Un-PC Stink from the Walls of Pink

There is a debate raging right now, and it is beyond asinine. As you may know, the visiting locker rooms at the University of Iowa have been painted pink for many years, because Hayden Fry was a psychology major and thought that it would provide an advantage because it would calm opponents down and theoretically downgrade their intensity on the field or court.

Now, led by some UI Law professors without enough to do, there is a movement to get rid of the pink interior design because pink is the color of "girls and feminine men", and therefore the statement the pink locker rooms make is homophobic and bigoted.

Have you ever heard of anything stupider to argue about? Now, I went to the U of I Law School. I paid them my tuition money, and they gave me a law degree. I feel pretty confident in saying that there are a TON of things that professors and students can do to make the school a better place and cultivate debate and discussion on IMPORTANT things, instead of wasting their time with an absolutely irrelevant social cause like the color of the locker rooms at the stadium.

The argument is illogical: the pink is for psychological effects, (just like the photos of historical All-Big Ten and All-American Hawkeyes in the visiting locker rooms), not to make a statement like "Pink is for sissies, you're in a pink room, therefore you're a sissy." If that were true, wouldn't it have the opposite effect of enraging opponents?

And, the result, no matter what logic says, is completely unimportant. It will never have any effect on the rights of homosexuals, the perception of them in society, or bigotry at large. To say that Hayden Fry was doing something homophobic or bigoted when he decided to paint the locker rooms pink is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. And to top it off, now the NCAA is getting involved.

You can read the Daily Iowan story here.

Having spent a lot of time with law professors and similar academics, I can say that I was never crazy about them. To me, most of them seemed like self-important people that mistook their own natural intelligence for a license to preach from on high. This isn't helping.