IT’S COME TO THIS: Universities: Avoid Basically Anything Holiday-Related to Be ‘Inclusive.’
At my school, the students are even calling for the Chancellor, Jimmy Cheek, to resign over UT’s no-Christmas-party policy, which seems a bit much. State universities can’t endorse a religion, though university “diversity” bureaucracies seem incapable of doing anything in moderation, and do seem particularly hostile to traditional values. And, alas for poor Jimmy Cheek, the bar for demanding resignations from university administrators has been set pretty low of late. These “student activists” just happen to be striking from the traditional-values side instead of the PC side. That said, I don’t think he should resign.
But what people really miss here is the class angle. The people holding (or at least attending) “holiday parties” on campus are mostly staff (at the law school, we have a potluck). The staff — secretaries, maintenance guys, groundskeepers, etc. — tend to have a lot more traditional values than faculty or administrators. These kinds of policies weigh heaviest on them, but this gets little or no sympathy from the campus types who usually purport to worry about the working classes.