Back in the not-so-olden days, it was the dream of every family to send their kids off to a good school; and some of the best schools in the country were considered the traditional 7 Ivy league schools, ones such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania. Other elite schools were seen with as just as much esteem, such as Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, etc.
Yet, the tides are surely turning as more and more so called “elite” schools have been turning out overprivileged, entitled snowflakes, for lack of a more eloquent term, unprepared for the rigors or common sense of the real world. In a struggling economy thanks to a certain “Brandon”, and skyrocketing tuition inflation for the past several years, parents must be thrilled to see their children are taking “rigorous” coursework in “advanced gender studies”, critical race theory, mandatory diversity courses, electives about Beyonce or Taylor Swift, and extracurriculars like protesting anything and everything not to their liking, including abolishing campus police, decolonizing the college, decrying their “oppression” and of course, most recently, engaging in violent protests over Israeli-Palestinian relations leading to many arrests and criminal charges!
One cannot put the blame solely on the students however: Faculty have misbehaved just as badly, and perhaps it is worse… They should be setting the example of how to function in society! The plagiarism scandals rocking Harvard University, which ousted former President Claudine Gay and also exposed several other faculty members at Harvard including Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer. The repercussions of such dishonesty that would get any student expelled? “Dr.” Gay, who stole work from the (real) Dr. Carole Swain, is still employed by Harvard and still makes $900,000 a year, a salary 99% of America could only dream of! In light of that, is it a wonder that Harvard’s admissions for next year have had a significant decrease? If you have the brains for Harvard’s slim acceptance rate, you pretty much have the entire market of elite schools open to you, and why choose the school now associated with plagiarism?
This is not to lessen the (dis)credit other so called elite schools have earned recently: Just in time to ruin commencement for thousands of hardworking graduates across the country, the violent, destructive and entitled protests over Palestine have led to cancelling the schoolwide commencement at universities such as Columbia due to safety concerns, striking (literally) fears of antisemitic violence towards Jewish students, destruction of campus property, and disruptions academically and socially across many campuses, tainting many of the class of 2024’s final memories of college and ability for all to turn in assignments on time for finals! It’s been obvious that these riots go beyond student grassroots efforts: The elites fueling this chaos are behind it, giving these activities funding, support and even getting career criminals and groups like Antifa involved! Even radical Leftist professors have joined in! Yet, do you believe for a moment Palestine and the rest of the Middle East would lift a finger to do anything if we were struggling through a humanitarian crisis? Or even remotely accept the highly Leftist snowflakes into their culture who claim to be speaking for them? The answer lies in the thousands of Israelis they sought to slaughter on October 7th, starting this whole fiasco!
I could not be more grateful to have graduated college long before this lunacy, with a degree applicable to the real world and opportunities to further my education at schools without such lunacy being tolerated. My alma mater may not be front page news, or as well known worldwide, but these days, that’s a blessing! I only wonder what some parents, footing the bill, are thinking about their kids attending school in this chaos, or worse, participating in the lunacy and entitled behavior! Aside from a minority of equally brainwashed parents, I assume most of the silent majority were initially proud their kids got into an elite school, only now to have regrets about sending them there now they’re becoming radical Lefties!
However, the threat of a parent withdrawing financial support pales in comparison to not being able to get a decent job in the workforce to pay for your life! More importantly long term for the student: What do employers make of this new entitled generation who does not hesitate to disrupt and destroy everything with which they find fault? Some employers are not hiring from these so called elite universities due to exactly that. Aside from radical Leftist organizations, most employers need a stable, hardworking individual who is willing to learn and grow in the company. Someone who isn’t afraid to work hard and go above and beyond to shine as a matter of personal and professional pride. What most employers’ worst nightmares are, are these new college grads who feel nothing but ungratefulness and entitlement to have everything catered their way 24/7. Those who will at a moment’s notice, be in HR complaining about something not being woke enough, how offended they are, or worst case scenario, actively disrupt the company just as they did in school last semester!
To the students who are causing these disruptions, I know this will fall on deaf ears for most of you, but for the miniscule percent who would read this far, hear me out: I know you think you’re doing this for some noble cause; you want to decry what you see as genocide happening right before your eyes. You think the more you disrupt your and everyone else’s college experience somehow it makes you the more moral, more just person. However, the best of intentions can still create the worst impact! I bet there is a side you have not considered as you destroyed property, engaged in disruption and even violence: What about your classmates who are not as privileged as you and their right to the college experience free from violence and disruption? Free from cancelled events, memories, and disrupted academics? Have you considered the hard work, often multiple jobs, and barriers first gen students from all backgrounds had to overcome to walk across that stage at the commencement you disrupted? The sacrifices their parents put in decades earlier to give them a chance at college? What about Jewish students and their collective cultural trauma from antisemitism past and present? Have you thought about the grandparents in the audience who may have lived through the worst horrors of hatred, or whose parents did? The 30’s and 40’s is still in living memory for many. What about any student who just wants one thing that isn’t polarized by today’s contentious political climate? Do you honestly believe ripping up your degrees, pretending to be prisoners, and flying silly slogans is helping Palestinian civilians one bit? Or is it just making you feel good about yourself and your “moral superiority”?
To the vast majority of the Class of 2024, I’m so sorry you had yet another experience tainted by Leftist agendas and politics where there should be unity and celebration of your wonderful academic achievements. You were the high school class of 2020, an experience tainted for a different agenda, and now having yet another graduation disrupted at these so called elite universities and colleges. I’m sure when you chose to go to the schools you did, you were proud to call them your home for the next four years, and excited to make memories and create valuable networks for your futures. I’m sure your family and friends were also ecstatic for the wonderful opportunity you earned. No one expects their dream school could become the nightmare for future employers when they read that name on your resumes and CVs, for scandals and disruptions you took no part in and wanted no part of. It’s frankly unjust you may feel the need to “explain yourself”, or ride out the awkwardness in silence hoping to minimize where you spent your last four years when the hiring manager or recruiter mentioned your alma mater in a “surprised” tone. I’m sorry you may have sat through a graduation disrupted by more protests, and wondered if it’s safe to stay, or at the very least, be associated in some way in this digital age, with the disruption by simply being in the room. I’m sorry your parents, who made many sacrifices of their own to get you to that day, also have to sit through these disruptions. In spite of all this though, I hope you still found the chance to celebrate your graduation your way, on your own terms.
Lastly, to prospective students of the class of 2028, Buyer beware!!!
“But mom… It’s a gathering!” 😉
A Lady of Reason 
I wonder if the situation you so aptly describe hasn’t been a problem within the Ivy League for a long time. Let us not forget that the Japanese Admirals and Generals who handed us our greatest grief were educated at Harvard.
Ron Litchman, writing for Minding the Campus, reminds us in his article “Intellectual Treason at Harvard, Penn, and MIT” that the antidote to bad ideas is good ideas. He tells us free speech means free speech… even the evil stuff we might deplore. But speechifying wasn’t the problem, was it? Maybe modern folks don’t know the difference between speech and the destruction of private property.
And maybe the dopes who call themselves Palestinians think that they have rights, but Jewish students don’t have rights. In the context of the sandbox wars, that makes perfect sense. It doesn’t make sense in America.
I do not look to these college/university grifters to clean up their act. Until tuition-paying parents lower the boom, it will be a cold day in hell before we see any substantive changes. The problem, I suspect, is that Islamist parents are far wealthier than your run-of-the-mill American corporate vice president. Follow the money.
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People change over time, and so do their institutions, reflecting changed values, new points of view, and new codes of ethics. Some people call this evolution, but I’m not sure evolution is the right word.
Our colleges and universities, once beacons of education, faltered when they veered away from their core mission of educating students. The repercussions of this shift are profound and demand not just our attention but also our active engagement. Here’s a glimpse of what transpired: In order to push greater numbers of minorities into the halls of academia, the government insisted that colleges relax their standards.
Mission accomplished. Thanks to affirmative action rather than qualification and achievement, a process that has been going on for the past 50 years, thoroughly unqualified people are placed into positions where they can do the most damage to American society: lawyers, judges, social workers, educators, and politicians.
Now we have people graduating from college with no appreciation for the classics, whose idea of literature is reading a spreadsheet, and who, because they are mental midgets, graduate with degrees that only work if you’re looking to find a job as a community organizer or gender activist. Do these morons have degrees? Yes. Are they educated? No. Do they have the intelligence to vote in important elections and pass judgment on the worthiness of various new laws, constitutional amendments, or propositions? Not hardly. But this does work out well for Democrats, who seek to destroy this Republic and put in its place a system based on foreign ideology.
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A fancy expensive degree from a fancy expensive university has no more standing than an inexpensive degree from any other. Time to cut funding to schools that become ideologically opposed to American values.
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Very true! Once you’re out working employers care far more about your experience and skills and the degree is more of a formality…
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Well said Lady of Reason! William F Buckley famously said that “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” After seeing the behavior of many of the faculty at Harvard and elsewhere during these protests, it’s easy to see why.
The rot in universities lies deep and has been growing for a long time. The overall decline in our education system is a major factor. A hundred years ago, high schools taught Latin and Greek. Today, colleges have classes in remedial English. Leftist professors are happy to accommodate their functionally illiterate students with pseudo educational courses in Marxist theory, gender studies and currently fashionable DEI themed claptrap. For a passing grade in such courses, one simply must regurgitate the professor’s opinions obviating the need to develop critical thinking skills.
Socially isolated students who live primarily in cyberspace lack a sense of belonging, so they join some cause to fill that gap. Their general ignorance prevents serious consideration of the worthiness of the cause. One can see that when they are unable to name the river or the sea about which they are chanting. At a recent Columbia University graduation a student demonstrated that lack of critical thinking when she tore up her diploma on the podium. One suspects that she was oblivious of the potential impact on future career options as well as the likely reaction of her parents after paying years of tuition bills.
Thomas Sowell defined an intellectual as someone who deals purely in ideas and for whom there no consequences for being wrong. Faculty and student intellectuals easily can pontificate on what the Israelis should or should not do in their defense because the middle east is thousands of miles away and they are not at risk of Hamas terrorists murdering and raping them. Rockets aren’t landing in Harvard Square.
Tragically, the Israelis do not have that luxury and nothing sharpens the mind as filling body bags and watching videos of vicious Hamas thugs putting their kidnapped daughters through a living hell. I hope that the support terrorists receive from American campuses doesn’t encourage them to come to America and that American students never have to learn the hard realities that constitute daily life in Israel. Darryl Worley asked in his song “Have You Forgotten?”
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Not to worry. Once Trump’s Reich is in place it will all be better. Probably on Day 2 given his Day 1 dance card is filling up.
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