DON'T PLAY BY THEIR RULES.

Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds quips, "Whining is a power move today."  That noted, Mark Bauerlein's advice to eschew whining might be worth following.

The progressivist insistence on feeling safe and included, along with accompanying acts of censorship and personnel [c.q.] complaint, has proven so successful in recent years that one can hardly blame conservative students for joining in. But they should hold back. When conservatives proclaim that they are offended and unsafe, though they may win a quick victory in the ongoing campus culture wars, they only ensure future losses as well. What happened at North Carolina State this month shouldn’t be repeated.

On the one hand, there's something to making them play by their own rules. On the other hand, the rules create new hierarchies of privilege and oppression, hierarchies that might be internally inconsistent.

The episode followed a customary plot. An official at a university says something offensive about a particular group; the group files an objection and the official steps down. Usually, the parties of complaint come from a historically-disadvantaged group—women, blacks, Muslims, gays, etc.—who have considerable moral authority at the school because of their victim status. The offending figure, too, has often meant no disrespect in his actions, but has shown himself insufficiently sensitive to the group’s “experience.” A protest follows, the offender apologizes, and he may or may not keep his post.

This time, however, we had a non-disadvantaged group, conservative students (presumably white), and an official who was a lot more than insensitive. He was hostile and insulting.

Turf the deanlet out, though, and he doesn't have the opportunity to grow on the job, and his successor might be worse.

The [College Republicans] should not have called for the resignation of the administrator. That’s the left’s tactic, which the young right should not imitate. Instead, [they] should have let him remain in place, but demanded that he demonstrate somehow that he will not actively discriminate against conservative students. They should have widely broadcasted his opinion of GOP supporters, made a public issue of it, and let the leadership of this public institution in a state whose voters went for Trump in 2016 wriggle its way out of the embarrassment.

For, the vice chancellor had put himself in a tough spot. He knew that he must treat students impartially in the nuts and bolts of his position. Administrators must be fair no matter what they think of the politics of the kids. But the vice chancellor had thrown himself under suspicion. This could have been an interesting situation, with the [College Republicans] enjoying a distinct advantage.

What a spectacle it might have been if, instead of demanding he resign, [they] had asked him to join them for a town hall meeting. They could have had fun facing their accuser and stating to him in front of a crowd, “You have called us allies of Nazis and Klansmen—me, a student from Charlotte whose mother read what you said about me—would you please explain?” No indignation, no excess solemnity, no tears. [They] could have shown themselves to be the adults in the room, the [vice chancellor] the childish name-caller. And throughout it all, [they] would have shown that they’re having a good time, that the insults are so ridiculous that they don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

In a way, that's still following a leftist script, which is to say a Mao-era struggle session. Never mind that, though, introducing a little accountability, and perhaps having a few parents in the audience, makes a lot of sense.  Using the rules of the wokesters is a missed opportunity, namely the opportunity to demonstrate how lame the wokesters' rules are.

The language of the letter after the opening demand maintains a tone of high offense. Here is the next paragraph:

Targeted rhetoric that compares Conservatives and Republicans on NC State’s campus to “neo-nazis,” “alt-right crazies,” and “KKK members” has no place in the university system. Mr. Mullen’s comments have affixed Republican students to society’s most egregious and reprehensible groups, thus widening the gap of political divisiveness and creating an unsafe political environment for all students.

The idiom comes right out of progressivist whining. “Targeted rhetorical . . . has no place . . . political divisiveness . . . unsafe political environment.” That last phrase is the worst. Conservative students should NEVER talk about safe spaces! Progressives have infantilized the campus enough. Conservatives shouldn’t add to the problem.

Perhaps the College Republicans have never learned any other way of framing an argument. Given the sad state of rhetorical teaching, whether on campus, or in high schools, expressions such as "exceeded his authority" or "unsupported allegations" might not be in their bag of tricks.

The next sentence gives us more progressivist lament: “Mr. Mullen has spewed hurtful rhetoric.” Hurtful is one of those fuzzy, whiny, flat, unimaginative words whose weakness is supposed to reflect the injured innocence of the afflicted one. It’s the diction of a victim mentality, and conservatives should save victimhood for people who have suffered more than an overgrown adolescent insulting them on Twitter.

The next paragraph is just as bad. It contains two words high in the social justice nomenclature:

Since 1951, College Republicans at NC State have advocated strongly for respectful dialogue and inclusiveness in the political process.

One would like to think this is parody. Progressives love to call for more “dialogue,” which usually means, “Let’s talk until you agree with me,” and their “inclusiveness” is really a form of coercion. Conservatives, then, should use them with irony. But there are no signs that the [College Republicans] have their tongues in their cheeks. They really mean it.

Experienced people understand the code words. Again, the students might not yet have discovered that those are code words.

This time, they won. The [vice chancellor] resigned. But it’s a lost opportunity. I sympathize with conservative students at NC State. The relentless condemnation of Trump and his supporters is annoying, witless, and predictable, not to mention insulting. But it does no good for the right to force a resignation, not when they are so outnumbered and overwhelmed in higher education that they must play a different game. A more enduring victory would have been to ridicule him and show the campus that conservatives have better things to do than complain about puerile accusations.

That's also something more experienced campus warriors understand.

For too long on this campus the Left held a monopoly on student expression, more by default than by design.  We've proved, we hope, that conservatives don't come old, grey, dull, reactionary, and filthy rich.  They come young, green, sprite, poor, and constantly laughing the rabid Left into impotence.  The heart beat of our editorial page is the simple assertion of the basic goodness and value of the individual in American society, as opposed to the retarding features in the guilt-ridden sheep who follow the collectivist impulse.

That's a column from the 27 May, 1971 issue of The Badger Herald, not even four weeks into the Amtrak era, and your Superintendent is still nailing down a perfect attendance award in high school.

Each generation, collegians have to rediscover the formula: consider the Dartmouth Review at which Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza broke into media. There was no Vietnam War to galvanize the left; there were plenty of excessively earnest professors and administrators well worth laughing to scorn.

Let Professor Bauerlein's closing words be a charge to the next generation to keep up the fight. "Conservatives must start having fun with liberal calumny. Social justice types will never be very popular. They’re humorless and judgmental. Don’t follow their lead."