← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Craig Smith
Thread ID: 11671 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-12-30
2003-12-30 18:39 | User Profile
Religious history discussion features public hate
Oslo University's (UiO) online forum for religious history students has featured public discussion at a level one expert called 'toilet wall debate'. Students have aired discriminatory remarks insulting Muslims, Jews, and women and university authorities have stepped in, newspaper Universitas reports.
A web site making up part of an interactive teaching project replacing seminars contained crass remarks and links to anti-Muslim content. The crudest comments, such as "we're boycotting classes because there are too many Jewish books", were posted in a chat section restricted to about 120 students.
UiO has removed the offensive links and discussion but the chat, which contains anti-Semitic and sexist conversations, remains online, though with restricted access.
"This testifies to a shockingly low intellectual level among students, even for pure anti-Semitism. This is a toilet wall debate, and the question is whether the university wants to be a toilet wall. It is an embarrassment to UiO that they have not managed to promote a better atmosphere for discussion than this," Monitor editor Tor Bach, an expert on extreme right-wing groups, told the student paper.
The university's relevant student parliament contact, Torgeir Joergensen, condemned public discrimination and racism on university education web pages and demanded UiO implement a system to monitor their chat pages.
The university agreed that ethical guidelines had been violated and the offending students have been warned and threatened with expulsion if there is repeat behavior.
Aftenposten English Web Desk Jonathan Tisdall
[url]http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=663346[/url]