This story, which isn't short but isn't ridiculously long either, is depressing in a lot of ways but fascinating in the detail that author Jonathan Kay goes into. The upshot of it all is that the striking students at the quite exclusive Haverford College got some nice perks for themselves. The school administration debased themselves, but at least turned the protests into a PR victory of a sort. The family, friends, and neighborhood of the man in the incident that started everything―a man whom the system failed before the fatal 9-1-1- call was ever made―don't have their lives improved in any meaningful way at all. They might not know this protest that quickly became about nothing but itself ever happened, and maybe that's for the best.
Also on the "depressing" side of the equation are the excerpts from the demands made by students toward the administration, which could be described as sounding "righteous" or "incendiary" but for the most part say nothing at all. But as a wise man once said:
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.
That essay has never left me, and it never ceases to be relevant.
2 comments:
Having read through this it seems to me there's more than one issue to be considered. First, is the shameful kowtowing on the part of the administration in agreeing so wholeheartedly with the voluble complaining of the students who began the strike. The administration, inluding many department heads, got into a 'go along to get along' respose knowing full well that at the end of the day they'd continue to be safe in their well recompensed positions. This was cowardly.
Secondly, and perhaps primarily, is the fact that Haverford as well as a number of other post secondary institutions has a generous grant and supplemantary policy in regard to admitting low income students. Now that wouldn't be any kind of problem at all if the American educational system itself wasn't so horribly broken, if there was real equality in public schools no matter where one lived. That not being the case we see students entering college many of whom can't keep up with the course loads expected of them while young people from wealthier backgrounds thrive. It's no surprise that this causes resentment and, certainly what we've noted in the large number of middle class white students, a reciprocal guilt. Why else would BLM have such a large proportion of young Caucasian members out on the streets (other than that being a major form of entertainment this past year)?
So we have resentment and decadence living out simulated culture war battles under a kind of 'pink police state' backed up by educational and cultural bureaucracies. Everywhere, not just in colleges, we see a subtle yet uncomfortable overturning of society as we've known it and a feeling we're going nowhere is felt all the more keenly by the young who understand at a visceral level that the dynamic growth of decades past that allowed for the comfort and security enjoyed by the faculty at Haverford and others at the top of the social ladders will never be theirs.
Orwell was very wise. Let's hope his worst nightmare doesn't come true.
Oh, the response of the administrative leaders is very much an act of cowardice. By rights, the students to whom they're kowtowing should be insulted by the implication that they're infantile and mindlessly threatening. It rarely if ever gets to that point because the hysteria doesn't die down until the demands are met.
On the one side I'm sure there are kids from disadvantaged backgrounds being admitted to prestigious universities. On the other hand I think a lot of non-white students are high achievers from relatively middle class backgrounds. The trouble is that the schools then treat them as proxies for inner city youth. Black people aren't interchangeable and you'd be excoriated for saying outright that you think they are, but that seems to be the tacit assumption: that one group will have much the same problems and concerns as the other. So there's actually a pressure to act up and disrupt the business of education, regardless of whether you have a proportional complaint.
The American economy, and perhaps in some other places, is in a tricky place. The number of professions requiring higher education has exploded in the past 4-5 decades. At the same time, the guarantees that an advanced degree used to promise have evaporated. College graduates aren't a majority of the population now, and their relative number is likely to shrink more, but as of now the government and media are entirely decided from an Ivy League or similar perspective.
Orwell's dystopias may not have come to pass down to the letter, but the lessons they offer are no less relevant.
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