Sometimes when I walk around campus, I hear people say, “everybody is so sensitive these days, people freak out over the smallest things. I wish we could go back to the old days.”  

What are the old days they are talking about?

In the 80’s and 90’s people literally made up stories about satanic death cults torturing children, throwing much of religious America into a paranoid mindset where everything that wasn’t going out of the way to positively affirm their religious beliefs was a satanist conspiracy. Never mind the fact that there was no corroboration of any satanic cult activity beyond edgy teens hanging out in the woods.  

In the 50’s when the slight mention of “communism” brought about a witch hunt, where countless innocent Americans were blacklisted from everyday life or jailed because they either held an unpopular view or were just perceived to hold that view. In the end, it was rare that someone would find an honest to goodness Soviet supporter and people would just move on to accuse the next group of communist activity.

The turn of the 20th century where panic over immigration in some circles would make today’s conservatives feel inadequate. It was not a specific group of immigrants that they worried about, it was ALL of them. They thought the coming of outside influences would break the very foundation of this country and turn it into a cesspool of degeneracy. All of this while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the people in the United States had their origin in immigration.

I’m probably not going far enough back to satisfy the term “the good old days”, am I?

What about the old South where people were so panicked about keeping their slaves they started a war because of the election of a man who on record said they could keep their slaves?

How about in 1692 when paranoia about witchcraft brought accusations forth about non existent witches, resulting in torture, false imprisonment and death?

I think by this point you have come to realize that I don’t believe we have become any more sensitive than we were before, or that the  “the good old days” even existed.

I would in fact go as far to say that at least today’s “over sensitivity” that many complain about comes from a far better place than the sensitivities of yesteryear.

On any occasion at ESU have you seen anyone publicly demeaned or put on trial for saying something that was not “politically correct”? Have you seen anyone on campus subject to mob violence because they said “Indian” instead of “Native American”?

In the unlikely case that you have, inform The Bulletin immediately, but until being told not to call someone the wrong name or pronoun results in mass harm (which it undoubtedly ever will), perhaps we should just get over it and realize maybe in retrospect we have it better than “the good ol’ days”.