Shades of Mediocrity

The pernicious influence of paper cups

Two of my obsessions meet: coffee and higher education. Remember those Starbucks cups that have the Concerned Women of America all worked up? They're not the only ones. Baylor University has now banned the cups bearing the Armistead Maupin quote (which oh-so-controversially advises gays to just be who they are) from campus. BU has no comment on the cups' removal.

I understand that Baylor is affiliated with a conservative religious denomination, and takes its mission of Christian higher education very seriously. But by essentially censoring something as harmless as a quotation on a paper cup, the institution demeans the commitment of its community to their own values. For a place like Baylor to perceive enough of a threat to Christian values in such a trivial thing seems ludicrously paternalistic. Shouldn't BU be above even noticing such a thing? As if a paper cup is a threat to the inculcation of values...

(Link via DuVernois.)