Thursday, April 19, 2018

Hit Them Where It Hurts

Too many of today's university student protesters are not brave civil rights warriors, they're pathetic children who aren't even smart enough to think their actions through.  University administrators, rather than giving in to the entitled little brats, need to demonstrate exactly who is in charge of the university (this assumes, of course, that the administration isn't completely happy with the social justice warriors and their tantrums).  New York University shows one such way to out today's Freedom Riders as the Freedom Hiders cowards they truly are:
At NYU, administrators threatened the protesters’ financial aid, and the woke warriors went back to their rooms.

Spare a thought for those knights of social justice, the student protesters. Motivated by the yearning for a better world, they sacrifice their time and energy in service to their ideals. They display courage, stamina, determination, and creativity in coming up with rhymes in their chants.

Except if you tell them they’re jeopardizing their financial aid or their housing. Then they fold immediately...

NYU administrators showed little patience for the activists disrupting the proceedings at the Kimmel Center for University Life. But how to dissolve the protest? It turned out that there was no need to bring in the police. Ringing up the students’ parents was all it took. The phone calls advised parents that students who interfered with campus functions could be suspended, and that suspensions can carry penalties of revoked financial aid or housing. The students “initially planned to stay indefinitely,” notes the Voice’s report. “Instead, the students departed within forty hours.”
The school called mommy and daddy, and the kiddies folded.  Classic.
 NYU shows us that it’s possible to maintain order on campus, even in the face of the strenuously aggrieved, with a tactic as simple as a phone call. If it disabused the protesters of any notion that the world must stop and listen to them any time they’re feeling feverish with injustice, it did them a favor. Undergraduates often joke about how ill-prepared they are for life after graduation, “out there in the real world.” Colleges and universities should seize the opportunity to teach the real-world fact that being woke is not a license to interfere with other people’s business.
Hear hear.

3 comments:

Ellen K said...

You'll love this. Our "woke" debate kids are all in for the type of David Hogg fame that he has gotten-especially as it may apply to college applications. So these "student leaders" went around this week plying people with stickers on which they were to write what they believed in. In my case I wrote Art and Hope-but I digress. So these "leaders" ranted and raved and demanded our principal give in and then they planned the march for today. Here's the amusing part. Our school calendar has bad weather days built into it. If we use the days for ice or whatever, we have to go to school on those days. But this year we didn't use the bad weather day and today-the day of the march-is a day off from school. It's a beautiful April day in Texas on top of all the "celebrations" for 420 Day-how many kids do you think will show up at 10:00 AM this morning on a day off from school? This is the nature of our student leaders-they are bid on grand public gestures designed to get attention, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of leadership, they don't pay attention long enough for their events to make sense. I'm sure there will be some walkouts today. And I am equally sure that there will be convenience stores ravaged, pedestrians accosted and general chaos in a party like atmosphere engaged in by upwards of 80% of the kids on the march. I've seen this movie before-it always ends the same.

Anonymous said...

I’d bet that the protests would end rapidly if those occupying buildings, being violent, defacing property or otherwise interfering with classes, college events, campus pedestrian or vehicular traffic etc. were immediately rounded up, expelled and escorted to vacate college housing.

Of course, I’d also bet that there would be a big drop in such disruptive events if only those with SAT/ACT scores indicating college readiness were admitted, if freshman weeder courses were reinstated, if non-academic majors like xyz studies etc were eliminated, and if government exited the student loan business and allowed private lenders to grant loans based on likelihood of repayment. If xyz lender chooses not to lend to an applicant with a combined SAT of 800 wishing to major in xyz studies or communication, so be it.

PhillipMarlowe said...

“By calling my parents and creating that sense of panic in them, they’re placing me in a situation where now my parents have no more peace of mind,” says Matos. “I’m pushed to stand down or silence myself because I care for them, rather than have a voice in the system.”

Too funny.

As Bob Dylan sang, "To live outside the law you must be honest."