College Isn't Supposed to Be a Safe Place

 by Peter Roff at U.S. News & World Report

Cutting straight to the chase, no one should be showing any sympathy whatsoever for the any of these chronic complainers currently causing chaos on college campuses across the country. They want diversity in every aspect of collegiate life except one – and it's the one that happens to be the most important: Everyone is supposed to think alike.

This, of course, is somewhat ironic because most of them don't appear able to think. Their supposedly high-minded complaints are not being handled with reasoned discourse so much as they are temper tantrums. They scream and yell their outrage about different kinds of privilege when it is they who are the most privileged of all, insulated in academia from the realities of life in the real world.

It wouldn't be much of a surprise to learn they've been shielded from those realities over the course of their academic careers going back to kindergarten. They may have been kept from bullying and harsh words and having to compete in sports or for grades to insulate them from the pressure, but the sanctuaries-of-learning approach to life in school taught them the wrong lessons. Life is hard. People are not nice. Not everyone will agree with you. And, most important of all, you are not always right no matter how you feel about the matter. Two plus two equals four, and A is A.

The demands by some of these student demonstrators that university officials and professors resign is laughable – but not quite as laughable as the fact that some have actually done it. What these campuses need right now are strong leaders who will not put up with this nonsense. The soft, squishy, overripe approach to dealing with the problem doesn't work. To use language these students will understand, it's like giving a mouse a cookie: When you do, he'll ask for a glass of milk.

The members of the University of Missouri football squad who refused to play as a statement of solidarity with the protesters should have been tossed off the team and had their scholarships revoked; they seem to have forgotten they're being paid to play ball, not go to school – something that the coach seems to have forgotten as well, which is why he should have been fired right away.

The student demonstrators have intimated things will escalate if their demands – which include contrite apologies and resignations from university leaders that resemble what the Chinese communists used to insist people do before taking them off to be shot by a firing squad and billing the surviving family members for the bullets – are not met. That would be unfortunate because, like the student anti-war demonstrations and campus occupations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, their effect would be to rally the country to the side of law and order. We barely tolerate all the whining coming from college-age millennials now. If these student antics, which are spoiling the learning environment for those who choose not to participate, continue, it will give university officials an excuse to crack down. If the demonstrators want an end to free speech on campus, then start with theirs. Perhaps that will make cantankerous millennials moaning and groaning about the cost of school and the level of debt they must incur to achieve subaverage grades because they are too busy partying and protesting to go to class to think long and hard about where their future lies.

College is not a safe place nor should it be. It's a place where basic perceptions should be challenged and where students should acquire knowledge, not just have the limited amount they have already confirmed without inquiry. That's called learning and it's supposed to be what a university education is all about.

A college education is a privilege, not a right. There are plenty of kids who would be happy to take the place of those currently unhappily attending some of the nation's most elite schools should openings suddenly become available.

Peter Roff is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. Formerly a senior political writer for United Press International, he's now affiliated with several public policy organizations, including Let Freedom Ring and Frontiers of Freedom. His writing has appeared in National Review, Fox News' opinion section, The Daily Caller, Politico and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @PeterRoff.

Source:
Student Protesters in Missouri Don't Appreciate College Education - US News