BMOC: Big mandate on campus

College "diversity" activists grab freshmen at orientation-and won't let go until everyone holds the same view | Lynn Vincent

JESSICA ASHOOH, 18, a freshman at Brown University in Providence, R.I., last month attended her new school's freshman orientation. But not a lot of orienting went on. Instead the program focused on becoming "part of the Brown community."

Facilitators, for example, billed one mandatory session on diversity as a meeting that would encourage freshmen "to think about how your experiences at Brown will be shaped by your membership in a pluralistic community." But what it really was, said Ms. Ashooh, was "your basic guilty-racist speech," delivered by Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of Brown's center for race and ethnicity. "She was almost militant. At some points she was yelling at us."