University of Michigan task force offended by words ‘picnic’ and ‘brown bag’

To the Left and academics, commonplace words can be deemed offensive. The University of Michigan’s “Words Matter Task Force” mentioned that there are at least two dozen words and phrases that could offend people in the modern era. The task force operates under the university’s Information and Technology Services department, according to a report from The College Fix.

Unfortunately, this is not a prank, a joke, or an example of satire.

In fact, a task force memo recently stated that, “To effectively communicate with customers, it is important for ITS to evaluate the terms and language conventions that may hinder effective communication, harm morale, and deliberately or inadvertently exclude people from feeling accepted to foment a healthy and inclusive culture.”

The task force noted that words and phrases such as “picnic,” “brown bag,” “off the reservation,” and “blacklist” are offensive to people. To expand on their premise, the task force pointed out that people should use the word “gathering” instead of “picnic.” Regarding “brown bag,” the task force suggested that people should change their wording to “lunch and learn.” To replace “off the reservation,” people should change their wording to “rogue” or “outside the norms.”

The same memo added that “this list is not exhaustive and will continue to grow.”

These are just a few of the suggested changes. The full list of words and recommended changes is below:

• “Men” or “man,” should be replaced by “people” or “person”
• “Crippled” should be replaced by “weakened” or “deteriorated”
• “Disabled” should be changed to “deactivated” or “broken,” when referring to a system
• “Crazy” or “insane” should be replaced by “outrageous” or “irrational”
• “Dummy” should be replaced by “placeholder” or “sample”
• “Gender-neutral, he or she,” should be changed to “gender-neutral they, referring by name”
• “Grandfathered” should be replaced by “legacy status” or “exempted”
• “Gypped/jipped” should be changed to “defrauded, swindled, cheated, ripped off”
• “Handicapped” should be changed to “restricted”
• “Girl/gal, boy/guy” should be replaced by a person’s name or “person”
• “Honey, sweetheart, sweetie” should be changed to the person’s name
• “Native” should be replaced by “built-in” or “innate”
• “Master/slave” should be changed to “leader/follower, primary/replica, primary/standby”

Below is a list of phrases and the task force’s suggested changes:

• A phrase like “Hi guys” should be changed to “everyone” or “folks”
• “Crack the whip” should be changed to “manage the effort closely”
• “long time, no see” should be replaced by “It’s been a while”
• “Privileged account” should be eliminated in favor of “elevated account”
• “Sanity check” is no longer appropriate and should be replaced in favor of “quick check, confidence check, coherence check”
• “Sold down the river” should be changed to “betrayed” or “thrown under the bus”

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