When McKenzie Deutsch posted a picture of herself posing with the Vice President of the United States at the White House she probably didn't expect to set off a mass 'triggering' event at her ritzy Southern California private institution of higher indoctrination, Scripps College, but that's exactly what happened.
According to the Daily Caller, Deutsch, a rising junior at Scripps, was an intern this summer in the office of U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and was excited by the opportunity to meet the Vice President. So, after snapping the pic below she posted it to Facebook with the caption: “The places you’ll go, the things you’ll see, the people you’ll meet… What a day it was in DC!”
Of course, it wasn't long before Deutsch was effectively tried and convicted of a hate crime by her peers at the ritzy, $70,000-per-year college.
“I don’t know if you understand that Pence want me and the people I love to be erased by any means possible. I don’t know how to express to you how it feels to see a fellow Scrippsie in this photo with someone who has shown himself so willing to commit institutional violence,” one angry student wrote under Deutsch’s photo with Pence.
“Posing next to someone who is a direct threat to LGBT+ groups and other marginalized communities and posting this photo with a pleasant caption is not a politically neutral act,” the student declared. “It shows you as a person who smiles with our oppressors for the sake of a photo op.”
Another student said the photo of Pence — snapped 2,636 miles away in Washington, D.C. — made her feel “unsafe.”
“To post this photo with pride is to make LGBTQ+ folks feel unsafe, as Pence has incredibly violent, homophobic views,” the student wrote, adding that she was “shocked at the continued inability to listen to marginalized people about the impact of this picture on us.”
A third student was downright hostile.
“Hmmmmm how many lgbtq folks do you need to help send to conversion therapy in exchange for reproductive rights from Pence?” the student asked.
Meanwhile, one student apparently is 'in to the whole brevity thing' and posted a simple one-word response to the picture: "Bitch."
Upon returning to school, Deutsch posted a scathing opinion piece blasting not only the "vicious" responses she received over Facebook but the faculty of her liberal college which she says are intolerant of con-conforming political opinions.
Mutual respect for those with right-leaning political beliefs is lost on liberal students at the Claremont Colleges.
Most students probably come to that conclusion within their first week at Claremont. I certainly did after just a few days in Scripps’s freshman seminar course, “Core,” a mandatory curriculum to introduce—although “indoctrinate” more accurately describes my personal experience—the theories and philosophies Scripps faculty deem necessary for students’ college education (Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete? was the class Bible).
I did not feel that I could freely express my own views without being shunned by my classmates and professors alike. So, I did not. I kept my head down and did my best to avoid sparking controversy.
How did we get here?
How did we get to the point where taking a photo with someone is an act of violence? How will we ever be able to have adult conversations if no one is ever willing to listen to those who have opposing philosophies? How can we coexist when we write off our political opponents—as well as those who dare to take photos with them—as morally bankrupt?
Hopefully Deutsch is OK never getting another 'A' during her college career at Scripps.