As it has become increasingly difficult to stop the flood of offensive, non-PC content plaguing McGill in the form of Facebook comments, memes and .gifs of Barack Obama kicking down doors, SSMU has decided to invest in thought-detection technology to stop potentially offensive ideas before they can be vocalized by the privileged masses of McGill students.
SSMU spokesperson Daniel Johnson explained, “It’s really the next step. As effective as our safe space posters have been, we still haven’t been able to prevent McGill students from having politically incorrect thoughts. That changes today.”
“When we detect offensive thought material, the offender will be brought into SSMU and made to wear a pin branding them a micro-aggressor. We believe this will be the best way to stop our students from thinking things they would never, ever vocalize.”
Reaction from the student body has been mixed; one student remarked, “while I certainly recognize the damage that .gifs, .jpegs even .pngs can do, I wonder if this might be slightly too much.”
The decision to employ this revolutionary technology was made after the SSMU equity committee failed to deliver desired results.
Johnson elaborated, “The committee tried to chaperone each McGill student 24/7 and monitor their actions for anything that could be potentially construed as micro-aggressive to the McGill community as a whole.”
“The program was ultimately shelved because the committee was completely overwhelmed by all of the potentially micro aggressive content.”
A committee member, who refused to be named, commented, “it was just too much: people asking Asian friends if they wanted to get sushi on the weekend, playing sports with their black friends. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
The funding for this initiative comes in the form of a $50, non-refundable annual fee. When asked about the cost, SSMU Boondoggle Financing Director Jonathan Merryweather commented, “imaginary technology isn’t cheap. In order to make the McGill Thought Monitoring Service a reality, we needed to appropriate funds while making sure we don’t offend anyone in any way. Initially, we considered a lower price, but that may have been construed as offensive, implying McGill students were poor.”
“With the Redpath renovations nearly, almost, maybe finished, we’re able to make this project our next big undertaking. We expect it to be completed some time in 2050.”
While some students expressed concern about the student governing body spying on their innermost thoughts, the majority of those surveyed support the body’s action on the matter. U20 Regulation/Bureaucracy student Christine Smith stated, “it’s a small sacrifice to make, I really don’t care if SSMU has unlimited access to all my thoughts, as long as it prevents me from saying or doing something that could potentially in some way be construed as offensive.”
