Few stories of special SJW snowflake pain drew more ridicule than the cries from students at Emory University at the chalk graffiti, “Trump 2016.”

Protests signs like this were shockingly less persuasive at conveying the seriousness of the matter than some might expect.  At first, the administration promised to go to the videotapes to find out who perpetrated this hate crime. After the grown-ups suggested that Emory President James Wagner was a blithering idiot for legitimizing the feelings of pain, he backed off.

End of a very pathetic, funny story?  Oh, come on. You know better.

A group of students, many of them minority students, held a protest Monday at Emory University over chalked messages that appeared at many places on campus over the weekend in support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The Internet has not been kind to the students (or Emory).

The demonstration, in which students reportedly said the chalkings made them feel unsafe, eventually moved from the quad to the administration building in search of James Wagner, Emory’s president. Wagner met with the students, and in an email to the campus afterward, he said, “They voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.”

Was their pain real?  To these students weaned on their entitlement to fragility, the universal importance of their feelings, no doubt it was.  Just as the voices in the head of someone suffering from psychotic delusions are real to them. Hey, you think David Berkowitz didn’t believe a dog was telling him to kill? Oh, it was real to him. And the pain was real to these Emory students. Don’t deny their lived experience.

“The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity,” he wrote. “After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or oversensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”

This comes not from a C minus essay written by a sophomore gender and deviant sexual studies major, but Emory’s President.  What makes this notable, aside from it being batshit crazy, is that it conflates the nature of communication. The intent of the sender, in this case the person who chalked “Trump 2016,” is defined by the sensitivity of the receiver, in this case the students who take offense at sun’s rising.

In the face of near-universal ridicule, Emory has shifted gears:

Many of those criticizing the Emory students said the messages were par for the course in a campaign year and that if students can chalk their support for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they should be able to chalk support for Trump. Emory is now stressing that it has no plans to take action against anyone for chalking, and that concerns were not because of the views of the person who chalked but because some of the pro-Trump statements were not made in places where chalking is permitted.

Ah, yes. Improper chalking locations. Seems legit. But the students who suffered “genuine pain” will not give up their narrative so easily.

“No one at Emory is afraid of chalk,” wrote one student who said she participated in the protest. “Students are upset by the environment of hatred that is created by seeing ‘Trump 2016,’ ‘Accept the inevitable’ and ‘Build a wall’ written all over campus and dealing with an administration that doesn’t seem to care about what that implies for those who hold identities Trump has continuously been attacking throughout his campaign.”

Many students, at Emory and elsewhere, are uniting behind a sort of social media form letter expressing support for the Emory protesters. Dozens on Facebook and Twitter have posted something identical or similar to a statement reading: “If you’d like to stand in solidarity with us, please use this as your status: ‘I, a [identity] from [college/university/state/country], stand in solidarity with the Black and Brown students at Emory, against the intimidation, lies and deeply rooted racism that people of color continue to face — on their campus, nationwide and globally. #1969not1836 #BlackBrownAndHere.'”

That the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump raises issues ranging from racism to incomprehensible irresponsibility is neither new nor surprising. Whether they prefer Ted Cruz if it turns out that Bernie Sanders doesn’t get the nomination isn’t clear, but that there will be a Republican candidate for president, one way or another, seems inevitable.  And that candidate may well espouse positions with which these students disagree.

One student who says he participated in the protest wrote, “As many people have pointed out, yes, Trump supporters have the right to chalk and campaign for this racist and fascist presidential candidate. But we also have a right to protest it …. None of the protesters wanted to deny anyone ‘freedom of speech.’

Putting “freedom of speech” in scare quotes doesn’t change the fact that these students do, indeed, want to deny Trump supporters rights. And while students have made remarkable inroads in censorship on campus, with the facilitation of college administrators who refuse to “dismiss” their feelings, they will not be able to stop a presidential election from happening, nor demand that the Republicans not nominate a “racist and fascist presidential candidate.”

This creates an untenable situation. Should Trump win the nomination, there will be no end to their genuine pain.  And, though they have yet to grasp it, Ted Cruz won’t be a whole lot better. Are they entitled to protest with signs proclaiming “chalk is murder,” even though, you know, it’s not about chalk? Absolutely. Protest all you want.  This is America, and you’re entitled to be as infantile as you wanna be.

But if you haven’t yet connected the dots, the twisted claim that “hate speech” silences the legitimate voices of the deeply sensitive, and thus must be silenced or their voices are deprived of their right to speak without anyone uttering disapproval that hurts their feelings and forces their silence, then you aren’t getting the point here.

The cries began as part of the gender war, and were adopted for all social justice causes. They are now part of students’ complaints of presidential politics, where the mere name of a candidate is “hate speech” because it causes them pain. We can ridicule the childishness of the Emory students’ cries of pain. We can ridicule President Wagner’s insipid embrace of their genuine tears. But they not only don’t care, but persist in their entitlement to their feelz and right to censor so their voices alone can be heard.

If it’s acceptable when it comes to sexism and racism, then it’s acceptable for all -isms, and there is or will be an -ism for everything.  And if you think this is just foolishness, then shut up because you’re making them cry. And if you think some grown-up on campus is going to tell the children to grow up so that you don’t have to, you are going to be sadly disappointed.