A University Tried to Ban Christmas Parties Because They Aren't Inclusive
War on Christmas? Not exactly, but...
Halloween is not the only holiday that launches university administrators into a joyless, censorious rage: Christmas inspires a great deal of handwringing over non-inclusive celebrations as well.
Consider what took place recently at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. From my latest Daily Beast column:
Last week, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville issued a breathtakingly Scrooge-ish (Scrooge-ian? Scrooge-esque?) piece of advice: "Ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise."
The diversity officers who wrote this instruction must have a lot of extra time on their hands, because eradicating secret Yuletide gatherings doesn't exactly seem like a pressing higher education issue.
The university, thankfully, has since re-discovered its Christmas spirit, but not before inspiring bewilderment and anger among some students, as well as quite a few Republican politicians who hysterically interpret any slight against Christmas as an attack on Christianity itself.
Read the whole thing here.
It's good to be "inclusive," but campus bureaucrats shouldn't need to be reminded that they lack the power to actually restrict kinds of speech they don't like—including and especially expression as inoffensive as holiday parties.
Related: Reason TV asks college students whether they hate free speech.
