Sep 12, 2016 3 min read

You may recall the tempest that was generated late last year when a group of students at Oberlin College in Ohio raised a ruckus over what they deemed offensive cultural appropriation and insensitivity by the school’s dining department, noting that the Geneal Tso’s chicken on offer used steamed poultry rather than fried poultry.

While much of the United States broke down in giggles at the absurd hypersensitivity of privileged students at one of the country’s elite institutions of higher learning, Oberlin administrators quickly tried to mollify the whiners, urging a “dialogue” and putting out their wrists to be slapped with a ruler, whimpering that they “fell short in the execution of several dishes …”

That was one of the more preposterous entries in a growing list of incidents on college and university campuses in recent years where students have cast themselves as victims of slights and insults and have demanded special treatment from administrators, whether in the form of “safe spaces” where they can huddle with like-minded compatriots and shut out ideas that they find disagreeable, or “trigger warnings” for readings or classroom discussions that might stir up traumatic memories.

Activists on other campuses have demanded that mainstream political figures, from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Washington Post columnist George Will, be disinvited from speaking at commencement exercises or other events, because their views diverge from “acceptable” doctrine.

Critics have pointed out that coddling students in such a fashion not only restricts the intellectual give-and-take that should be a principal component of campus life, but also poorly prepares them for the world beyond campus, where they will have to interact with a wide variety of people who are not from the same intellectual or ideological mold.

So kudos should be extended to the University of Chicago, which sent incoming freshmen a letter last month informing them that they would not be swaddled in comfortable, narrow, dogmatic conformity during their time at the school.

John “Jay” Ellison, the dean of students, told them, “You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort. Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

Ellison went on to point out that promoting the free exchange of ideas “reinforces a related University priority – building a campus that welcomes people of all backgrounds.”

Of course this doesn’t mean that the University of Chicago, or any other college or university, has to give its blessing to any and all comers, or turn the campus dialogue into a free-for-all. No college or university with any ounce of prestige should lend its imprimatur to, say, astrologers or Holocaust deniers. And standing against trigger warnings and safe spaces doesn’t mean standing against common courtesy and good manners. No one on campus, whether an instructor or student, should be subject to harassment, and if an instructor believes it would be helpful to give students a heads-up if they will be dealing with difficult subject matter, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But students shouldn’t anticipate that they will glide through their undergraduate years in a tightly wrapped cocoon, or that professors and other campus leaders will act as their parents.

Or therapists.