The problem is to develop an intervention to reduce school conflict. One of the areas of conflict developing in schools today centers on a form of division into different groups and classifications, with students identifying themselves first as members of a subgroup--women, blacks, Asians, handicapped, or some other assumed minority classification--before they identify themselves as members of the larger group--the nation, say, or the student body as a whole. In Canada, this sort of division has not been as widespread as it has been in the United States to the south, though such political and social divisions have been a force in Quebec and are likely to continue to be so as long as the issue of home rule and separation remains a major concern. We are beginning to see some of the problems of bias developing on Canadian campuses as they have elsewhere, with groups that believe they have been discriminated against in the past seeking not only to resolve bias in the present but to launch a preemptive strike against it for the future. What we do not need is the sort of divisive rules that have been implemented in some U.S. colleges, rules intended to prevent divisions and yet apparently exacerbating them instead. What we do need is a preemptive strike to provide a means for resolving disputes and for controlling bias between students and student groups without instituting a thought-police state to stifle speech and exploration, precisely what a college should not be involved in creating.
The speech rules instituted in many U.S. colleges have been described derisively by opponents as coming under the heading of "Political Correctness," or "PC." It has been defined as efforts by certain political groups, primarily those on the left, to enforce a form of speech code so as to regulate speech to ban any term or phrase that might be considered demeaning to any group in society. One of the clear problems with these efforts is the vaguen...