The term "safe space" has attained a negative connotation both due to the rhetoric of angry conservatives and liberals who echo this rhetoric as a way to express disdain for millennials. Before you jump to the comment section and begin to try to explain to me that I am just another "coddled millennial", I implore you to read on.
If you search Google for the definition of safe space, you will get back "a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm." Seems innocent enough, but yet so many baby-boomer liberals and conservatives jump on the same side to criticize these spaces.
In 2015, President Obama spoke to college students criticizing this so-called "safe-space culture" arguing that, as college students, we should be tough enough to have conversations with people who disagree with us rather than protecting ourselves in political echo-chambers; this exact argument is the argument that is used to paint millennials as "coddled" and "entitled." Yet, this argument has nothing to do with the definition of safe space.
If you examine the definition of safe space, you see that its clear purpose is to provide a space where one does not have to combat discrimination. Let me provide you with a few examples. I am the president of the LGBTQ club at my university, we meet once a week for two hours. Our club attracts a lot of students in the queer community who don't feel comfortable being out or those who are questioning their identity and want a place where they can ask questions without ridicule. The club attracts a lot of transgender students who outside of the club get misgendered or get told that their gender identity is not valid. Picture now that, our club meets 2 hours a week out of the 168 hours that there are in a week; meaning that for 1% of the week, these students get to be an environment where they don't have to validate their identity. That is 1% of the week while the other 99% is spent in an environment where they are not comfortable.
Consider the same situation with students who are undocumented, those who are black, or those who are Muslim; these safe spaces provide an environment where one doesn't have to deal with discrimination or validate who they are.
Furthermore, these spaces provide members who share a common identity to form a community where they can interact and organize politically. So for liberals who berate safe spaces and claim to stand up for minority groups, the two actions are hypocritical.
As mentioned, Obama spoke about how he believes that millennials should ditch safe spaces and not be afraid to hear what people who disagree with us have to say. But safe spaces are not about shielding ourselves from the viewpoints of others, their about giving us an environment where we can be ourselves without fear; the rhetoric of our political counterparts is not going unheard because this is the rhetoric that we hear the other 99% of time we are outside our club meeting.
There were many on both sides of the political spectrum who criticized students at UIC in Chicago for shutting down Donald Trump's rally by making the same argument as Obama in which that college students should be open to political debate. Shutting down people like Trump, Anne Coulter, or Ben Shapiro with student protests isn't students avoiding hearing the side of those who disagree with us, it's students showing that they won't let people who spread hate or false information use their campus as a platform to do so. Because we already know the conversation on the other side; if we didn't, there wouldn't be students protesting. Students at UIC were not violating Trump's free speech or avoiding debate, they were simply protecting their campus from being a platform for Trump to bash immigrants and Muslims who are a significant demographic of the student body.
I think if liberals really want to support minority groups, they won't be so quick to attack the concept of safe spaces; a space where minorities can organize together and turn it into political action.