On Nov. 23, President Everett Piper of Oklahoma Wesleyan University wrote a blog post about how a young student came to him and said that he felt “victimized” by a chapel sermon on love. Instead of succumbing to the offended student’s sensibilities, Piper pressed back, suggesting that the student’s attitude was self-absorbed and narcissistic.

He wrote this in a blog post titled, “This is not a day care. This is a University,” which has since gone viral and can be found here: http://www.okwu.edu/blog/2015/11/this-is-not-a-day-care-its-a-university/

“Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic,” Piper wrote. “Any time their feelings are hurt, they are victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a  ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor’ and a ‘victimizer.’”

And I couldn’t agree more. My favorite term for people like this is “cry-bullies.” It reminds me of back in kindergarten when a child didn’t get his way, so he would go tattle to the teacher; except in this case the teacher is the president of a university.

This seems to be endemic occurring on campuses all over the nation and even on this campus. People are offended by the words of their peers, so it has to be the administrations fault, because they can control what each of their students say all the time. (I hope you found the sarcasm in that statement.)

In this case the student felt offended because the “[sermon] on love made him feel bad for not showing love,” he explained. “In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.” After reading his whole blog post and re-reading this part, I can only imagine the president laughing at this statement.

This may seem like a problem only a private religious university would have, but this is a culture problem that is infecting all college campuses, including ours. This fall, protests at Yale, Princeton, Duke and the University of Missouri — where the chancellor and system president resigned in the midst of uproar — drew national attention to the concerns many students have about how minorities are treated on campus. The protests have also prompted debate about freedom of speech and whether students should be protected from words and ideas that make them uncomfortable.

A recent Pew Research poll revealed that 40 percent of millennials support a crackdown on offensive speech. One can see the troubling implications of such a poll when considering these words from Piper:

“Do we want ideological fascism or do we want intellectual freedom and academic freedom?” asked Piper during a Fox News interview. “Because really what we have right now is an argument for ideological fascism: ‘You must submit. You must agree. You must be one of us. And if you don’t, we will silence you. We will crush you.’”

I fully support the words of Piper. I believe that we have a culture that is coddling those who consider themselves as victims even when they are the ones who are oppressing freedom of speech. Thus, the term “cry-bullies.”

Some people find power in complaining and try to use that power to silence thought that is contrary to their own. Instead of remaining calm, using reason and facts (as should be part of the debate), they use anger and rebel-rousing slogans.

Piper says it best in the final paragraph of his blog.

“Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a ‘safe place’, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up. This is not a day care. This is a university.”