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The Veteran
Penn State’s gratuitous slur.
By JAMES TARANTO

“What if it was ‘Oh, the gay one,’ or ‘Oh, the Asian kid?’ ” asks Maggie Kwok, head of the Penn State Veterans Organization in an interview with the Daily Collegian, PSU’s student newspaper. She is referring to a “training video,” prepared by the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services office, depicting “worrisome student behavior.”

The office swiftly removed the video when it prompted a kerfuffle, but the PSU College Republicans preserved it on YouTube. It’s a fascinating documentation of academic prejudice.

Just shy of five minutes, the video depicts a vignette in two scenes. As it opens, a timorous young female instructor is talking with an older man, perhaps the department chairman. We join the conversation as it is about to wrap up, before she brings up a new and worrisome subject:

Instructor: … So, I think that we should talk to everybody about that.

Chairman: Good, let’s bring it up at the staff meeting, OK?

Instructor: Actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you about something else? Um, I’m still having problems with that student I mentioned?

Chairman: The Veteran.

Instructor: Yeah. He’s having problems with his papers still. His grammar is really poor, and he veers off subject, and he’s just not really seeming to understand the assignments.

Sound familiar? “You know, education—if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The video’s salient stereotype, however, is not of veterans as thickheaded but as angry. The instructor reluctantly tells the chairman that the student’s “tone is very confrontational, and I feel like he’s always on the verge of losing his temper.” The chairman asks if he has threatened her or if she is “worried about what he might do.” She says no, but “he makes me really uneasy.” He gives her some obvious advice, beginning: “If he ever threatens you, you call the police right away.”

After this inconclusive chat, the story shifts to the classroom, where The Veteran confronts the instructor, demanding to know why he only got a C-plus on his paper even after rewriting it to her specifications. She says that while there was some improvement after the rewrite, she graded the paper on the merits. He thinks she has it in for him and says, “I don’t see why you’re doing this”:

Instructor: I’m not doing anything, Matthew. This isn’t a personal thing against you.

The Veteran: I think it is! You’ve made it very clear in class how you feel about the war, and you’re taking it out on me!

Here’s the video … Youtube Video