Smith: USC experiencing racial slurs, sexual assaults because we have no meaningful values

In the wake of a recent incident involving a racial slur, USC President Harris Pastides has called on members of the “Carolina family” to “reflect on our values and tell the world what we believe.” I have done so, and here is my conclusion.

The “Carolina family” has no common beliefs. We share no meaningful values. The Carolinian Creed is a hollow charter that says and means nothing.

The university no longer attempts to educate the whole person, instead desiring only to improve its statistics, churn out graduates and compete with other institutions. It is neither a family nor a community; it is a business.

Our school has abandoned the liberal arts, cutting the ties between education and virtue. What was once a unified curriculum of philosophy, classical languages and the history of antiquity is gone. We are left with the “Carolina Core” — general-education requirements that boil down the artes liberales to categories such as “Global Citizenship and Multicultural Understanding.”

The school fails to impart virtue unto its students; worse yet, it does not even encourage us to pursue it. It trains students to market a product but does not require us to ask the meaningful questions such as “What is justice?” and “Is there an absolute standard of right and wrong?”

The Carolinian Creed, upholding diversity and tolerance as the foremost virtues, is a perfect match for our empty curriculum. Why should I “learn from differences in people’s ideas and opinions” if I am exposed to no standard of what is right and just? Am I to learn from Islamic extremists? Am I to tolerate the ideas and opinions of fascists? They certainly have their differences. “Openness” for its own sake and with no moral guidance is flat out dangerous.

If you want to know why students keep making public racial slurs and perpetrating sexual assault, look no further than the banners on campus that tell them they have “No Limits.” To fix what ails us, throw out the Core and abandon the empty words of the Creed. Encourage students to ask meaningful questions and pursue virtue through learning. Do not abandon the liberal arts.

Remind our students that, as human beings, we do have limits, and that there is a higher purpose to education than a nice starting salary. After all, learning humanizes character and does not permit it to be cruel. Or have we abandoned that belief, too?

USC Class of 2015

Columbia

This story was originally published April 13, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Smith: USC experiencing racial slurs, sexual assaults because we have no meaningful values."