Pro-free speech students tried to implement a rule banning all safe spaces from their campus – but got comprehensively beaten.
A group at Texas State University in San Marcos attempted to get their student government to pass a bill outlawing all safe spaces.
But a last-minute intervention by other students meant the motion got roundly defeated, according to the University Star campus newspaper.
Student senator Mason McKie brought the motion to the senate on Monday evening, arguing that they restrict intellectual diversity.
However, he was opposed by other students who came to the meeting to speak in favor of safe spaces.
According to the Star, one student, who was not named, said: “We need safe spaces to be ourselves.”
After twenty minutes of debate in the chamber, the motion was defeated by 30 votes to one.
The issue has been a contentious one on campus for some months.
In November, an angry letter sent to the Star lambasted the university’s President, Dr Denise Trauth, for failing to ensure that they “feel safe”.
The letter, signed “The Many Thousand voices you refuse to hear”, said:
Safety is not a concern for which one can afford to be reactionary. It is a promise and regard with which ALL universities have a duty to uphold as paramount.
We collectively feel that you have failed to proactively engage in this ethical contract. As a consequence, many of us no longer feel safe, and certainly not under the charge that has been entrusted to a president that has failed to make our safety—albeit physical, emotional and/or psychological—an undertaking of importance and priority.
