Red Alert Politics

Thomas Sowell: Campus Protestors are like Storm-Troopers

By Rebecca Downs
Published December 2, 2015 4:58pm ET
Add Washington Examiner on Google

[caption id=”attachment_154364″ align=”aligncenter” width=”3208″](Arnold Gold/New Haven Register via AP, File)

[/caption]

Getting a college education is expensive. It’s even more of a headache to consider that some students make it difficult or even impossible for others to actually get an education because of their unruly protests and demands.

Thomas Sowell has a fitting and relevant title for such protesters, with his piece for the New York Post, “How parents can avoid spending thousands on colleges that host student storm-troopers.”

Why should parents or students paying their own way have to pay for what has become a breeding ground for activism? And why should alumni be asked to contribute to places which have lost their true purpose?

What makes the current state of affairs even worse is that Sowell noted it wasn’t always this way. “Clearly it was not inevitable that academic institutions would follow the path of least resistance,” he wrote.

The article mentions an incident at the University of Chicago from 1969:

After student mobs seized control of a campus building, the University of Chicago expelled 42 students and suspended 81 other students. Seizing buildings was not nearly as much fun there, nor were outrageous demands met.


Despite the “inevitable[ility],” Sowell still acknowledges the question “why then do so many colleges and universities not only tolerate storm trooper tactics on campus but surrender immediately to them” is “hard to answer.”

Sowell points to Choosing the Right College, which he considers “by far the best of the college guides.” The guide gives red light or green light rating. The ratings for Mizzou and the University of Chicago are not surprising:

…It gave the University of Missouri a red light rating, and spelled out its problems, two years before Mizzou made headlines this year as a symbol of academic cowardice and moral bankruptcy.

The University of Chicago gets a green light rating as a place where both conservative and liberal students are allowed free rein…

As Sowell closes with:

If parents and donors start checking out intolerant colleges and universities before deciding where to send their money, the caving in to indoctrinating professors and storm trooper students will no longer be the path of least resistance for academic administrators.

Clearly, such institutions as the University of Missouri do not deserve any more money.