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2016-03-04 Home Front: Culture Wars
The Strange Case Of The Campus Cry-Bully
h/t Instapundit
The oxymoron "Cry-bully" has become a popular way to describe the schizophrenic contemporary college student.

Today’s students, especially on elite campuses, pride themselves for being cultural warriors. They are determined to make their college experiences referenda on the alleged race, class, and gender inequities of American society more broadly. In pursuit of that noble end, they feel they are entitled to use almost any means necessary to raise social awareness about perceived injustice.

...Deliver a college lecture that includes the Israeli perspective on Middle-East tensions, question the Ferguson "hands up, don’t shoot" mythic narrative, or entertain views contrary to the idea of apocalyptic man-made global warming, and one is likely to be labeled by campus activists as a colonialist, racist, or enemy of the environment deserving to be silenced for the greater good. The end of civil liberties on campus is coming about not suddenly with an authoritarian bang, but insidiously with an egalitarian whimper.

Though campus warriors appear to be hardened would-be revolutionaries, they are more accurately defined by their faint hearts. At Brown University, students claimed that they were traumatized by the inability to square the circle of being full-time social activists and full-time students, and therefore became depressed and stressed out--driving them to counseling and anti-depressants. According to one student, "There are people breaking down, dropping out of classes and failing classes because of the activism work they are taking on." Throughout the year, this student has worked to confront issues of racism and diversity on campus. His role as a student activist has taken a toll on his mental, physical and emotional health: "My grades dropped dramatically. My health completely changed. I lost weight. I’m on antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills right now. Counseling and Psychological Services counselors called me. I had deans calling me to make sure I was okay."

...Are today’s students, then, brave reformers or fragile hothouse campus plants? Do they want to wade into freewheeling debate and battle all ideological comers, or do they insist on being protected by surrogate faculty parents, who must provide them the same cozy emotional embryos that they enjoyed in junior high school?

...To make matters worse, college students are not even receiving a high quality education. Courses that enrich liberal education and lead to mastery of written and spoken English are often squeezed out by therapeutic "studies" courses--Gender Studies, Asian Studies, Africana Studies, Chicano-Latino Studies, Environmental Studies, Community Studies, Cultural Studies, Leisure Studies, Media Studies, and on and on. The latter courses often require less work, result in easier grades, grant psychological rewards for ideological uniformity, and provide little in terms of a classical education. For such a revolutionary cadre of students, eager to battle America’s inequities, students have almost no interest in demanding a quality education at a reasonable price.
And what happens to scientific education is has to be seen to be believed.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-03-04 04:56|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ]  Top

#1 "Cry-bully" has become a popular way to describe the schizophrenic contemporary college student.
Posted by Skidmark 2016-03-04 09:12||   2016-03-04 09:12|| Front Page Top

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