College Moves 9/11 Memorial For Fear It Will Cause Coercion And Harassment

College Moves 9/11 Memorial For Fear It Will Cause Coercion And Harassment

A memorial dedicated to the lives lost on 9/11 would seemingly have nothing offensive about it. After all, who can complain about remembering those who died? But leave it to the liberals in academia to find a way to turn a 9/11 memorial into something negative — and their whining caused one college to refuse to display the 9/11 memorial as usual.

Young Americans for Freedom has a chapter at Southern Methodist University and for the past two years, they have displayed a memorial to those killed on 9/11. Located on the Dallas Hall Lawn, almost 3,000 American flags are erected to remember the 2,996 people killed in the horrific terrorist attacks. But now, the memorial will not be erected as usual. Why? Because some people might find it “triggering.”

The university has demanded that the Young Americans for Freedom chapter move the memorial to another part of campus, where there is much less traffic and that is much less prominent — meaning far fewer people will be able to see it. The reason for the change is a revised policy that looks to “protect” students from “harmful or triggering” messages. “While the University respects the rights of students to free speech, the University respects the right of members of the community to avoid messages that are triggering, harmful, or harassing,” the new policy reads.

“SMU respects the rights of all campus community members to express their opinions, as well as their right to be free from coercion and harassment,” spokesman Ken Best explained.

So, the university is concerned that a 9/11 memorial might be triggering, or constitute coercion and harassment? Unsurprisingly, there was considerable backlash and the new policy was revised — again — “to remove the poor wording regarding triggering or harmful messages.” But that wasn’t good enough for Grant Wood, who heads up SMU’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.

“The university’s statement is reflective of a larger problematic attitude present on college campuses nationwide that the presentation of words and ideas constitute a kind of violence, or ‘macroaggression’,” he said in an interview with Todd Starnes. “When we see our school use rhetoric of that ilk to defend a policy whose effect is the mitigation of debate and dialogue on campus, we students who love freedom have legitimate cause for concern.”

“The fact that this display caused such controversy, combined with the university’s stated rationale claiming a right to be free from offense, provides circumstantial evidence that the university instituted this policy to prevent possible public outcry from students offended by or opposed to ideas presented in displays,” he added.

Do you think the university was right to remove the display?

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