The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

from the Atlantic comment thread. zinnnng:

"One feels for these students. But if an email about Halloween costumes has them skipping class and suffering breakdowns, either they need help from mental-health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain."

Must be difficult to be in college these days, organize a protest, and have to consider the feelings of a Atlantic article commenter.

skipping class wow that never happens in college

brilliant call to send these miscreants off to the psych so they can get prescription medication like a normal American

several years ago just as i started working at a slac they held an all-faculty meeting to do a bit of onboarding, old and new faculty together, and they went over a little presentation on unexpected ways young people might be very different than the olds expected. among them, the constant contact with parents, and the increased prevalence of already-diagnosed or yet-to-be-diagnosed mental health problems.

like, they did a quick survey about phones and text messaging frequency and things like that, and of the couple-hundred-ish faculty in the room, i, already past 30, was one of the few people in the room whose answers aligned with the students rather than the faculty. the social/behavioral facts across generations are just different.

it's symptomatic of some larger trends in campus activism

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, November 10, 2015 1:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it isn't part of any trend. that's part of what i was posting about initially. reporters who have covered protests at any point in the past all chimed in and said "yes, this is what happens, what's the story."

i guarantee you if you were at the campus tent cities set up in protest about apartheid in the 1980s you would have found conflicts between reporters wanting to go into the middle of them and protestors seeking to restrict access.

in fact if you are at any event ever, even in a public space, and it is well managed, you will find people directing reporters to where they would and would not like them to be. usually reporters who are more seasoned have figured out ways to navigate that and push their access but also know when they should not escalate, in order to get the best story possible. those reporters have typically learned that yelling "free speech" is not a good way to get people to talk to you, engage with you, and allow you good access to cover them.

a good read on press access and the relationship to protests is, of all things, mailer's armies of the night btw.

I can't tell if these ongoing college incidents are indicative of a tiny minority of students seeking accommodations that they may very well grow out of or if they imply broader cultural shifts among a large and diverse similarly aged demographic. And I feel like it is in the interest of this potentially radical minority and the media seeking controversial narratives and political antagonists alike to make them seem larger and more significant than maybe they are which just distorts the picture more.

i think that's fair

sterling, i'll give your post more thought. i don't think what i saw is as routine as you argue, and i do think that it entails an unreasonable extension or misuse of the concept of "safe spaces" -- which connects it to larger trends in campus life. but i don't want to be too dismissive.

i still think that your assertion that the story is /either/ "x" or "y"--and that talking about "x" is necessarily to discount or obscure "y"--is condescending at best.

missouri school of journalism paper's story on Jonathan Butler

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/higher_education/quest-for-justice-drives-mu-hunger-striker-to-grab-things/article_8fbbb75e-873a-11e5-a683-4f42206b7731.html

i do agree that the use of the term "safe space" for this stuff is pretty new. but that bit of jargon aside, i think the underlying dynamic isn't very novel at all, and is pretty easy to understand.

btw good rundown of stuff running up to the resignations here: http://www.themaneater.com/special-sections/mu-fall-2015/

"like, they did a quick survey about phones and text messaging frequency and things like that"

i am definitely an old cuz when rufus was talking about how all the kids in his class have phones i said i thought they shouldn't be allowed in class. at all. and he said but what if they have to call home and i said i don't care they can use the phone in the office. the office! that's how old i am.

"And here's a shiny dime so you can use a payphone if that one's busy!"

i can't believe i told that long halloween story about my sister-in-law and i totally didn't mention that she went to Yale!

my sister-in-law is awesome by the way. i love her. and she is actually taking time off from her job right now to go to yale divinity school.

i walked by a very forlorn-looking payphone in the university library today and wondered how many people use it every week.

i think the last time i used a payphone was in france in 2004.

in those days we called them cabines

Which was the style at the time.

the last time anyone used a payphone was when Adnan called Jay from the Best Buy parking lot

if i ran a school i would totally ban cell phones from the school grounds.

the more i read that list of demands from the missouri football players (et al) the more ridiculous and incoherent much of it seems. they demand "comprehensive racial
awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units"? what does this mean? that the math dep't should offer "racial awareness and inclusion curriculum"?

This curriculum must be vetted, maintained,
and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color.

those "overseeing" this curriculum must be "of color"? all of them?

(i'll take a snooty grammar moment to note that "comprised of..." is incorrect. that said, this is an error that pretty much everyone seems to make.)

there's plenty in those demands that's reasonable, pointed, thoughtful. but there's a lot in it--and unfortunately this stuff is front-loaded--that, again, seems hectoring, outrageous, impossible, or incoherent.

that said, this gets to my point about the internet not being good for student activism in a sense. i guess it's OK for a bunch of 20-year-olds to put together a list of demands that doesn't read like they were written by seasoned activists. they're young. but b/c of the internet, social media, etc., there's going to be this huge spotlight on those demands, and the folks who wrote them, and it's going to follow them around forever.

at my second-tier occupy we of course kept the press mostly out of the residential areas of camp and totally out of places like the "communications" tent (originally the "media" tent, which made this difficult). it did not tend to be necessary to interact with them physically (though it was sometimes useful to get someone big to stand somewhere) but then the journalists tended to be professionals.

i share iatee's skepticism of the great achievement of getting the guy at u of m to resign, although i think it is very cool that the grisly exploitees of the football team gave a squeeze to the sport's collective grip on higher education's nuts. hope there will be some progress on some of the other demands but i kind of suspect the modern university is much less amenable to such demands than it is to stuff like the vyshinskian specifications of the first item.

do people still go occupy camping? kinda forgot about that whole thing. probably time for #occupy reunions already.

they've upgraded to yurts

this is a safe space; no yurt feelings.

the more i read that list of demands from the missouri football players (et al) the more ridiculous and incoherent much of it seems. they demand "comprehensive racial
awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units"? what does this mean? that the math dep't should offer "racial awareness and inclusion curriculum"?

you can read it as a demand for a suitably universal curricular requirement. i don't know if mizzou has one. but given the compartmentalization of programs on campuses, unless there's a gen ed diversity requirement in place, many majors (including some prone to reactionary swastika-drawing hmmmm) can escape college having given minimal thought to anything like what's being asked for.

Yeah I don't get how it's unreasonable to ask anybody that teaches anything for a living to hold court on racial awareness and inclusion.

which majors are most prone to reactionary swastika-drawing? business?

what do you mean by "hold court"?

i don't have a problem with the sort of "diversity" curriculum requirements that many if not most universities have (meaning that at some point students have to take one or more courses substantially about minority cultures/issues). i don't actually think these requirements do much of anything, but i have no problem with them.

asking /all/ parts to add "racial awareness curriculum" to their courses is just not practicable.

if you read this (at a stretch) as asking that all /teachers/ somehow receive diversity training, this is a theoretically laudable goal that, based on everything i know about how these things are implemented in practice, will be a huge waste of time and resources.

and of course one important context for these demands is that we live in a time when state legislatures are less and less interesting in funding state universities.

ahem, i meant asking all departments

You seem pretty certain that any such initiatives are a waste of time, why?

not "any such," but those particular ones, sure. have you ever been at a diversity-training workshop?

i'm profoundly cynical, i suppose, of the efficacy of asking for, effectively, more bureaucracy in a probably vain attempt to purge the university of the racism that is, unfortunately, a fact of our culture--a culture from which the university can't be cut off. does that mean that the president should ignore racist acts when they occur, or should twiddle his thumbs rather than engage with student protestors? no. maybe he needed to go for a host of reasons, that being one of them. but if those demands really are the endgame (which is a big "if," i'll admit) then it seems like mostly wasted motion.

guessing that training on the professional side would amount to a mandatory workshop w/ some kind of binder distribution and powerpoint slides, maybe a little bit of the usual role-playing exercises, a cynical charade all around

or worse, a required webinar designed by HR staff

oh believe me I've attended these diversity training sections, and I work for the division that programs diversity in student activities: they're staff development hours at best.

which majors are most prone to reactionary swastika-drawing? business?

maybe; i'm teaching a bunch of business types for the first time this year and am finding them surprisingly engaged and thoughtful, as a group - should be no surprise i guess that a lot of people who are ambitious and talented would be in business since that's a way to get the $$$

i was thinking over the years of lame letters from people in the engineering fields. or e.g. when my graduate alma mater tried to unionize, the core of resistance to the efforts came from some of the most socioeconomically conservative majors on campus - chemical engineers and the like who were well compensated, highly skilled, and incentivized to side with authority

to be fair "mostly wasted motion" is a good description of life

xxxpostsssss

Xps
Yeah I've seen a fair few and while the feeling I mostly associate with them is despair, they're so much better than nothing. Change in wider culture often foments in controlled closeted institutions, and while I don't think anybody expects the eradication of racism in America, fighting a losing battle is better than playing the odds in a situation where things could easily get worse.

Yeah I mean those demands reflect the fact that uncertainty in the atmosphere leading up to the resignations and i assume/hope they'll reevaluate what's what.

Xps
Yeah I've seen a fair few and while the feeling I mostly associate with them is despair, they're so much better than nothing. Change in wider culture often foments in controlled closeted institutions, and while I don't think anybody expects the eradication of racism in America, fighting a losing battle is better than playing the odds in a situation where things could easily get worse.

Yeah I mean those demands reflect the fact that uncertainty in the atmosphere leading up to the resignations and i assume/hope they'll reevaluate what's what.

the J-school dean; http://journalism.missouri.edu/2015/11/dean-david-kurpius-comments-on-students-coverage-of-protest-on-carnahan-quad/

this blog post from the american assoc. of university profs website echoes some of the stuff sterling said about there being better ways for a journalist to be present without that presence upsetting people, but also comes down on the "side" of the photographer. above all he blames the authority figures present for not exerting a mediating, de-escalating presence: http://academeblog.org/2015/11/10/16583/

I gotta say, the photojourno thing seems like kind of a distracting non-issue -- obviously the footage capturing that mob mentality in action is disturbing & hard to watch, which is why we're even having the conversation, but I don't think it's any more disturbing than the 'whimsical' flash mob I witnessed on my public university campus ~7 years ago, and if I step back and look at the big picture, I know which activity I'd rather see young people getting carried away in service of.

Obviously the two UM employees in the video were... shall we say "overzealous" in their support of the students; but given that they were never trained to act as law enforcement officers, I can forgive them for performing poorly when the role was thrust upon them (and obviously, at this moment in history, there are about a thousand reasons for not wanting to involve the *actual police*).

That being said: a small part of me hopes the off-camera dude who kept repeating "you lost this one, bro!" got splashed by a bus on his way to class the next day, because gloating is really just nagl

This is kinda all-over-the-place, but I agree with the central point of not looking to authority for all of the answers, etc.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/194874/person-up-yale-students

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/race-and-the-free-speech-diversion

jelani cobb

Also was Kelefa's article on this subject posted earlier this year? i forget http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-hell-you-say

towards the end of that tablet piece:

I have a different vision for my students, one that I am constantly trying to promote in class: Please, think of yourselves as fellow adults, my peers. When I am wrong, say so. Don’t assume I know any better than you—in many cases, you may know more. When upset by fellow students, ask if there is a forceful, creative way to solve the problem without involving the strong fist of administrative authority—which, as you know, is often likely to get things wrong and make matters less, not more, just. Recognize that solidarity with one another will nearly always work better than asking us to be disciplinarians. Consider an analogous situation in the post-college world: Do you want more police presence, or less?

And, above all, take some time to wonder what college life would be like if you comported yourselves as draft-age, marriage-age, voting citizens. Which is what you are. Would you drink more responsibly, party a bit less, be less reckless in relationships? Would do more of your reading? When offended, would you organize more effectively? Would you be more capable of truly radical political action? Think about how an adult, not a partying student, treats people of other genders. If you are white, take stock of what solidarity you owe people who lack white privilege.

this is a theme i stress a lot in my own teaching (usually in regard to taking charge of your education) but it rarely seems to get across. it's quite difficult to get college students to look at college as anything other than an extension of high school adolescence. and i think larger trends within and without the university unfortunately encourage that approach.

you almost uniformly see students with children of their own, or students who have worked prior to school or are still working 'real jobs', take to that message w/ complete alacrity tho

yes absolutely. it's kind of a thing with me to remind my classes early on that "you don't have to be here, this is a choice you are making"--which is both obvious and hopefully a bit of a perspective changer.