Young people are radically changing how we think about violence, consent
and gender. Antioch College is where much of the conversation started... When Alyssa Navarrette, a third-year student who is studying anthropology and art, came home for her first visit after starting college, she was taken by surprise when her mother hugged her.
.. “If you don’t want to be touched and your mom wants to hug you, you should be allowed to say no,” Ms. Navarrette said. “It’s about having autonomy over your own body.”
.. People introduce themselves with their preferred pronouns (“I’m Katie and I use ‘they/them/their’”).
.. In a lot of ways, Antioch College exists in a bubble. With a current enrollment of 135 students
.. it guaranteed free tuition to its first four enrolling classes.
.. He attended several sessions at orientation devoted to the policy, including one led by Planned Parenthood educators, another about the history of sexual relations.
.. “silence conveys a lack of affirmative consent.”
.. the school and the women who created the policy were portrayed as endemic of a politically correct culture run amok that was trying to desexualize sex.
.. it became the subject of a lot of media attention, including a blistering skit on “Saturday Night Live” in 1993 starring Shannen Doherty (“major in Victimization Studies”)
.. programming has included screenings of ethical pornography
.. The college’s administration sees this all as a big selling point for the school.
.. “There’s an idea that it has to be very unromantic and very contractual and that’s not true at all,”
.. “You can learn to ask in ways that are sexy and romantic and say, ‘Is this O.K.? You want to continue to do this? Can I touch you there?’ These are all thing that can enhance the experience instead of killing the buzz.”
.. “The challenge was, ‘How do you get consent in a situation where everyone is so nervous?’”
.. She thought the policy was too based in political correctness. “I was an eye roller,” she said.
.. “I have very little patience with the notion that something like this isn’t needed,”
.. “I’m also looking for it to help people get justice or get acknowledgments at least for microaggression,”
Conservatives battle the left, without a clear foe
This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference began 472 days after the 2016 presidential election. Its first day ended with jeers for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
.. During Barack Obama’s presidency, speakers — Trump included — warned that Democrats would “fundamentally transform” America and saddle children with unpayable debt.
.. portrayed a conservative movement that was winning the present and the future, in the position, finally, to smash the left.
.. the CPAC conservatives lacked a clear, new adversary.
.. Donald F. McGahn used his remarks to spell out how Trump’s judicial appointments — a ready applause line — were part of a long-term strategy to dismantle the bureaucratic state.
.. the young crowd was promised resources for campus organizing — and lawsuits, when necessary — to unravel decades of left-wing dominance at universities.
.. “The future of western civilization will be won on college campuses,”
.. The conference’s exhibit hall contained little about potential Democratic presidential candidates; the only one that stood out was a stand-up of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), made grotesque and outfitted with a Native American headdress.
.. Onstage, the Democratic Party was alternately mocked as pathetic or described as an increasingly radical menace
.. Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser who now works with the main presidential super PAC, said that Trump would face any impeachment push from Democrats by “outflanking them every day on Twitter multiple times.”