The 'Cry In' of 2016
A disturbing glance at the post-election hysteria on college campuses.
November 17, 2016
Jack Kerwick
Since Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton on November 8, college campuses across the nation expanded their “safe spaces” for students and faculty whose world had been turned upside down by this historic election.
In at least three respects, the Great Meltdown of 2016 is a truly tragic commentary on the state of higher education today:
First, it reveals the dominance of a single left-leaning ideology at an institution that is supposed to be a free marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying, after all, that no safe spaces would’ve been created or would have needed to have been created had the election gone the other way.
Second, the hyper-emotionality accentuates the intellectual flaccidness that prevails at the one place that is supposed to exist for the sake of instilling into the next generation intellectual virtue, men and women with strength and toughness of mind.
Third, the Great Meltdown betrays the stunning arrogance on the part of just those people—professors—whose calling to a life in education requires the cultivation of humility. Given that students were just as unprepared as were their teachers for even the possibility that their candidate could lose proves that neither have they been acquiring the virtue of humility while in college.
The College Fix, a campus watchdog publication run by students, is a national treasure. Here are some of the happenings in the academic world from last week that it reports:
At Converse College, an all-female institution, students organized “silent protests,” walked the campus in tears, and posted pictures of themselves crying on Snapchat. At least one professor held off on giving a midterm exam, and another told her students that the day after Election Day was the worst day in American history second only to September 11, 2001.
...
Over in “the quad” at Cornell University, students held a “Cry In” the day after Election Day. “I’m quite terrified, honestly,” remarked one student. Trump’s win reflects people’s “willing[ness] to put people down based on their identity just so that they would feel vindicated that they would be getting rid of ‘Crooked Hillary.’”
The “Cry In” consisted of about 20 students who sat in a circle on the ground writing on the sidewalk with crayons and chalk. Some professors stood around them. One observer noted that it looked and felt something like a funeral.
...
What is most difficult for this writer to report upon, though, are the incidences of hate that are being visited upon Trump supporting students at colleges around the country. At Mount Holyoke College, for instance, Kassy Dillon, the president of the College Republicans, was badgered as she drove around campus. People were “coming up to my car,” she explained, “to yell ‘f*ck you for supporting Trump.”
She adds: “It’s more dangerous now than ever to be a conservative on a college campus.”
...
There’s also a racial dimension to the reaction to Trump’s victory that is critical. Sometimes, it is made all too explicit. It was made explicit at North Carolina Chapel Hill. One hundred students walked out of class to “protest” the election results. A black student said that he skipped his classes on November 9 because he “could not be in really white spaces.”
Chalk writings on the ground read: “A vote 4 Trump was a vote 4 death,” “fuck str8 white privilege,” “whie [sic] supremacy lives,” “Donald Trump is a racist,” and “impeach Trump.”
One student called for destruction—“it literally all has to go, it has to burn, it has to crash, it has to die.” Another said that “this” is “white America’s problem.” White America “created this problem. You embraced it at Thanksgiving and Christmas and now we’re—people like me, people of color, women—if you are anything that’s not a white man you are feeling the pain because of this decision now.”
...
The 'Cry In' of 2016
A disturbing glance at the post-election hysteria on college campuses.
November 17, 2016
Jack Kerwick
Since Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton on November 8, college campuses across the nation expanded their “safe spaces” for students and faculty whose world had been turned upside down by this historic election.
In at least three respects, the Great Meltdown of 2016 is a truly tragic commentary on the state of higher education today:
First, it reveals the dominance of a single left-leaning ideology at an institution that is supposed to be a free marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying, after all, that no safe spaces would’ve been created or would have needed to have been created had the election gone the other way.
Second, the hyper-emotionality accentuates the intellectual flaccidness that prevails at the one place that is supposed to exist for the sake of instilling into the next generation intellectual virtue, men and women with strength and toughness of mind.
Third, the Great Meltdown betrays the stunning arrogance on the part of just those people—professors—whose calling to a life in education requires the cultivation of humility. Given that students were just as unprepared as were their teachers for even the possibility that their candidate could lose proves that neither have they been acquiring the virtue of humility while in college.
The College Fix, a campus watchdog publication run by students, is a national treasure. Here are some of the happenings in the academic world from last week that it reports:
At Converse College, an all-female institution, students organized “silent protests,” walked the campus in tears, and posted pictures of themselves crying on Snapchat. At least one professor held off on giving a midterm exam, and another told her students that the day after Election Day was the worst day in American history second only to September 11, 2001.
...
Over in “the quad” at Cornell University, students held a “Cry In” the day after Election Day. “I’m quite terrified, honestly,” remarked one student. Trump’s win reflects people’s “willing[ness] to put people down based on their identity just so that they would feel vindicated that they would be getting rid of ‘Crooked Hillary.’”
The “Cry In” consisted of about 20 students who sat in a circle on the ground writing on the sidewalk with crayons and chalk. Some professors stood around them. One observer noted that it looked and felt something like a funeral.
...
What is most difficult for this writer to report upon, though, are the incidences of hate that are being visited upon Trump supporting students at colleges around the country. At Mount Holyoke College, for instance, Kassy Dillon, the president of the College Republicans, was badgered as she drove around campus. People were “coming up to my car,” she explained, “to yell ‘f*ck you for supporting Trump.”
She adds: “It’s more dangerous now than ever to be a conservative on a college campus.”
...
There’s also a racial dimension to the reaction to Trump’s victory that is critical. Sometimes, it is made all too explicit. It was made explicit at North Carolina Chapel Hill. One hundred students walked out of class to “protest” the election results. A black student said that he skipped his classes on November 9 because he “could not be in really white spaces.”
Chalk writings on the ground read: “A vote 4 Trump was a vote 4 death,” “fuck str8 white privilege,” “whie [sic] supremacy lives,” “Donald Trump is a racist,” and “impeach Trump.”
One student called for destruction—“it literally all has to go, it has to burn, it has to crash, it has to die.” Another said that “this” is “white America’s problem.” White America “created this problem. You embraced it at Thanksgiving and Christmas and now we’re—people like me, people of color, women—if you are anything that’s not a white man you are feeling the pain because of this decision now.”
...
The 'Cry In' of 2016