Thread by @aaronsibarium

SCOOP: Students at one of the oldest and most prestigious boys schools in the United States could soon face expulsion for a single "misplaced" joke, according to a draft "anti-bias" policy obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

freebeacon.com/campus/leaked-…

Long seen as a conservative holdout among private schools,
St. Albans is considering a crackdown on "harmful" speech that prioritizes the impact of the speech rather than the intent of the speaker.

"It is the impact of hate speech, rather than the intent of those perpetrating it, that is of utmost importance," the draft policy states. As such, boys could be expelled "even in the case of a single expression, act, or gesture"—including "misplaced humor.”

Reporting infractions would be a communal responsibility. “We also expect that anyone, whether student, faculty, staff, or family member, who witnesses, or has knowledge of an incident of hate speech, will report the incident to the appropriate individual," the policy reads.

Speech codes are now de rigueur at elite private schools, where an ever-expanding crop of diversity professionals has institutionalized an ever-expanding definition of "hate." That definition is enforced by bias reporting systems that encourage students to flag offensive speech.

At St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts, students can report their peers anonymously via an online form, set up in 2020 as part of the school’s "antiracist action plan." stmarksschool.org/campus-life/co…

Now, even even the most old-fashioned private schools are becoming fluent in the language of left-wing identity politics. freebeacon.com/campus/leaked-…

St. Albans—which refers to Hispanic students as "Latinx," has replaced Columbus Day with "Indigenous People’s Day," sponsors an "Alliance of White Antiracists," and costs over $50,000 a year—is often seen as more conservative than its co-ed counterparts.

Boys must wear formal attire and attend weekly Anglican chapels, whose liturgy one alum described as "traditional." Lunch is served family-style in a 100-year-old dining hall called "the Refectory," which the school rents out for private dinners.

“St. Albans used to have a simple honor code: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal," an alumnus of the school said. "Everything else was adjudicated human-to-human. Now boys are being policed for humor and innocuous comments are subject to the highest form of punishment."

That punishment will presumably be doled out by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committee, which enlists 21 teachers and administrators. stalbansschool.org/about/diversit…

The committee has injected "antiracism" into nearly every facet of school life: In June 2020, all faculty and staff were required to read Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist; that September, all middle and high school students read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.

St. Albans also curates an extensive list of anti-racist "resources," including Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and an introductory textbook on critical race theory. stalbansschool.org/about/diversit…

This transformation has been encouraged by the accreditation bureaucracy to which St. Albans belongs. St. Albans is a member of the Association of Independent Maryland and D.C. Schools, which expects that "diversity practice" be "an organic part of every area of school life."

The Association of Independent Maryland and D.C. Schools, in turn, is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools, which expects all of its "approved accreditors" to mandate DEI programming.

Under those pressures, the best private schools in the nation’s capitol have all come to resemble each other. Even Landon, perhaps the most conservative boys school in the D.C. area, hired a diversity consultant last year to "evaluate the lived experience of the Landon program."

As part of that evaluation, students were asked to join focus groups "based on how one identifies"—including, at the all-boys school, gender identity.