In his commentary on “Sex and the College Dean” in The Wall Street Journal, William McGurn bemoans what he calls the “surrender [of] what little moral authority [deans and college presidents] have left to their in-house counsel and off-campus government authorities.”[1] McGurn points in particular to the rising influence of lawyers in college administrations. “Today deans have given way to lawyers. The consequence has been endless gestures to raise ‘awareness,’ constant upgrading of procedures and the proliferation of committees—all designed primarily to limit the institution's civil liability. Thus Rutgers says it is working on making the school ‘more inclusive’” after a gay student killed himself after his roommate had posted video secretly shot of the gay student having sex in the dorm room. Not to completely dispute McGurn’s “lawyer thesis,” I do, however, want to broaden the explanation based on material provided by McGurn himself. Specifically, the “more inclusive” language McGurn cites is the signature of the political-correctness movement that had swept college campuses in the United States since the late 1980's. McGurn claims that deans of students have gone from being adults to legalists in seeking to minimize their school’s liability; I want to add that those deans went from being adults to ideologues as well.
Years after I was at Yale, fraternity students chanted, "No means yes. Yes means anal" outside women's housing. Yale College had only admitted women since 1968. The chant was of course highly inappropriate. With some trepidation, I must admit to also thinking that college students in the 18 to 22 age-bracket are not always going to be appropriate. For example, at my first university in the Midwest, fraternity students stole human cadavers from the biology building and laid out the bodies on beach towels near the campus pond. At the time, as an 18-year-old, I thought this was pretty funny. Decades later, I wonder whether the contemporary "solution" would be to create a campus safety zone where placing dead bodies would be tantamount to assault, legally.
Back to Yale, far indeed from my first university on the plains, I submit that to expect teenage boys who had been in high school just a year or two earlier to be politically correct, or ideological, in referring to women asexually only would ignore the reality of surging hormones. The creation of campus safe zones wherein statements such as, "You're looking good today!" would be tantamount to legal assault would, I submit, go too far. Of course, if an ideological agenda is the true motivator, as in to teach the boys an ideological lesson by harming them, then such a safety zone's excessiveness could be accounted for.
Perhaps the tension between the ideology and human nature lies at the root of the problem with adopting an ideological solution. The ideology holds that if the boys are harmed (e.g., by being arrested on overblown charges), the very nature of the boys would change. I submit that the ideology is deeply flawed in this resort. Furthermore, the ethics of broadening criminal assault to speech that does not reach hate speech can be challenged. I submit that criminalizing disagreement with any given ideology is unethical because the harm to the offender is not justified. At root is the ideologue's anger, even more than any urge for justice. As Nietzsche claimed, the weak who seek to dominate all to readily resort to cruelty, for it is power without the requisite strength that they want.
At Yale, the response was not the creation of a safety zone, for that time had not yet arrived. Instead, McGurn reports that based in part on the fraternity brothers' chants, “16 female students and alumni are claiming under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that the campus is now a ‘hostile sexual environment’ that denies women the same opportunities as their male counterparts.” The claim distends the plain meaning of the word, hostile, and extends a brief incident into an enduring part of the environment on campus. In other words, the women over-reacted, and I suspect that ideology played a large role in that reaction. In fact, I suspect that an ideologically-driven dean of students may have had a hand in that, for an opportunity to make an ideological statement would have been rather obvious. So whereas the boys' chant may be viewed as one of power, I submit that the reaction was even more so.
Years after I was at Yale, fraternity students chanted, "No means yes. Yes means anal" outside women's housing. Yale College had only admitted women since 1968. The chant was of course highly inappropriate. With some trepidation, I must admit to also thinking that college students in the 18 to 22 age-bracket are not always going to be appropriate. For example, at my first university in the Midwest, fraternity students stole human cadavers from the biology building and laid out the bodies on beach towels near the campus pond. At the time, as an 18-year-old, I thought this was pretty funny. Decades later, I wonder whether the contemporary "solution" would be to create a campus safety zone where placing dead bodies would be tantamount to assault, legally.
Back to Yale, far indeed from my first university on the plains, I submit that to expect teenage boys who had been in high school just a year or two earlier to be politically correct, or ideological, in referring to women asexually only would ignore the reality of surging hormones. The creation of campus safe zones wherein statements such as, "You're looking good today!" would be tantamount to legal assault would, I submit, go too far. Of course, if an ideological agenda is the true motivator, as in to teach the boys an ideological lesson by harming them, then such a safety zone's excessiveness could be accounted for.
Perhaps the tension between the ideology and human nature lies at the root of the problem with adopting an ideological solution. The ideology holds that if the boys are harmed (e.g., by being arrested on overblown charges), the very nature of the boys would change. I submit that the ideology is deeply flawed in this resort. Furthermore, the ethics of broadening criminal assault to speech that does not reach hate speech can be challenged. I submit that criminalizing disagreement with any given ideology is unethical because the harm to the offender is not justified. At root is the ideologue's anger, even more than any urge for justice. As Nietzsche claimed, the weak who seek to dominate all to readily resort to cruelty, for it is power without the requisite strength that they want.
At Yale, the response was not the creation of a safety zone, for that time had not yet arrived. Instead, McGurn reports that based in part on the fraternity brothers' chants, “16 female students and alumni are claiming under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that the campus is now a ‘hostile sexual environment’ that denies women the same opportunities as their male counterparts.” The claim distends the plain meaning of the word, hostile, and extends a brief incident into an enduring part of the environment on campus. In other words, the women over-reacted, and I suspect that ideology played a large role in that reaction. In fact, I suspect that an ideologically-driven dean of students may have had a hand in that, for an opportunity to make an ideological statement would have been rather obvious. So whereas the boys' chant may be viewed as one of power, I submit that the reaction was even more so.
1. William McGurn, “Sex and the College Dean,” The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2011, p. A15.
