If you still think that the PC Police in America are not going overboard, then you are incredibly ignorant.
To simplify what happened: a student at Clemson saw an "offensive" Harambe meme, and now Clemson has banned everyone from posting Harambe memes around their dorm or around campus. While saying the word "Harambe" isn't banned, students can still get in trouble if what they say about Harambe is deemed "offensive". The only place students can post pictures and memes of him is in the confines of their own room.
To those of you who have no idea who Harambe is, he was that gorilla killed by Cincinatti zookeepers after he started dragging a child around his enclosure after he fell in. No one talked about him for like a month after he was murdered, but then for some reason, he became a national sensation/joke.
Anyway, here's some screenshots of emails from Clemson, reported from campusreform.org. Notice how they offer no proof how the meme was racist or how it promoted "rape culture"-
Look, I can understand if the school banned Harambe memes because someone posted them around campus with a legitimately racist joke on them. Hell, I'd even understand if the school said "We're banning these memes because they are a huge distraction around campus. They are also incredibly stupid and stopped being funny a month ago." That would have made more sense than banning them after one student saw one meme and got offended.
I'm all about making people feel welcome and comfortable on a college campus. We should be promoting a culture of acceptance and tolerance on every campus in America. But this is way over the line. This would be like if one kid tripped and fell on the playground at an elementary school and got a scratch on their knee, and then the school said, "STOP! No one is to play on this playground anymore since Tommy got a boo-boo."
Banning these memes literally is not healthy for students. If we teach people that if something hurts your feelings, just go ahead and ban it, we don't teach people how to be resilient. The person who made the Harambe meme is basically a bully, and the student who got offended is the little nerd on the playground. What would be the right course of action if that bully told the nerd, "You're stupid," or, "Your hair's funny," or, "You're weird"? Expel the bully from the school forever? Or would it be better for the school to confront the bully, and tell them why what they did was wrong? Would it have been better for the nerd's parents or the school to tell the kid, "You're not stupid, you are incredibly smart," or, "Your hair looks great," or, "You're not weird at all"? It would have been way better for someone to tell the kid to not let mean words hurt them. You know what my parents told me when I was younger? If someone says something mean to you, you simply ignore it or walk away. That takes way less effort than getting upset about it, or telling the school to get that kid in trouble.
The school is basically promoting this one student, or others like them, to have soft skin. They are not helping this student be resilient when faced with an uncomfortable situation. They are not preparing this student at all for the real world, because frankly the world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Once you're an adult and you're out of college, no one's going to pat your back and say "That guy was a meanie. He shouldn't have said that."
I think it makes perfect sense to not allow certain things. Students probably shouldn't post racist jokes on their doors in a dorm. Makes total sense. But a harmless Harambe meme? If we teach people to be offended by something as minuscule as that, how can we expect them to survive in the real world?
Plus, Harambe wasn't provided with a Safe Space. Why should the student be provided with one?
