One of the lowlights from yesterday was the chance I got to read all about what passes for student activism on the modern American Campus. The President of the University of Missouri displayed perfect cowardice by resigning his position after a handful of students demanded that he do so. The reason for their indignation had something to do with his alleged racism, demonstrated by his insignificantly hysterical reaction to an outbreak of, er, a recent number of, uh...a few curse words being uttered at students of color by a drunk white guy...or something. The tipping point came when the thirty or so black players on Missouri's football team vowed to boycott this Saturday's football game against BYU, if the President didn't step down. That would be thirty African American kids who were given full rides at the University to play a game because of their exceptional athletic skill, upset about...white privilege. Meanwhile, on the east coast in the heart of the Ivy League came the heart warming story of the Yale undergraduates brought to the edge of the abyss by the mere possibility that one of their classmates might choose an offensive Halloween costume. When their glorified room mother suggested in an email, that this sort of thing might best be handled by Yale students themselves, through stuff like face to face conversations, her continued employment at the University became the subject of much angst and recriminations. One of the students, statistically among the smartest, most gifted in the country summed up the feelings of the protesters well..."I don't feel like debating, I want someone to feel my pain!"
As I read these stories I became truly envious. Seldom do I actually wish I were twenty again. Being an adult is so much easier than trying to get started in life. But, I swear, for a minute yesterday I so wished that I was twenty again, and that I would get the chance to compete against these delicate flowers in the job market. If this is the best America can do, we are in some serious trouble. If we are producing this level of weakness and fragility, this much self-centered childishness not to mention this much contempt for the First Amendment, then this country is doomed. But I suppose this is what academia gets for teaching kids what a rotten, horrible, racist country they live in. You teach students that America is irredeemably racist, mysogonistic, homophobic and ruled by white privilege long enough, then I suppose that this is exactly how you would expect those students to eventually behave. Trouble is, if they actually find jobs after leaving their $70,000 a year safe spaces, all of the helmets and knee pads in the world aren't going to protect them from the cold hard reality that awaits them in the real world of competition, where literally no one gives a crap about your pain, and those non-existent micro-aggressions, turn into real, honest to God aggressions that begin with the words, "You're fired, Cupcake!"