in public property—or at the very least, publicly available property. So on school campuses, for instance; clearly the school owns the land, but (a) they're not necessarily the ones setting up the safe spaces, like you are with your own living room, and (b) while nobody needs to be in your living room other than you and your family, students have legitimate business being and operating on campus. And of course, there are all sorts of variations—is it okay in student common areas? Is it okay in classrooms? Is it okay in club rooms? Is it okay if the university sets aside a room for that purpose? Etc, etc.

At many schools, "safe spaces" are designated by clubs sponsored by the university that meet in university-owned space in a building designated for student activities. That seems appropriate. Classrooms, by contrast, should be professional and constructive places where people agree to argument for the purpose of learning.

I work at a university. I hear from, say, a transgender student that math class is tiring because they have a peer who keeps humming "Lola." I can tell that student to stop taking away from class discussion, but I can't create a "safe space" in my math class by magic. I'm glad my student has a place to go to in the student activities center to figure out a response -- I don't want to be the point person on that! I just want to teach math. Students need other places where they can feel welcome and supported, even if people here on HN feel that it's somehow cowardly and unintellectual to want a place where they're normal, because student drop out otherwise -- the stats are clear.

Because the point of college is to challenge your ideas and beliefs, not shelter and reinforce.

Depends on the college and the administration really.

If I take a car to an establishment labelling themselves as a 'Car Wash', and their washing method consists of flinging mud all over the car....said establishment isn't a very good car wash, is it?

The word "college" is much more ambiguous than "car wash".

Latin root: collegium: 'partnership, association'

Certain religious colleges for example tend to shelter and reinforce their respective beliefs more than challenge them.

So they're not very good car washes.

But to stretch my analogy, very few people live in the living room only. Classes, academic activities, sports teams, your dorm where an evangelical pro-lifer is stuck with a girl who already had an abortion in one room and where a gay farmer boy and a sheltered foreign student from Saudi Arabia are in another room -- those are where your ideas and beliefs are challenged!

You seem to be confused about what's public and what's private. You're entitled to all the "safeiness" you want in the privacy of your home.

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