Marquette Warrior: Writer of Bizarre Anti-Police Tirade Was Mover of Femsex at Marquette

Monday, April 13, 2015

Writer of Bizarre Anti-Police Tirade Was Mover of Femsex at Marquette

It created quite a stir:  a column in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel where one Claire Van Fossen demanded the abolition of police!

Titled “A just and free world means a world without police,” the lede paragraph sets the tone:
Whether we call them because of a dispute between neighbors or a robbery, a shooting or sexual violence, the police rarely meet our needs. They don’t help us heal. And they don’t prevent future harm. Rather than serve as advocates for true justice, they use their nearly limitless power to reinforce the oppressive status quo. They threaten us with violence and incarceration and target the most oppressed and vulnerable people in our society. By blaming “crime” and “criminals” instead of systemic oppression for society’s ills, the police exacerbate societal problems, harm citizens, and bar the people from liberation by maintaining the capitalist social order.
And further:
What’s perhaps worse is the fact that, because the police do not keep us safe, their predominant role in society is maintaining a social order that enables people in power to operate with the least amount of disruption possible and thus continue to exploit and oppress the already disenfranchised. By targeting low-income individuals and people of color, the police maintain a racial and economic system of social stratification that is profitable and beneficial only for the ruling class.
Yes, it’s a left-wing tirade.

Van Fossen, however, is not a stranger to Marquette. She was one of the organizers of the Femsex Workshop at Marquette in 2013. We exposed the event here, and Marquette eventually decided it was so over the top in terms of the way it dealt with female sexuality that the university ordered the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center to cease its sponsorship.

Van Fossen responded with a deranged rant. She sent the Journal-Sentinel (which covered the story) an op-ed saying:
As a Marquette student, I demand punitive action on McAdams and am prepared to convene any and all students who have been hurt or slandered by him in order to ensure that he is held accountable.
And further:
McAdams and his blog . . . are regular sources of oppressive, hateful content and blatant misogyny, not to mention homophobia, racism, and slander of Marquette students.
All this is the standard politically correct denunciation of any politically incorrect ideas, showing the nasty authoritarianism of campus leftists.

But demanding the abolition of the police is extreme even by the standards of campus leftists.

[Note:]  As of right now, the Van Fossen column is online.  There is a report that the Journal-Sentinel has decided to withdraw it and take it offline.  If so, an archived copy can be found here.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Kirby Olson said...

Marquette University should join the list of "outposts of tyranny" as defined by Condoleeza Rice. Those places include Cuba and Zimbabwe. They are defined as places where some cannot speak in the public square, while those in power can.

Everyone should be able to speak and blog at our colleges and universities. Otherwise, specific colleges and universities that don't allow this should be defined as "outposts of tyranny."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outposts_of_tyranny

9:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

**Note: For if Van Fossen read this, had anything to say to me: walter.marie.miller@gmail.com


I have absolutely no problem with radical thought. And any readers of the Warrior know that you will find a friend of radical thinking here in me.

This is not radical thought.

Let's have a few definitions of this:

1. High plaintiff language

2. An extreme example of Establishment plaintiff language.

3. Remedy-free thought.

Make no mistake people. We know what ails us. The diagnosis is clear: The plaintiff must be raised up.

To that end, then, from St Alphonsus: Kindness should be shown even in corrections. We should sometimes give a strong reproof when the fault is great and when the fault has been repeated after due admonition; but we should take care never to reprove bitterly or angrily.

This is a complaint and it is unremarkable in that. I had originally thought to commend the novelty of offering that police be abolished. But that would be to lower expectations. That, for a simple twist in the yawn-narrative, Ms. Van Fossen should be commended, is an insult to commendation.

Ms. Van Fossen offers only entrance into karmic complaint. Complaint that necessitates further complaint.

Simply: Van Fossen suggests getting rid of police. But then to whom are we to wail and scream at wrongdoing? Boston College theologian, Peter Kreeft would call Ms. Van Fossen a New Pagan. http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/religions_newpaganism.htm. But, verily, it would seem, her recommendation necessitates Christianity.

Again from Alphonsus:

Afflictions, be they ever so great and so many, do not extinguish, but rather brighten the flames of love in a heart that loves God and God alone.
If police are done away with, will Ms. Van Fossen take up her cross? Silently bear afflictions?

I’m not so sure that’s the world she’s supposing, but, as Readers, we’re left with no other inference than that she’s recommending Christianity. Christopher Hitchens - I’m paraphrasing - once said, “Just don’t do anything ghastly.” I call Van Fossen’s remarks “Remedy-free thought” because she offers no means by which the ghastly may be prevented. So then are we to suffer the ghastly, as Christ did?

9:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...



While her actual comments aren’t particularly worthwhile, that they lead to that question - How then is the ghastly to be prevented? - Well, yeah, that’s great! It’s certainly not a vast departure from the unending lowliness of the American writer-plaintiff, but I can’t help but respect the effort somehow. In the vein of Samuel Beckett, she has failed better.

My favorite, from the French, is Montaigne, and his Essai - with an "i" - the "i" clearly delineating that that word means "Attempt."

I would recommend, if I may, the final chapter of William Ryan's Blaming the Victim in which he does offer an Essai from the left. Study it and grind the gears. And grind.

Any Reader who can get their hands on William Ryan, I love to suggest doing so. The book is all complaint, but of a high caliber for today's complaint marketplace, and the final chapter is Essai.

And yes it is from the left.

I have heard whispers of Article V http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/article-v.html and we are only its masterful recommendation away from curing what ails us.

From Aristotle's Politics: But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

I had read of "tipping points"--that you just need to get the right rumbling to become an avalanche. The attempts I've seen thus far, the Article V recommendations, will doubtless fail. But the right ones won't.

One thing that must go into thoughts aspiring so high is our heritage. Only the pure convention has any chance of winning enough American hearts. The Convention ratified by State Convention.

Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is? Ok, off the dome then: Legalizing mass production of cannabis will instantly save the world from the kryptonite-clutch of the pharmaceutical industry. It would break the tension, the stasis, because there would instantly need be worldwide legalization or we would well bankrupt the world by becoming its weed dealer. Seeing real action would showcase real action's possibility, and there would be real hope for a virtuous cycle.

Read Banerjee and Duflo Poor Economics and think of the United States as a vicious cycle. And how it could be made a virtuous cycle. They talk about taking African farmers and giving them fertilizer to go from vicious to virtuous; soon as America does, it's on.

From the so-fondly thought of 1603 Florio Montaigne:

I propose certaine formelesse and irresolute fantasies, as do those schollers, who in schooles publish doubtfull and sophisticall questions to be disputed and canvased: not to establish the truth, but to find it out: which I submit to their judgements, to whom the ordering and directing, not only of my actions and compositions, but also of my thoughts, belongeth. The condemnation, as well as the approbation of them, will be equally acceptable and profitable unto me, deeming it absurd and impious, if any thing be, either ignorantly, or unadvisedly set downe in this rapsody, contrarie unto the sacred resolutions, and repugnant to the holy prescriptions of the Catholike, Apostolike, and Romane Church, wherein I was borne, and out of which I purpose not to die.

9:44 PM  

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