In this week’s edition of campus madness, we return to Penn State, where administrators are striking another blow against the patriarchy by banning more words. The vile, forbidden speech in question has nothing to do with slurs against women, however. There are going to be new designations for students entering each of the four standard years of college progression. Newly arriving students will no longer be referred to as “freshmen.” Gone also will be the terms junior and senior for third and fourth-year students. Why? Because those words are apparently non-inclusive and “paternalistic.” No, you really can’t make stuff like this up, folks. (Daily Wire)

Pennsylvania State University’s faculty senate passed a resolution on “inclusive language” that will rid the university of alleged paternalistic labels such as “freshmen,” “junior,” “senior,” “upperclassmen,” and “underclassmen.”

The Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs passed the “Removal of Gendered & Binary Terms from Course and Program Descriptions” resolution on April 27, according to Campus Reform.

The introduction of the resolution claims that gendered language comes from living in a male-dominated society.

For good measure, the faculty also banned the terms upperclassmen and underclassmen. Those are apparently not only sexist but “classist” as well. But those words are being replaced with “lower division” and “upper division.” Hold the phone there, Penn State! You’re going to introduce the terms “lower” and “upper?” Doesn’t that imply that some students are “above” others? That’s blatant “classism” is you ask me.

The designations of freshmen, sophomore, etc. are being replaced with “first-year, second-year, third-year, and fourth-year.” We can clearly see that “freshman” has the word “man” in it, so it had to go. The claims of sexism in “junior” and “senior” are a bit harder to follow. The faculty is saying that those terms are “parallel to western male father-son naming conventions.”

Oh, and “he/him/his” and “she/her/hers” have to go also. Everyone will now simply be they, them and their. Because you wouldn’t want anyone studying for an advanced degree to be exposed to the idea that there might be two genders. Perish the thought.

I realize that this probably sounds like satire to many of you, but it’s actually happening. And Penn State is far from the only school where this madness is taking hold. As the Daily Wire notes, the University of Virginia has already put a similar measure in place.

Nearly 89 percent of students who voted in the University of Virginia’s recent Student Council elections approved removing gendered pronouns from their constitution.

The first referendum question on the students’ ballot was entitled “Modernization and Inclusion of Student Council Constitution.” As University of Virginia Student Council Director of University Relations Noah Strike confirmed to Campus Reform, the updates strike “any use of ‘he or she,’ him or her,’ or ‘his or hers’ to the gender-neutral singular ‘they’ pronoun” in the student government’s constitution.

Beyond obtaining a college degree in preparation for a professional career, colleges also used to be considered places where young adults were prepared to head out into the real world. At this point, students are being treated like hothouse flowers that might wilt after being exposed to anything deemed controversial. Some of these kids are going to be in for a rude awakening when they show up at their first job.