I don't use such bombastic allegorical terms lightly, so when I tell you that Orientation Advisors behaved like the Gestapo to prevent incoming University of Texas freshmen from reading flyers handed out by Young Conservatives of Texas last night, please understand that I'm not exaggerating.

YCT member Brianna Becker gives a full account of the incident on the YCT blog.

Incoming freshmen at the University of Texas are required, as a part of their orientation to the university, to undergo "diversity training." Needless to say, there's no "intellectual diversity" component in this training, and it is straight-up liberal indoctrination. Lots of jokes could be made about Texas A&M's fish camp and the way students come out die-hard-gig-'em-Aggies-for-life, but at least, to my knowledge, fish camp is about traditions. At UT, freshmen orientation is about solidifying a way of thinking and keeping out intellectual diversity at all costs.

Clearly, given what happened when members of Young Conservatives of Texas attempted to offer a differing viewpoint to UT freshmen (at one point, an orientation advisor brandished a table leg to keep the YCT members from the freshmen), there's more going on in "diversity training" than meets the eye.

One OA, in the course of the evening's events, asserted that just being at the University of Texas means a person has an open mind. Oh, really? That's why, at UT, Texas Independence Day celebrations were shut down by the administration? That's why, at UT and so many other universities, Ann Coulter and David Horowitz are booed out of the auditoriums? That's why, at UT and other prominent Texas universities, the stated long-term goal is a physically diverse student body, but there is no one championing an intellectually diverse campus?

The message is being sent through diversity training programs that "if you've never been oppressed, you're part of the problem." Of course, that message prevails in the sociology classroom as well, but someone must have figured out that it would work better to get them while they're still in a giddy glow about getting into their first choice school instead of waiting for the doldrums of classroom life. Diversity training makes assumptions about upbringing based on skin color. And have you seen the lengths some schools have gone to in diversity training on religion?? Let's not even start talking about the way "diversity" initiatives, including "training," perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes. Or how diversity training is used at some universities to "fix" conservative students.

(oh, and, did the UT administration miss this study about how diversity training doesn't work?)

Luckily, as the YCT members at UT discovered, the freshmen coming to UT aren't sheep, and several of them noticed right off that something was amiss. If an authority figure is trying to keep you from reading something (to the point of actually taking flyers from students in line!), there's probably something there worth your time. If nothing else, it'll help you keep an open mind. And after all, it's UT. Having an "open mind" is practically an admission requirement.

Main page photo courtesy of flickr user, jcs12madi