Before orientation we had to take a 120-question survey about our "cultural sensitivity." It asked us how much we agree/disagree with statements like "My culture is [freer / more tolerant / more industrious / etc] than other cultures." It was obviously written to get Americans to say good things about America, but there was a second set of instructions that said if you felt your "culture" wasn't necessarily a country, you could answer the questions about that culture. So America-hating libs were prompted to say nice things about liberal culture.

Once on Zoom, we then did a "self-identification" exercise. In a recorded session of 800+ people, we were told to hold up our name plates every time the speaker said something we agreed with. We would thus see the names and faces of our peers tied to specific beliefs. It started off innocuously enough: "I am excited to start law school." "I am nervous about classes." "I am proud of my family background." Then the typical diversity stuff: "I am first gen / LGBT / black / disabled."

But then they started asking about political beliefs. After the speaker said "I am a feminist" the people whose name plates were raised began glaring at the people who didn't. The next one was "I am an environmentalist" and more name plates were raised, but some people started visibly shaking their heads, and by the end of the prompt, almost everyone had their name plates raised. Then, "I am an antiracist." Even I hesitated at this one, but everyone ended up raising their plates having been conditioned by the previous prompts.

I was reminded of a passage from a book on how CCP prisoners of war were encouraged to write essays to get rewards like cigarettes. Since only essays bashing America won, over time the POWs were conditioned into writing anti-American essays, and subconsciously began to identify more with communism. By the end of the exercise, you could have gotten us to raise our name plates for anything BLM-related.

The final step of the indoctrination was to remind us all about our survey responses. They made a big deal about the science behind the survey, and how some huge longitudinal study had shown its accuracy in detecting racism. Of course, when it instructs people to essentially say nice things about their in-group, it can find "racism" anywhere. When our class was told how racist our survey responses were, some people took it really personally. I saw a few women start crying and turn off video. It felt kind of like a religious ceremony, something out of Scientology. We were all sinners, and the only way to cleanse ourselves of this horrible racism was to follow the teachings of antiracism and commit works in the name of BLM (joining certain activist student groups).

This is a T14 law school committing this kind of emotional blackmail.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40858293)

Also you should share this story with media outlets

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40858540)

doing this to first semester 1Ls is truly despicable - people who are already very nervous and worrying about fitting in.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40858589)

diversity priest during orientation asked "what is diverse" and i said "not white, lol" (a lot easier to do on zoom-i probably woulda chicken'd out in person). surprisingly it turned into a pretty decent conversation. talked about how diverse white ppl are w/r/t hair, eye color, ethnicity; it seemed like they were making an actual effort to consider whites as well. can't believe it happened considering the academic piety going around. very blue state too

i'm a pretty high ranking in-house associate at Racism Inc. and i actually ended that day feeling ok

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40859363)

The glaring is a fair point. I got that from a private Slack thread of students in my section where afterwards people were making fun of the students who didn't answer yes to the feminism or environmentalism question. I guess I don't know if they were aware they were being glared at or badmouthed in private, but there was more compliance for the later prompts.

I'm not surprised xo thinks this is flame. This is grad school in 2020, basically everyone from the administrators to the students is an HR shrew.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40861325)

for mandatory attendance classes, I voluntarily spoke a grand total of 0 times in my law school career

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40862375)