Students Demand University President's Head After She Bashes 'Safe Spaces'

Brittany M. Hughes | April 3, 2017
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Students at Northern Arizona University are reportedly calling for their university president to resign after she stated she didn't support college-sanctioned “safe spaces.”

According to KPNX in Flagstaff, NAU President Rita Cheng responded to a question at a recent forum regarding her promotion of “safe spaces.”

“As a university professor, I’m not sure I have any support at all for safe space,” Cheng responded. “I think that you as a student have to develop the skills to be successful in this world and that we need to provide you with the opportunity for discourse and debate and dialogue and academic inquiry, and I’m not sure that that is correlated with the notion of safe space as I’ve seen that.”

The horror.

The university president’s response apparently prompted the NAU Student Action Coalition to host a walkout, organize a protest and call for Cheng’s immediate resignation, claiming she hasn’t done enough to ensure the safety and best “experiences” for all students.

One student at the forum accused Cheng of not protecting her students because a preacher had shown up on campus the week before and pushed “hate speech against marginalized students.”

“If she's not ready or willing to engage in these serious conversations and more importantly work towards solutions, then we do feel her resignation is necessary and would want a university President who works to provide the purpose of higher education, which is to enrich the lives of many people, students, faculty, staff and the larger Flagstaff community,” the student group said in a statement to KPNX. “We were guaranteed access, quality and excellence in our higher education student experiences and far too many students are experiencing the exact opposite.”

Apparently, the best “student experiences” must also involve having your every feeling and opinion catered to at the expense of those who may dare to disagree. 

(Then again, this is the same university, mind you, that has openly labled President Donald Trump a neo-facist and a "rapist in chief," staged walkouts in support of climate change, and held protests because they're offended by Columbus Day. So this fit-throwing isn't anything new.)

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