Saturday, May 21, 2016

Oh for the Days of Panty Raids: College Students Then and Now

Catherine Rampell in the Post has a column on today's college students.
"But many  such {anti-bias] programs have mission-crept into disciplinary, pseudo-parental roles.
They have encouraged student informants to rat out peers (anonymously, if they choose) for building a phallic snow sculpture; playing a party game called “mafia” (which one student complained was anti-Italian); or chalking sidewalks and marking whiteboards with support for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee."
I hate to show my age, but back in the day we were just on the down slope of panty raids, and in the middle of uprisings against in loco parentis rules.  There was a curfew in the women's dorms (yes, the dorms were single sex), male visitors had to sign in, and the one foot on the floor rule applied. My sister's class was, I think, one of the last to wear freshman beanies. Hazing of freshmen was in retreat, finding a refuge in the fraternities and sororities.  We felt like adults, and wanted the university to cut back on its babying.

Maybe it's an illustration of cycles in history--sometimes we progress toward an end goal, but other times, as in the regulation of conduct among new/near adults, we waver back and forth.

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