Horse FeathersThis week, Columbia Law School students demanded—and got—delayed exams to compensate for the trauma the fragile things experienced over the Eric Garner case. Also in response to the Garner case, Smith College President Kathleen McCartney had to apologize for insisting that “All Lives Matter” when the acceptable sentiment of the moment is that “black lives matter.” And at the University of Iowa, David Ryfe, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, insisted “I would follow the lead of every European nation and ban this type of speech” after an anti-racism art installation misfired and upset students who are defintely not spending years of their lives at an institution of higher learning to have their ideas challenged or their feelings bruised.
If this was all, it would still be enough reason for me to start contemplating just how much motorcycle my kid’s 529 can buy. But of course there’s more. College, after all, is where Rolling Stone went dumpster-diving in eager expectation of finding seamy tales of sexual assault, and instead unearthed the revelation that students dipping their toes into adulhood are unpredictable, perhaps unstable—and that its own journalistic practices suck.