Writing for the Washington Post, Andre M. Perry, makes it clear right away that students need a safe space, or they will drop out. His headline says it all with “Campus racism makes minority students likelier to drop out of college. Mizzou students had to act.” The rest of his piece is just as forward.
Early in his piece, Perry writes:
In one sense, given the controversies at Mizzou — where a hostile campus climate serves as a mechanism by which students of color remain outsiders — the students didn’t have a choice. It would be illogical, and self-defeating, if they didn’t use the power they had at their disposal.
The “activism of students” which Perry is “applauding,” of which he argues they “didn’t have a choice on” has led to extreme measures. The president resigned, and the university has been thrown into turmoil.
But there’s also the incident at Yale University, where he he doesn’t go into the proper specifics. Students behaved unruly, even cursing at a university employee. In such instances it seems as if the students are only contributing to such “hostile environments.”
Perry doesn’t throw around the term “safe space” often, but he does use it. After mentioning research that shows students are more likely to drop out after experiencing racism, he writes that “black students facing adverse conditions are likelier to leave college early — and would, presumably, be likelier to stay in what they felt to be a safe space.”
Students may have been scared before, but now they really are. While the university originally tweeted out that there would be classes, they were forced to close on Wednesday after receiving online threats from a non-student over Yik Yak who was never physically close to campus.
As KMBC reported, some students even felt concerned enough to stay with friends, parents, or at hotels to be off campus.
For all these separate demands of free college, one would think that it would be more logical to make the best use of one’s education being paid for. Instead students are staging hunger strikes, walk outs and dropping out completely.
Students are not using their college campuses to get an education, at least not an academic one. Instead, they have become the breeding grounds for activism. And God help those who just are there to get their degree, as many students want to do, as they have taken to express on Yik Yak.
One aim of college is to prepare students for the real world, or at least it ought to and used to be. Instead, with all these demands, charades even, of a safe space, students are hindering their maturity and independence. And universities, which are too afraid to act otherwise, are only helping them do so.
