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Contact CU Independent Staff Opinion Columnist Emily McPeak at emily.mcpeak@colorado.edu.
Last week, Starbucks released its annual cup for the 2015 holiday season. In years past, this iconic must-have for peppermint mocha aficionados everywhere featured classic winter-themed designs, from frosty snowflakes to the outline of reindeer. However, this year Starbucks decided to go more minimalistic, choosing a simple bright to dark red ombre. And with this cup, the company inadvertently declared a war on Christmas.
As Old St. Nick picks up his pitchfork with the “keep Christ in Christmas” faction of society, the red cup controversy exposes a current cultural trend that encompasses more than just the debate over the religious ties of Christmas. In the hyper-politically correct, or PC, world of today, many institutions and companies feel the need to remove themselves and their products from any specific culture.
Starbucks offers a prime example of this; with their 2015 red cup, they are making it clear that the holiday season does not belong to any one religion. While this is an honorable notion to try to promote, there are other cases where the PC culture is taken too far. This is extremely evident on college campuses.
It’s been commented upon by figures such as President Obama, who spoke out against the coddling of today’s university students. Furthermore, according to Jerry Seinfeld, it has caused many comedians to avoid performing at college campuses because they know doing so will force them to censor their work if they wish to avoid the wrath of student protestors.
University administrations are acting in a way that proves these comments are not entirely misplaced. They refuse to invite speakers who might bring controversy to their campus, while at the same time ceding to student demands to remove certain building names or long-standing mottos and mascots. By doing this, they are certainly avoiding causing offense. But is this at the expense of a legitimate educational experience?
People attend college for many reasons. While academics are important to most, if not all, of today’s university students, many of the reasons behind the choice to attend college are not directly related to the classroom. A student’s four years at a university are meant to expand their knowledge so that they can one day become a functioning member of larger society.
Throughout this experience, as with the rest of life, much of our learning occurs through interactions with the world around us rather than what we read in a textbook. However, when universities adopt a hyper-PC mindset, they fail to teach students a crucial fact about the real world: in life, you’re going to offend and you’re going to be offended.
So while no institution or individual should aim to be rude or oppressive toward a culture group, they shouldn’t censor who they are or what they do in the name of being PC. The way to counter racism or sexism or nativism is not to avoid causing offense and attack those who mistakenly do, but to engage in a conversation about why something may be offensive. Only then can people learn how to better engage with the world in a way that includes others, and not lose who they are in the process of doing so.
