The Privilege Of Overprivileged Brats
The main output of many on campuses these days seems to be howling.
Anyone noticing about how little college is about education for so many students?
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) December 2, 2020
"Privilege" is being in a college w/average annual cost of $76K & using your time to write gibberishy manifestos, demanding, for example, that the college stop profiting off a story about a tree. https://t.co/MxEPtcIxmQ
Qullette piece by Jonathan Kay, "Race and Social Panic at Haverford: A Case Study in Educational Dysfunction." An excerpt:
The full text of the strikers' manifesto runs to nearly 3,000 words, and is written in that strange style of juxtaposition that characterizes many campus social justice manifestos of this type (including the "Open Letter to the Bi-College Community" published by student strikers at nearby Bryn Mawr): Soaring rhetoric about the survival of "lives, minds, and bodies" and a strike that's "generations in the making" is sprinkled liberally with details that remind us that these students live very privileged lives. Among the Haverford strikers' demands, for instance: canceled classes on Election Day, official school pronouncements to "honor and credit" student groups that "contributed labor" to the strike, "a framework to deal with problematic professors," and continued payment for striking student workers who don't show up for their jobs. As the demands piled up, they were catalogued in a 73-point spreadsheet titled "Anti-Racism Commitments," which included entries such as "less strict attendance policies and leniency for late assignments," and "academic leniency for BIPOC and/or FGLI students who are traumatized by the effects of COVID and constant police violence."To read through these demands is to understand that Saghir was correct to cast the college as a protected fishbowl, though perhaps not in the way she emphasized: The strikers' pronouncements are composed in an acronym-littered mash-up of social justice jargon and academic terminology that would be impenetrable to anyone who doesn't inhabit this kind of privileged milieu. One can only imagine what any ordinary resident of Cobbs Creek would think of the demand that Haverford students get "content warnings from professors for readings that include anti-Blackness, slavery, r*pe, abuse, fatphobia, etc."; or demand number five, which requires the college to stop exacting "profit off of the romanticized story of [the school's] Penn Treaty Elm"--the century-old descendant of the tree under which Pennsylvania's founder made a pact with the Lenni Lenape Nation in 1682.
In the end, the college acceded to almost all of the student demands, except where doing so would be illegal. (And the college did say no to the demand that it literally give away its land to Indigenous peoples, dryly noting that "the College cannot return institutional land without ceasing its educational mission as currently realized.")
I find it typical of Quillette that Kay mentions the students' "manifesto" is "nearly 3,000 words" while breaking that windy record himself.
Again: college is an expensive, useless exercise for many students; the current winds at these colleges are ridiculous and indicative of the fact that they'r expensive, useless exercises; and Quillette seems to exist just to catalog, again and again, the exact same goddamn point.
I'd love to read a Quillette piece that started with the premise "Modern colleges are useless. Here are some more useful (and spendthrift!) ways of obtaining education." But Quillette seems to exist to hector, badger and lecture colleges as to how their administrators should behave, rather than provide alternatives.
As one who doesn't need outrage as a part of my recommended breakfast, it's all tits-on-a-mule to me.
Kevin at December 1, 2020 11:32 PM
> I find it typical of Quillette that
> Kay mentions the students' "manifesto"
> is "nearly 3,000 words" while breaking
> that windy record himself.
Different quantities, no? I can imagine finishing a 30,000 word novel/story in a short afternoon… Lenona linked an 8.5K piece in the Times just yesterday. (It's been saved to disk for a rainy day.) But a 30K list of chores, which is presumably what the "manifesto" comprises, would be plenty intimidating.
> Quillette seems to exist to hector,
> badger and lecture colleges as to how
> their administrators should behave,
> rather than provide alternatives.
Isn't that, um, the same thing?
Listen, given the insanity of what's happening to student credit burdens specifically and our campuses generally, I'm all for kicking Admins as hard as possible. Those are my tax dollars being corrupted, not tits on a mule.
Crid at December 1, 2020 11:48 PM
I've never been in a mostly-white environment that wasn't desperately trying to get more black people in. Every single one. The schools I attended. The religious events I went to. The hiking club I joined. Dance classes. Theatre troupes. EVERYTHING.
It isn't lack of wanting to be nice to black people that's the problem.
NicoleK at December 2, 2020 1:30 AM
For context, Haverford College is located on a very tony stretch of U.S. 30 just west of Philadelphia, an area called the Main Line. Along the same route you will find Bryn Mawr College (one of the Seven Sisters), Villanova University (a religious school which reveres basketball), one or two small Catholic colleges, plus a couple of exclusive private day schools. To call the area wealthy would be a bit of an understatement.
Now, I was just talking about this with one of my kids a few days ago: a student strike assumes that the students actually have any leverage to strike with, but they don't really have any. Don't go to class? Hey, it's your failing grade, not mine. Don't show up for work in the chow hall? The contractors actually running the place could probably live without you.
So why does the strike look impactful? Because, and only because, the administration indulged the students' fantasies of power.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at December 2, 2020 4:56 AM
Um, Kevin, don't you mean "thrifty"?
Lenona at December 2, 2020 5:02 AM
I had childhood friends with a beagle named "Peanut." I'm partial to dogs named "Peanut." The students lost me at threatening to kill Peanut.
Oh, and the friends' cat was an orange tabby named, yep, "Buttercup."
Conan the Grammarian at December 2, 2020 5:05 AM
"The students lost me at threatening to kill Peanut."
Heh. Hopefully for them, the president is more a university pointy-head and less John Wick.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 2, 2020 6:53 AM
Conan's friends are terrible at naming animals and is this the real NicoleK joining us today? Still reads like a Ben in a NicoleK suit.
Crid at December 2, 2020 7:31 AM
IDK, perhaps the students need to experience someone going full John Wick on them; a little lesson in the way the real world works.
The problem we have is that the university today represents a holding off of growing up; a way to delay the onset of maturity. And we've encouraged this. Witness the ACA allowing adult children to stay on Mom and Dad's insurance until age 26.
The problem lies in that fact that we can't agree on what we want academia to produce from the raw materials we're sending it. We used to know what we wanted out of academia - educated citizens, functioning adults to whom we could entrust running the country, heading the corporations, building the infrastructure, and teaching the next generation. We might have disagreed politically, but we trusted each other's competence. Somewhere along the way, we go sidetracked by ideology.
I liked Peanut. The friends I could take or leave, but Peanut was a pal.
Conan the Grammarian at December 2, 2020 7:48 AM
I grew up in a very white world.
Actually, I think the reason black people aren't joining every thing is maybe, just maybe, they don't WANT everything we're offering. Why would they want to join a hiking club run by white people. Wouldn't they rather run their own hiking club?
Sometimes it feels so fucking condescending, like we assume they need what we have. Maybe they don't.
NicoleK at December 2, 2020 8:43 AM
Maybe white people should join organizations run by black people. Maybe it doesn't always have to be us in charge.
NicoleK at December 2, 2020 8:44 AM
My impersonator is back, but you knew that…
Tanquam ex ungue leonem.
Crid at December 2, 2020 9:02 AM
It does occur to me it is awfully easy to impersonate someone on this board... Amy have you ever considered upgrading and making us register n stuff?
NicoleK at December 2, 2020 9:49 AM
> Amy have you ever considered upgrading
Having done this for twenty years, she deserves a financial incentive for that kind of upgrade.
Personally, after all the amusement and reflection this blog has brought to me, I'd be will to pay for my own account and those of ten others... But that still wouldn't make it worth her time. Basically, we'd be turning a gifted writer into a kindergarten schoolmarm, adjudicated our childish idiocies.
I intend to enjoy this as long as she makes time for it, thank her when she's through, and remember the good times.
Crid at December 2, 2020 10:00 AM
"I intend to enjoy this as long as she makes time for it, thank her when she's through, and remember the good times."
Amen
Spiderfall at December 2, 2020 12:45 PM
Oh I will be sad when she is through!
I wish we could all meet in LA one day.
NicoleK at December 3, 2020 5:27 AM
Agreed! 2025 work for everybody? Shutters hotel in Santa Monica? I'm buying dinner! Early December? (Misty breeze off the bay… sport coat weather, worst case.)
It's on.
Crid at December 3, 2020 7:25 AM
Can't circle-fart the brats?
Join me in American Not Against Liberty!
BOTU at December 4, 2020 3:41 AM
Ah, our impersonator has nursed a grudge over a decade.
(Partial credit to Sheepmommy.)
Crid at December 4, 2020 6:50 AM
Agreed! 2025 work for everybody? Shutters hotel in Santa Monica? I'm buying dinner! Early December?
Sign me up! Do we need to hire a band?
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at December 4, 2020 4:13 PM
I'll be there.
Conan the Grammarian at December 4, 2020 8:30 PM
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