The College Fix

You have to hand it to students at California’s Pomona College — they know the score.

After all, Pomona is the institution where you can block access to a speech and not get punished, where you’ll get assignments like “Decolonizing Physics” and statistics courses dealing in social justice, and which adjudicates Title IX proceedings in the same manner even after a judge strikes them down.

Most recently, a student felt emboldened enough to publicly shame a theater lecturer who had requested that the “n-word” not — that’s right, not — be used in an upcoming production.

According to the Claremont Independent, the anonymous student hung up posters around campus accusing Rose Portillo — a Latina — of racism:

“On Tuesday, April 17th, I was organizing song cues for one of Pomona College’ Theatre Department’s upcoming productions. My professor Rose Portillo [emphasis original] walked up to me in class and said: ‘Nothing with nigga in it.’ I said ‘don’t say that.’ She replied ‘I’m saying it.’”

The student concludes the poster by stating “That’s racist.”

Prof called racist for trying not to be Racist https://t.co/fdh8vycGAv #news

— Campus Reform (@campusreform) April 19, 2018

Incredibly, Portillo’s actual point doesn’t matter at all to the student, nor the fact that she didn’t utter the actual n-word. Portillo’s identity politics bona fides are irrelevant too, it seems.

The Pomona theater department’s mission statement says “[the department] embodies the liberal arts education…In an atmosphere of freedom, discipline and passion, students, faculty, and staff approach intellectual and artistically great creations of the human spirit, both in the classroom and in production.”

Read the full Independent article.

MORE: Prof defends canceling class after his use of n-word upset students

MORE: White prof denied tenure after quoting N-word in class discussion

IMAGE: Max Sparber/Flickr

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