Free Advice to College Kids: “Don’t be Nuts”

Things have gotten really crazy on most college campuses these days.  And the focal point of the craziness is often race.  To get a taste of what I mean, just read the College Fix for a week.  After you get past the initial shock of what colleges now call racist, you’ll likely conclude that when everything is allegedly racist, then nothing is really racist as the word loses all meaning.  And a recent fiasco at Georgetown University demonstrates this point.

Georgetown—a truly “elite” college, ranked in the top 25 of all colleges—has a “minority fellowship program . . . designed to mentor students of color” and give them a leg up in the real world.  It is one of many such programs at Georgetown, and is housed in the school’s “Center for Multicultural Equity & Access.”  Sidebar: It’s never enough to have programs; the programs also need to be administered by numerous highly-paid bureaucrats, who are usually employed through a “center,” which in turn drives up tuition and fees, which in turn puts most students deeper in debt.

Yet I wonder how much value this minority fellowship program actually delivers.  According to the College Fix article, “every current member” has resigned, citing, among other complaints, that the “minority fellowship program” is guilty of racism, sexism, classism, and elitism.  A phobia was also alleged, but I’ll focus on these complaints.  But before we begin, go ahead: soak in the irony of students at a truly elite college complaining of elitism.  Okay, finish laughing at their expense, and let’s get down to brass tax.

First, what was classist and elitist about the program?  Well, even though these students decided to drop out, the program is actually highly competitive so it requires a 3.0 GPA to get in.  How dare it!  This upset some students who complained that “this requirement prioritizes academics over activism.”  Of course, the resigning students “demanded”—demands are all the rage on campus these days; more demands are recounted below—that the program drops the GPA requirement.

Now, thanks to grade inflation, college students today can basically sleep through most of their classes and get a 3.0.  Even at Harvard, which is probably the most elite school in the country, the median grade awarded is an A-, and an A is the most popular single grade doled out.  (For those of you who went to college in the 80s or 90s and had any contact with math or stats, you’ll remember the difference between median and mean.)  And those grades include the grades of kids who didn’t get in on academic merit, such as, possibly, some of the rowers, fencers, other athletes, legacies, children of rich donors, and everyone else who was admitted on criteria other than grades or test scores.  Therefore, unlike merely being at Georgetown, requiring a 3.0 GPA is not a sign of elitism or classism; it is effectively a requirement that the student stay awake during most classes.  If anything, though, it borders on being a merit-based criterion, which is disfavored these days.  According to the University of California, merit is now considered a micro-aggression.

Second, what was racist and sexist about the program?  Well, keep in mind that it’s a mentorship program, so I presume that it’s common to dole out advice, even criticism, to applicants and fellows.  But many of today’s college students believe they know everything and won’t be told what to do, so when a woman applicant or would-be fellow—isn’t that in itself sexist or something?—was called “aggressive,” that was a racist and sexist comment.  Of course, it couldn’t possibly have been true or even a mistaken but well-intentioned criticism from someone who is working hard to advance the program’s mission.  So it must have been racist and sexist.  And although details weren’t provided, the resigning fellows complained of “repeated instances of racism, queerphobia, sexism, classism, etc.”  Yes, etc.  It must have been a horrific experience for the fellows.  In fact, using other buzzwords of the day, they even referenced the “harm” that the program “perpetrated” upon them.  Question: Will they ever “heal”?

As mentioned above, for some reason the resigning fellows issued a series of demands, including which board member must be removed for a lack of contribution, how the mentoring program (that they aren’t paying for but were using for free until they resigned) should be redesigned to focus less on “professional networking” and more on “supporting the voices of students of color.”  And, to quote the resigning fellows themselves, “etc.”

The resigning fellows probably didn’t like the response they got.  The program board members didn’t apologize, even though apologies are also all the rage these days.  (Yes, begging forgiveness of angry college students is surprisingly popular; why anyone would want such forgiveness is unclear.)  Instead:

“We are willing to accept your voluntary resignation from the Fellowship,” they stated in a letter to complaining members, adding they will look into the grievances but saying the way they [the complaining / resigning members] approached things was unprofessional and unsubstantiated.

Kudos to the board for raising concepts such as professionalism and evidence.  And now that the existing crop of students has resigned, the program can recruit some students who truly want to be mentored.

The board’s mild rebuke counts as a bold statement on college campuses these days, so it will likely spark a lot of outrage.  Colleges have created and tolerate students that are entitled, arrogant, and demanding, so calling their complaints of racism, sexism, classism, and elitism “unprofessional and unsubstantiated” will not sit well, and may even be cited as more evidence of said “isms.”  Unfortunately, many students of all races have become this way; there is no one on campus to tell them that their far left ideas are wrong, insulting, self-sabotaging, or flat-out stupid.

In other words, I’ve recently learned that, back when I went to college, the ratio of liberal to conservative profs was 3:2, so any crazy ideas from either end of the political spectrum—e.g., that merit is a micro-aggression, that a 3.0 GPA requirement is classist or racist or whatever—were kept in check.  They were met with some resistance, with an opposing viewpoint.  However, I’ve also heard that today, the recent prof hires are 47:1 in favor of liberals, and other stats also indicate that liberal profs dominate the landscape.  Whether it’s an existing liberal-conservative faculty ratio of 28:1 at colleges in certain parts of the country, or a near 100-percent financial support rate of Democrats by profs, there’s strong evidence that college kids are being indoctrinated with only a single, narrow viewpoint and no checks or competing views. 

Unfortunately, such competing views usually don’t exist on campus, and, when they do, they are deterred or even foreclosed, and those who dare speak out are punished—even at public colleges where the First Amendment is supposed to protect speech, even by Republicans.  That’s the college M.O. today: argument and debate have been replaced by intolerance and mandatory conformity.  Or else.  And the consequences can be severe.

This is dangerous for the real world, as college kids, like AOC, eventually get out into the world and infect it.  And it’s bad for most college kids, too, because what some of them need is a shred of sanity.  In the case of the Georgetown students, they literally joined a mentorship program designed specifically for students of their race, bitched and moaned about it, publicly resigned, and then still demanded that the people in charge of the program run it the way they, the quitters, want it to be run.  These kids are so brilliant that it’s not clear why they enrolled in a mentorship program in the first place.

When I used to express an idea that was unwise, my mother used to tell me, “don’t be nuts.”  I appreciated the reality check at the time—that’s why I went to her with the idea in the first place.  And later, in hindsight, I realized that whenever she said that, she was right.  She had an incredible blend of intelligence, wisdom (which is not the same thing), real-world experience, and the ever elusive commonsense.  At least three of these things are sorely lacking at the modern university.  And her succinct advice—“don’t be nuts”—was a bit clearer and a lot bolder than the response delivered by the minority mentoring program.

But then, my mother wasn’t indoctrinated at a modern university—let alone an elite one, like Georgetown.