I don’t know how old you are, but I am old enough to have been around when the term “politically correct” first started to come into wide usage, and I can tell you its original sense. In its original sense it was a term of ridicule or reproach. It was implicitly or explicitly contrasted with “factually correct”, and the idea was that people were being pressured not to say what was true, but rather to say what was acceptable to certain rising tides of intellectual or social opinion (whether feminist or other). So, for example, if statistics showed that crimes in many US inner cities were disproportionately committed by blacks (or by some other identifiable group or combination of groups), one was not supposed to say that out loud or in print; it was not “politically correct” in light of the reigning attitude among a certain sort of intellectual. Saying it out loud would lead to immediate charges of racism against one, which made it difficult to discuss the social causes of crime in a rational and objective way. One had to tiptoe around the facts, instead of facing them head-on. Saying out loud, based on the actual choices of women, that women seemed to prefer careers in work that involved “people” than in work that involved primarily “things” was deemed “sexist”, and so one could not report the mere fact that relatively fewer women chose engineering than teaching or nursing without incurring the sexist label. Irritation with this attempt to police thought and language led to the contrast between “politically correct” and “factually correct”, and the term “politically correct” was intended as a sneer against the thought and expression police.
The example I gave of Doreen Kimura is pertinent here, because she was saying things about male and female brain development which she regarded as established by the proper methods of brain research, and was getting resistance from people who thought that such conclusions should not be drawn, and the motivation for the resistance was not scientific, but political.
If you are against science being controlled by the religious beliefs of fundamentalists, I’m with you, but unless you are against science being controlled by the philosophical or ideological beliefs of anyone, we aren’t on the same side.
We need more information about this. Is this a secular university? Is it publicly or privately funded? Is the building in question one donated by private donors, entirely from their own personal funds, for the use of Christian students? Would the university’s rules allow a similar dedication or donation of buildings to Muslim students, Jewish students, etc.? You aren’t giving us enough to assess the situation. Perhaps you could name the university and the building so we could investigate.
At the university where I was an undergrad, one large lounge in a student-dedicated (but wholly publicly funded) building was called the “women’s lounge” and only women were allowed to congregate there. Had that same building allotted a lounge of equal size to men only, there would have been a colossal scream of sexism, endless editorials in the student paper about “old boys’ networks” and so on. But at the time, feminism and the alleged interests of women dominated the campus, and the idea was that equal rights for women was not enough, that special considerations for women were required. It was politically incorrect to say that if the women had a dedicated tax-paid room, the men should have one, too – even though that would have been a fairer use of taxpayer money.
At that same university, there was a room used regularly by the Intervarsity Christian group, but they didn’t own the room and had to book it like any other group. Groups representing all religions, all political parties, homosexuals, etc. were equally free to regularly book a constant venue for meetings in various buildings around the campus. The student union gave out money to all these student groups, I believe according to a formula depending partly on number of members. Christian groups were not favored.
More important, look at the rash of incidents over the past 20 years or so in which activist student groups on campuses at secular universities have tried to block invitations to visiting speakers whose views offend them. These have made the news, often very prominently, and I don’t see how anyone who claims to know anything about university life can be unaware of them. You will not notice any case in a secular university where Christian groups have tried to block talks by visiting speakers who attack Christianity. You will find many cases where special interest groups have tried to block invitations to speakers who hold views that are politically incorrect according to those groups. It isn’t Christianity that is the problem on secular US campuses; it’s interest-group politics, grievance politics. In some cases the university administrations have shamefully capitulated to pressure from the interest groups and rescinded issued invitations. But students who aren’t willing to tolerate the expression of views they find offensive aren’t fit to be university students. Nobody forces any of them to attend any visiting speaker event that they find offensive, and they shouldn’t be trying to block the exchange of ideas or prevent others from hearing those speakers. Again, this problem is not coming from Christian students. It’s coming from various secular and generally leftist quarters.
Americans use to hold strongly to the principle, “I may disagree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it”; that commitment was always one of the noblest things about America. But that commitment to diversity of opinion is waning in America, in its universities and elsewhere, due to the power of political correctness. This is not a good development for a free nation.