Essay On Why Students Should Have Zero Tolerance On The Learning Environment For Students

The use of social media by colleges and employers may increase as time goes on. Although some may say people have a right to personal business, it is not personal if it is posted to the public. To avoid people from looking at one’s social media, keep the page

Fleming tells us how the colleges and universities can look into your social networking sites and use it against you, also how it’s impossible for colleges and universities to keep up with all of their students. She reminds us that the schools are not to release any of the students’ information. How can colleges and universities keep this information private when the students themselves are putting their personal information out there on these social sites?

Higher education law attorney Dana L. Fleming voices her controversial opinion in favor of institutionalized involvement in social network protection in her article “Youthful Indiscretions: Should Colleges Protect Social Network Users from Themselves and Others?” (Fleming). Posted in the New England Journal of Higher Education, winter of 2008 issue, Fleming poses the question of responsibility in monitoring students’ online social networking activities. With a growing population of students registering on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, she introduces the concern of safety by saying, “like lawmakers, college administrators have not yet determined how to handle the unique issues posed by the public display of their students’

“Over the years, courts have ruled that college officials may set up reasonable rules to regulate the ‘time, place and manner” that the free speech can occur, as long as the rules are “content neutral,’ meaning they apply equally to all sides of issues” (Fisher, 2008). Speech codes and free speech zones on campus do exist for many reasons: many of the causes or topics that students or others looking to interact with students take up are controversial and can frequently take on less of an academic or social justice overtone and more of a hateful one. Hate speech is the greatest threat to freedom of speech on college campuses, and the limitations colleges and universities put on student’s verbal freedoms are largely in place as efforts to avoid it. Religion, in particular, is a hot topic on campuses and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more aggressive and argumentative than universities would like. However, under the First Amendment, individuals do have a right to speech that the listener disagrees with and to speech that is offensive and hateful. It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in a free society, you also have a duty to defend speech to which you may strongly object.

Recently, the world-renowned Harvard University was in the news. However, they made headlines not for a ground-breaking study as they often have, but rather for kicking ten incoming students out. These ten students were kicked out for posting inappropriate memes in a Facebook group chat. For the uninitiated, a meme is a funny picture posted online. Memes have various formats, and there were several different “types” of memes shared through this group chat. These memes contained various tasteless themes such as anti-Semitism, pedophilia, and racism, among others. These memes were offensive enough to result in the university revoking the students’ offers of admission. While these students are likely bright enough to attend another

Conversations in the media and on college campuses regarding trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions have been impassioned, to say the least. Many have found such requests to be reasonable, because students, in essence, are seeking a respectful atmosphere in which vulnerabilities are respected and insults are not tolerated. Critics have argued that designating some spaces as “safe” implies that others are “unsafe,” and it follows, then, that these “unsafe” spaces should be made “safer.” To what end? Even those who express support wonder: where to draw the line? What topics warrant trigger warnings? Who decides what constitutes a microaggression? That certain subjects demand delicate treatment in the classroom is hardly

Colleges and universities have found numerous ways throughout the years to protect their students from the outside world. One measure that colleges have taken to ensure this is that they have stopped continuing to allow comedians and speakers present at their schools due to upset students. These students did not care for the jokes that were being made by the speakers. Another measure taken by colleges is that minority students can eliminate anything they do not want to think about, read about, or be challenged

Trigger Warnings on College Campuses According to the Harvard Political Review, a safe space regarding a college campus is defined as “protection from emotional discomfort.” Although being comfortable about yourself and your opinions is a good thing, having designated spaces where people can not voice their opinion because it “could hurt someone” is not. In an interview with political and civil rights activists and former advisor to former president Barack Obama, Van Jones. He was asked where he stood on the subject of “safe spaces” on college campuses.

Xavier is not the only school that has experienced racial incidents of white students in blackface. At Kansas State University, Paige Shoemaker and her friend posted a snapchat in blackface and captioned it with racial slurs. When the photo surfaced the internet and was made known to the administration, Paige Shoemaker was immediately expelled (“College Student Expelled over Racist Snapchat”). Similarly, The Washington Post writes on how the University of Oklahoma temporarily suspended a student who sent racial messages that included, images of people hanging from trees, racial slurs and a ‘daily lynching’ calendar to several black freshmen from the University of Pennsylvania (Svrluga). By expelling and suspending students who were involved in racial incidents, these universities show that they do not condone any forms of racism. Xavier should follow the footsteps of Kansas State University and the University of Oklahoma by expelling any student involved in racial incidents. This will assure Xavier’s black and minority students that they are welcomed at Xavier. Expelling students will also act as a warning to other racist students. When other students see that severe punishment is implemented when it comes to racism in Xavier, other students will be less inclined to perform racist acts, hence creating a safe environment for all students. In addition, Xavier should specify a policy of expulsion in its student conduct book to inform students ahead of time that any racist acts

There is a difference between being insensitive and being childish with trigger warnings and enforcing safe spaces for the wrong reasons. It is not the main purpose of colleges and universities to mute themselves on how they educate for your comfort. You’re at that college or universities to learn and further your major, not to be a brat and tell them what you don’t want to learn or be exposed too. As Jonathan Rauch, author of ‘Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought’ put it when discussing with The Daily News “[I]f students feel the modern university’s job is to create a “place of comfort” rather than an “intellectual space,” that is hardly all their fault. Many parents of my generation make it their business to spare their children any exposure to upset and risk. Then kids and

Zero tolerance has become the latest contemporary educational issue for the Christian school leader. Zero tolerance policies mandate predetermined consequences for specific offenses. According to a government study, more than three quarters of all U.S. schools reported having zero tolerance policies (Holloway, 2002). Systematic guidelines of enforcing zero tolerance require educational leaders to impose a predetermined punishment, regardless of individual culpability or extenuating circumstances (Gorman & Pauken, 2003). Ethical decision making and the opportunity to apply Biblical principles have taken a back seat to reactive discipline by school leaders. Societal expectations have forced proactive educational

“As the use of social media increases and becomes an integral part of nearly every student’s life, problems arise when student expression on these sites turns into threats against the school or other students, implicating both student safety and the speaker’s right to free speech” (Hughes 208). There’s no denying that social media has become a part of most people’s daily life. We have sites like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. These websites, or apps, allow us to express ourselves in any way possible, whether it’s supporting families who lost a member in a mass shooting, trying to impeach the latest president, or donating to those who are victims of natural disasters. It’s not always that social

Unsafe learning environments create a climate of fear and insecurity and a perception and this reduces the quality of education for all students.

Cyberbullying is not only within the youth, but it is also within colleges and universities. Many would say that this is “high school behavior” or “he said, she said behavior”, but this is reality of technology. In high school there were signs all over the hallways reminding students that the facility was a “zero tolerance for bullying zone,” however many students thought they could by pass this through social media. I thought coming to college, this type of behavior would be left in high school and middle school, however it is still present. Unfortunately, not only does this bullying exceed to college, but it also extends into the real world. After taking a nursing course this year, I learned that bullying also exists within nursing, which is known as “lateral violence.” As young adults, no one would ever think that college students would need to be monitored just as much as children needed to be. "These findings highlight the possibility that lack of confidence and misperceptions may be affecting educators’ ability and likelihood to handle incidents of cyberbullying among students within higher education” (Luker & Curchack

In a recent poll a whopping 36 percent of students felt that safe spaces were necessary on college campuses according to LendEDU, a student loan organization. Safes spaces provide an outlet for many who may take offense to material that negatively impacts a student’s emotions. Some students who have had traumas in their life take security in safe spaces due to the guarantee of not being in harm’s way of the lessons they may find offensive. In a world that is not censored from sensitive material in every location it is apprehensive to put trust into a specific location for security. Although many would agree safe spaces provide an outlet of security for those who have experienced traumas in their life, an alternative compromise should be in place to allow students to explore the world from different perspectives, learn to handle the tribulation of opposition, and to prepare students to overcome adversity outside of the classroom. Safe spaces on college campuses are defined as a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm therefor, it is wise to find comfort in the ideological sense of security a student would likely find in a safe space.