Column: Get over it
I have spent the better part of my life writing. I always seem to find myself writing something for someone, somewhere. However, I have spent only the last year as a columnist for The Utah Statesman.
Although my life as a columnist has been short-lived, it has not passed without teaching a few important lessons.
As a columnist, I’ve learned that any response is good response.
It means people are listening to you. I’ve learned, if you are paying attention, small events in life can become great lessons, often it’s better to listen than to speak and most of the time you’ll never know when you are the one who might make a difference for someone else.
But when I think about lessons learned from being a columnist, printing 6,000 copies of my opinion once a week and spending the better part of the last year in a newsroom, one yells louder than the rest.
The actions of giving tolerance and taking offense are both individual choices with individual consequences.
I was recently told of a situation at one particular university where a student took deep offense to an innocent comment by a professor and since then has requested parental intervention in the situation.
Another similar situation occurred when one student e-mailed a professor recently complaining about a religious example used in class to demonstrate one specific principle.
Both of these students requested special treatment because they had suffered undue offenses. When they say they have been offended, perhaps they really mean they were insulted or disrespected.
To be offended is not a disease you get unexpectedly hit with; to be offended is a choice. People do things every day they regret.
If you have accomplished one entire day without making one wrong choice, one embarrassing move, one clumsy step – I’d love to hear how you did it.
Most of us, in our everyday lives, make mistakes by human nature.
Consequently, most of us will become victims of others’ mistakes that would allow us to take offense. But, it is your choice if you become instantly offended.
Whether it’s something your boyfriend or girlfriend did, a comment said by a friend or an example used by a professor, it is still a choice to take offense.
We could spend the entire day carefully planning each word, each step, every move to ensure we do not offend anyone, but this isn’t worth it and provides no guarantee.
Most of the time, when someone is offended, they are pretty determined in that position and will continue to be offended, regardless of what we do to try and fix it.
This line of thinking has lead to an entire generation of “political correctness.”
The Declaration of Independence says each man has a right to “the pursuit of happiness” – nowhere does it mention the right from offense. However, teachers often cannot teach accurate representations of American history in grade schools because it is not clean and happy. History is messy and sometimes even upsetting, but in an effort not to offend anyone, we often teach a different version than what really happened.
This does not give us a right to be insensitive to the feelings of others by using racial slurs, insulting jokes or comments that are unnecessary in nature.
It’s one thing to be offended because of discrimination or prejudice; that is the whole purpose of the Civil Rights Movement.
It is quite another thing to be offended because someone made a mistake in action or made a fastidious comment.
In the words of one of my favorite columnists, “Being thin-skinned is bad enough; going out of one’s way to find something to be offended by is much worse.”
A university campus is one of the few places on Earth that embraces differing opinions. Campus is a marketplace of intellectual thought, a place of tolerance, a home to the extremists and a safe harbor for opening your mind to new ideas, a training ground to thicken your skin for the real world.
It is the responsibility of each individual to reduce the opportunities they give others to take offense, but it is the bigger responsibility of each individual on the other side to make a decision not to be offended, even when they may have reason.
Tolerance should always trump offense, if it doesn’t, it is only your responsibility to change.
Pass it on.
Emma Tippetts is a senior majoring in law and constitutional studies and print journalism please send any comments or questions to etippetts@cc.usu.edu