EDITORIAL: President of Oklahoma college courageously defines role

College campuses are supposed to be places where students are exposed to a wide range of ideas, not protected from them. Among the ideas students should hear: There is no right to never be offended.

One student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University is learning as much.

After a recent chapel service at the school, the student approached the university's president, Everett Piper, and told him that he felt "victimized" by the service's sermon on love, and that he should not have had to listen to it. Sensing the opportunity for a teachable moment for the student (and others), Mr. Piper took to the university's blog to pass along some healthy advice.

The student told Mr. Piper that the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable for not showing love. In his blog post, Mr. Piper pointed a finger at our culture for teaching this student and other kids to be "self-absorbed and narcissistic."

"Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims," Mr. Piper wrote. "Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them 'feel bad' about themselves, is a 'hater,' a 'bigot,' an 'oppressor,' and a 'victimizer.'"

Mr. Piper took aim at other universities, such as the University of Missouri, for enabling the current campus culture of victimhood, and suggested that if students didn't want to be confronted, then Oklahoma Wesleyan might not be the right place for them.

"At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered," he wrote. "We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don't believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don't issue 'trigger warnings' before altar calls."

Mr. Piper finished by explaining that Oklahoma Wesleyan "is not a 'safe place,'" but rather a place "to learn that life isn't about you, but about others."

"This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up," he wrote. "This is not a day care. This is a university."

Mr. Piper does an exemplary job of defending what a university is supposed to be. While students certainly have good reason to protest from time to time, it would be nice if they spent more time rallying to defend rights instead of trampling them.

University presidents everywhere should use Mr. Piper's letter as a template. It would be one instance where plagiarism in higher education would be a great thing.