The sighting warranted a front page story in the campus newspaper. Most interesting was the reaction of the campus "safety" chief.
From the article:
Campus Safety first learned of the truck by Chief William Caskey of the Granville Police Department, who warned Dan Hect, chief of campus safety, that the truck had been sighted in the area in case it made its way on the hill.
This came into fruition on Friday evening when a student called Campus Safety to alert them of the truck’s location on campus.
When a dispatcher picked up the phone and heard the student’s concern, the dispatcher told the student that the Confederate flag is an issue of free speech, and there is nothing Campus Safety can do about that.
Dan Hect, chief of campus safety, explained that the dispatcher is new to the job and came from a police dispatch center before coming to work at Denison.Chief Hect took full responsibility for the dispatcher’s actions. “I should have trained her better,” he said."...came into fruition"? Anyway...
See, Denison is a private school so the administrators and students have every right to ban speech they don't like on campus. Stupid untrained dispatcher! Chief Hect, on the other hand, has been exquisitely "trained" by the P.C. Idiocracy that now runs this place. He knows full well his powers (his obligation!) to clamp down on any expressions that offend the delicate sensibilities of young Denny Do-Rights.
Back in our day, if we saw a Confederate Flag flying from a local's pick-up, we'd think to ourselves, "There goes a Newk hillbilly" and then hustle to our first year Spanish class. (Despite the fact that we'd already taken three years of it in middle and high school - "Yo hablo Espanol es muy malo!)
It wouldn't have occurred to us to call campus security to protect us from such a frightening expression of backward thinking. But then we weren't all so well-trained back then.
The good news is that the frightened student in this case had the wherewithal to contact a dean who contacted Chief Hect who, after reprimanding his dispatcher, assured everyone that any person caught driving around campus showing off such threatening symbols would be pulled over, identified, and banned from the premises.
"The benefit of a private campus," Hect told the campus newspaper, "is that we can do that."
Benefit? Does Chief Hect know the difference between the words "can" and "should"?
“I’m vested in this issue." he dutifully told the Denisonian. "Diversity is a core value.”
Huh? Diversity of what? Certainly not of speech, thought or expression.
But why beat up on the chief? He's just doing what his bosses in the administration want him to do. That is, to provide students with an environment where they will be safe from the sort of crude intrusions the outside world has to offer. A place where they don't have to tolerate impure and unpretty thoughts. Let's see how that all works out for them upon graduation.
Operator: "9-One-One. What is your emergency?"
Denison Grad: "Yes. I was just in a bar and I overheard two people confusing the terms cisgender and bigender. And when I tried to tell them the difference they looked at me as if I had like two heads. Then they went right back to misinforming one another."
Operator: "Yeah. What is your emergency?"
Denison Grad: "Isn't that a hate crime?"
Still based on what the chief told the student newspaper he has been "well-trained," by his own bosses, if not made particularly articulate in the lingo of academic hermeneutics.
After all, what man in his right mind would ever publicly utter the phrase, "I should have trained her better," unless referring to a cocker spaniel.
Here's hoping he escapes the ire of campus feminists. He deserves to be. After all, let's not forget his "core values." As for the core values of Denison University, they seem to have changed quite a bit since we graduated.
