Enough “Scathing Articles.” More Needs to be Done about the Sorry State of Academia.

It appears to me that new stories keep coming out all the time about entitled college students demanding special treatment and special protection for their feelings. They don’t want to deal with sensitive material or take classes with professors who don’t cater to their wishes. They’ve stopped caring about free speech and academic freedom and want to live in a bubble where they can control everything that’s said and done. Articles like:

The Coddling of the American Mind.

This is not a Day Care, it’s a University.

I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me.

It’s Time for the Academy to Put its Pencils Down.

No, Nissy Aya, Columbia’s Core Curriculum is not Traumatizing.

have become more common over the past year. Things are coming to a head. People are fed up. Something’s gotta give.

You know what I think we need, besides articles? Rules.

Every university should enforce the following rules:

• You can’t petition for any student to be expelled or any faculty member to be fired or resign without evidence that they have harassed, threatened, or done physical harm to anyone else.
• If a speaker is booked to come to campus, that person is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you disrupt the speaking event so that it can’t go according to plan, you will be subject to discipline (such as formal apologies, fines, suspension).
• If you do not make alternative arrangements earlier in the semester with your professors, or have an emergency that makes it impossible to be on campus at the time, you absolutely cannot be exempt from or reschedule your final exams.
• Professors who fail students must be able to prove that the students deserved to fail the class. They can’t fail students or give them poor grades for presenting alternative viewpoints on any topic. Students have the right to dispute a final grade lower than a C if they believe it’s for this reason, and if they do, their tests and papers must be submitted to another member of the department for review.
• Professors can’t be fired or withheld tenure for not addressing political or social issues in their classes or not having a curriculum that gives attention to certain identity groups (unless the title or description of the class specifically called for attention to certain groups of people or points of view).
• Protests aren’t allowed for any incident that we don’t know for a fact took place.

All prospective students should be introduced to general education requirements and required courses and to the concept of academic freedom and freedom of thought and should be told, “If you don’t like it, don’t come.” All new students should be reminded that the school values due process, academic freedom, and civil, open discussion of all topics, including very sensitive ones. They should be told that the core curriculum is the core curriculum and it isn’t going to change. And they should be told that if they don’t like it, they can pack up and leave.

It’s up to university professors and administrators to fix this. Articles are just one step! And I suppose parents can help, too, by teaching their children to not be afraid to go outside their comfort zone, and to not take things personally all the time, because not everything’s about them.