Having now received a tsunami of messages from people across the US (and a few internationally) about the surveillance regimes being permanently installed at their educational institutions — in contravention of earlier assurances that the current academic year would mark a long-awaited “return to normalcy,” thanks to the onset of mass vaccination — there are a few conclusions to draw.
Can someone please explain something to me, why is there such crazy overlap with the "man, fuck the police" crowd to the now "I will obey" crowd? I swear many of the same kids on social media who are loving this insane lockdown stuff were last year proclaiming themselves against all police and government authority. I can understand one or the other, but someone having both views makes my head hurt.
I spoke to a CC parent this weekend. An academic at another institution. He sneered and rolled his eyes at students who had to ruin everything going to BARS(!). It was such an odd exchange. I mocked him mercilessly but he was so enmeshed in his insane alternate reality he couldn't imagine I wasn't agreeing with him. He's a very nice guy but he's now clinically insane.
Sorry folks but the left-wing have gone insane. Do you have any idea what these morons are teaching your children. They are untether from any common sense reality and your children are being taught to be stupid. Don’t trust me go talk to your kid you’re gonna cry.
Blockbuster piece, Michael. Thanks for so assiduously, so starkly exposing the weak-minded, power-grubbing little totalitarians who run most of academia and all too many other institutions these days.
I'm reminded of Camille Paglia's story of being an undergrad in the 60s, where women were forbidden to go out at night to bars (or anywhere else), curfews were enforced, and school administrators acted as nannies enforcing 1950s social mores -- which was what drew her and others at the time to feminism and demanding the same liberty male students enjoyed.
It's going to be like this more and more until we finally break through on the issue of treatment. As long as there are no widely-available, affordable, easily-accessed FDA-approved treatments for milder cases, then there is always going to be enough fear of transmission to warrant this kind of irrational nonsense. But all attempts to discover and disseminate treatments have been met with the most extreme kinds of hostility, presumably out of fear that if people think that there are treatments, then they won't get vaccinated. Faced with a worldwide pandemic of unprecedented proportions, I fail to see why, "all of the above" is not always the right answer.
Also, it's clear by now that natural immunity is the only way from pandemic to endemic. Vaccines don't work, they only delay; even the reduction in hospitalizations and deaths is merely temporary, as Israel announced this week. Healthy young people and children need to get sick in massive numbers. Lockdowns are only worsening the problem.
Michael Great article. Thanks for pursuing this and bringing this nonsense into the daylight. I suspect the college kids are afraid of reprisals so they stay quiet and comply.
It seems to me that the best way to put a stop to this idiocy is to Defund Academia! Keep the pressure on. Well done.
It just hit me right between my boomer eyes, esp after reading 20@20's and Blair's statements below regarding the mindset of the college kids:
The current generation (X?Y?Z? Mellianls? Whatever...) in college now are basically frightened people that scream for conformity on all fronts so that the world will become a better place.
It's happened before.
My parent's generation endured the Great Depression, and then WW 2. They were ultimately frightened people. If you read the stories of how Alan Shepherd and John Glenn were lionized after their Mercury flights you'd see the depths of fear that fed their adoration.
But then...their kids said basically 'WTF is up w/ that?' Starting in the mid-late 60's against Vietnam, in the 50's Civil Rights began, and on and on.
(Please don't think I'm bragging, K? You have NOOO idea how obnoxious we became in the 80's)
These munchkins- and their profs w/their useless post-modern grievance degrees who remain moronically ignorant of human nature- will eventually have kids of their own.
Who will, as kids are wont to do, rebel.
(I also suspect that there's an enormous cohort of these elite college munchkins who despise what's going on at their overpriced degree mills...wait'll those kids grow a pair of balls).
I'm not sure, but looking at the profiles that you gave us of admins doing this work in your article, Mike...I got a hankering suspicion that all of the grievance studies profs are realizing that there's no real future in what they're doing and it pisses them off.
These controls they're installing in higher ed can be interpreted as flailing by a culture that is coming to terms w/ its own irrelevance in the real world. I mean, after all, food's gotta be harvested, and no, the military is incapable of running a tomato field or an abattoir. (Thanks for the observation Blair Davis!)
I dunno ... "leadership oversight" sounds awfully oxymoronic, don't you think?
This has got to make some of these students want to transfer to a school in a big time football conference so they can get drunk with 100,000 of their closest friends every Saturday and engage in maskless "fuck Joe Biden" chants. I wonder why everyone at those schools hasn't dropped dead already.
If I wasn't being sarcastic I don't know how I could bear this crap. I'm 64 and vaccinated in San Diego county. Since I was vaxed I havent worn a mask anywhere I wasnt required to - which has only been in medical offices and my mother's care facility. I know I, unlike college age folks, am in a higher risk group (I am in general good health and fit). All evidence is that if I now get Covid the case will be mild. I have no intention of living in fear, and giving up my life to ridiculous nanny state restrictions.
Especially for those in college there are things WORSE than Covid. Such as those loss of freedom and liberty. The one student in the Zoom session who worried about freshman transferring out hit the nail on the head. Not every school is doing this crap. Transferring, or doing college online at much lower cost, makes a lot of sense. If enough vote with their feet these admins will see the light.
Here is the simple reason why this continues at these (lets face it) mostly white colleges. Because 95% (at least) of the parents AND students do NOTHING about it. They DO comply. If just 20% said, fuck it, Im dropping out, Connecticut College would go bankrupt. But they don't. They, therefore, ALLOW for this to happen. And that's why this will never change.
This is the leftist, control freak mindset in places like NYC, LA, SF, and practically all campuses. Give me a conservative area any day of the week. We are already looking to move. Hell, the people in Northern ID already have a mantra 'only the slaves wear the mask'.
Can someone please explain something to me, why is there such crazy overlap with the "man, fuck the police" crowd to the now "I will obey" crowd? I swear many of the same kids on social media who are loving this insane lockdown stuff were last year proclaiming themselves against all police and government authority. I can understand one or the other, but someone having both views makes my head hurt.
I spoke to a CC parent this weekend. An academic at another institution. He sneered and rolled his eyes at students who had to ruin everything going to BARS(!). It was such an odd exchange. I mocked him mercilessly but he was so enmeshed in his insane alternate reality he couldn't imagine I wasn't agreeing with him. He's a very nice guy but he's now clinically insane.
Sorry folks but the left-wing have gone insane. Do you have any idea what these morons are teaching your children. They are untether from any common sense reality and your children are being taught to be stupid. Don’t trust me go talk to your kid you’re gonna cry.
Blockbuster piece, Michael. Thanks for so assiduously, so starkly exposing the weak-minded, power-grubbing little totalitarians who run most of academia and all too many other institutions these days.
Nothing would please me more than to see this generation of university students launch a massive revolt against this nonsense.
I'm reminded of Camille Paglia's story of being an undergrad in the 60s, where women were forbidden to go out at night to bars (or anywhere else), curfews were enforced, and school administrators acted as nannies enforcing 1950s social mores -- which was what drew her and others at the time to feminism and demanding the same liberty male students enjoyed.
Everything seems so ass backward.
It's going to be like this more and more until we finally break through on the issue of treatment. As long as there are no widely-available, affordable, easily-accessed FDA-approved treatments for milder cases, then there is always going to be enough fear of transmission to warrant this kind of irrational nonsense. But all attempts to discover and disseminate treatments have been met with the most extreme kinds of hostility, presumably out of fear that if people think that there are treatments, then they won't get vaccinated. Faced with a worldwide pandemic of unprecedented proportions, I fail to see why, "all of the above" is not always the right answer.
Also, it's clear by now that natural immunity is the only way from pandemic to endemic. Vaccines don't work, they only delay; even the reduction in hospitalizations and deaths is merely temporary, as Israel announced this week. Healthy young people and children need to get sick in massive numbers. Lockdowns are only worsening the problem.
Michael Great article. Thanks for pursuing this and bringing this nonsense into the daylight. I suspect the college kids are afraid of reprisals so they stay quiet and comply.
It seems to me that the best way to put a stop to this idiocy is to Defund Academia! Keep the pressure on. Well done.
It just hit me right between my boomer eyes, esp after reading 20@20's and Blair's statements below regarding the mindset of the college kids:
The current generation (X?Y?Z? Mellianls? Whatever...) in college now are basically frightened people that scream for conformity on all fronts so that the world will become a better place.
It's happened before.
My parent's generation endured the Great Depression, and then WW 2. They were ultimately frightened people. If you read the stories of how Alan Shepherd and John Glenn were lionized after their Mercury flights you'd see the depths of fear that fed their adoration.
But then...their kids said basically 'WTF is up w/ that?' Starting in the mid-late 60's against Vietnam, in the 50's Civil Rights began, and on and on.
(Please don't think I'm bragging, K? You have NOOO idea how obnoxious we became in the 80's)
These munchkins- and their profs w/their useless post-modern grievance degrees who remain moronically ignorant of human nature- will eventually have kids of their own.
Who will, as kids are wont to do, rebel.
(I also suspect that there's an enormous cohort of these elite college munchkins who despise what's going on at their overpriced degree mills...wait'll those kids grow a pair of balls).
I'm not sure, but looking at the profiles that you gave us of admins doing this work in your article, Mike...I got a hankering suspicion that all of the grievance studies profs are realizing that there's no real future in what they're doing and it pisses them off.
These controls they're installing in higher ed can be interpreted as flailing by a culture that is coming to terms w/ its own irrelevance in the real world. I mean, after all, food's gotta be harvested, and no, the military is incapable of running a tomato field or an abattoir. (Thanks for the observation Blair Davis!)
I dunno ... "leadership oversight" sounds awfully oxymoronic, don't you think?
This has got to make some of these students want to transfer to a school in a big time football conference so they can get drunk with 100,000 of their closest friends every Saturday and engage in maskless "fuck Joe Biden" chants. I wonder why everyone at those schools hasn't dropped dead already.
If I wasn't being sarcastic I don't know how I could bear this crap. I'm 64 and vaccinated in San Diego county. Since I was vaxed I havent worn a mask anywhere I wasnt required to - which has only been in medical offices and my mother's care facility. I know I, unlike college age folks, am in a higher risk group (I am in general good health and fit). All evidence is that if I now get Covid the case will be mild. I have no intention of living in fear, and giving up my life to ridiculous nanny state restrictions.
Especially for those in college there are things WORSE than Covid. Such as those loss of freedom and liberty. The one student in the Zoom session who worried about freshman transferring out hit the nail on the head. Not every school is doing this crap. Transferring, or doing college online at much lower cost, makes a lot of sense. If enough vote with their feet these admins will see the light.
After reading this it’s clear blue America is, and will continue to be, the centre of Covid crazy. And yes — that includes Australia.
Here is the simple reason why this continues at these (lets face it) mostly white colleges. Because 95% (at least) of the parents AND students do NOTHING about it. They DO comply. If just 20% said, fuck it, Im dropping out, Connecticut College would go bankrupt. But they don't. They, therefore, ALLOW for this to happen. And that's why this will never change.
How the hell did all these humanities graduates becomes epidemiological experts anyway?
This is the leftist, control freak mindset in places like NYC, LA, SF, and practically all campuses. Give me a conservative area any day of the week. We are already looking to move. Hell, the people in Northern ID already have a mantra 'only the slaves wear the mask'.
I love reading your stuff on CC Michael. The CC Dean needs the continued pressure, or he will go even more off the rails.