"Millions Of Narcissistic Little Jerks..." (Welcome To College Freshman Orientation)
James Richardson writes at Medium, "My Generation is Just Awful, and Colleges are Making it Worse."
He's talking about speech codes and the parental culture that helped give rise to them:
Millions of narcissistic little jerks, reared by an uncommonly hysterical generation who instilled in their children the adamantine conviction that they are exceptional and necessarily worthy of respect, enrolled this week as freshman in universities across the United States.There was a moment when this exercise might have tested these students, made better and new through confrontation with the uncomfortable and occasionally outrageous thought.
Now, instead, they will pass the next four years of pseudo-scholarship as they have the eighteen that preceded them: swaddled in institutionalized political correctness and protected always from the unconventional or provocative.
For example:
These speech codes stretch from the ludicrous, like Jacksonville State University's policy that students not offend anyone, to the plainly unlawful.
This doesn't just affect those on college campuses:
The result isn't simply an emotionally delicate dolt, but a broader culture at jeopardy of losing the most foundational of human rights. Today's over-sensitivity to offense means these students may be entirely desensitized to the loss of speech tomorrow, even in the face of gross government encroachment.
A Barton Hinkle writes at Reason:
A regime that protects everyone's free-speech rights can allow both the gay-rights advocate and the Christian fundamentalist to speak her mind. But a regime concerned with protecting people's feelings inevitably will hurt either the fundamentalist's feelings (by allowing only the gay-rights advocate to speak) or the advocate's feelings (by allowing only the fundamentalist to speak). Unless, of course, it hurts both of their feelings by letting neither of them speak. No matter what, though, it allows the censors to dismiss some people's claims for consideration as less worthy. (You sometimes get the sense that's exactly what the campus censors want.)What's more, any regime that "privileges" feelings over rights inevitably will ignore the very real emotional pain experienced by another important group: those who cherish individual liberty and abhor censorship of any kind. There are still a few of them left - even on the modern American campus.
When I went to college, the open spaces were filled with political and religious rabble rousers - and plenty of rabble to be roused.
Passersby were engaged, enthralled, and, gasp, offended. Some encouraged the rabble rousers, some attempted to shout them down. What no one did was attempt to get them banned from campus.
No one worried that they were being offended. If you didn't like what someone was saying, you staged a counter-rally nearby, you held up signs, or you ignored them.
You defended your ideas. You argued. You built verbal and intellectual muscles. Later in life, when someone dismissed your ideas, you had learned to argue to defend them and did so with gusto and skill.
College kids today are missing out - and too indoctrinated to realize what they're missing. They have no debating skills, no intellectual muscles. "It's not fair" is the cry of a two-year-old challenging his bed-time, not of an adult trying to defend tax policy.
Conan the Grammarian at August 26, 2015 9:36 AM
ha ha! This line from the second link is funny:
"you are jeopardizing my well-being with your violent refusal to agree."
I wonder if that calendar is sold at the student bookstore; or maybe they don't allow parody as it is a microagression.
charles at August 26, 2015 10:54 AM
it hurts both of their feelings by letting neither of them speak
*ding*
Free speech isn't for the peons, you know, but rather our "intellectual betters".
Tho I have a feeling that my interaction with these children is going to have more than its fair share of "fuck"s and "you"s in it.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 26, 2015 11:35 AM
I started my college career at San Francisco State, a few years after the riots. I seen to recall that free speech was tolerated on campus as long as you agreed with the prevailing conventional wisdom; for example, if you put a sign about a libertarian/objectivist meeting up on a bulletin board (intended for that purpose), it would disappear promptly. It was not the college management; it was the other students.
What has happened, IMHO is that those students are now running the colleges, and that behavior is therefore institutionalized.
Kate O'Brien at August 26, 2015 11:42 AM
Anyone notice how much of this can be laid at the feet of those determined to protect the delicate snowflakes who now comprise nearly 60% of the student population?
It has become embarrassing to be a young woman on campus these days, given the apparently low regard for her adult agency.
Jay R at August 26, 2015 12:08 PM
You go to school for 12 years in a government run institution where free speech means the teachers get to say what they want. Why should students expect that to suddenly change in year 13?
Ben at August 26, 2015 2:56 PM
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