One of the powerful things I come away from this excellent piece with is that actually these protests are a sign of resilience -- they're college students doing a very classic college student thing despite all of the wailing about how these kids are different and weaker. And they're doing it over something that is a common thread in so many of the biggest and most famous student protest movements of recent decades: the idea that some people's humanity matters less than others.
FWIW as Columbia students take over a building, I'm remembering a time when I was a kid and my father took me with him to deliver pizza to students who had taken over a building at UMass, where he taught. I don't remember what that protest was about, but it stands out that he 1) was able to approach the building with pizza and send it in and 2) felt safe bringing his kid because there was no thought that police in riot gear were about to storm the place.
Thank you thank you thank you! I'd love to read a companion piece on how corporate-style university leadership and relentless focus on assessment and outcomes is augmenting these problems. I work in public higher education and the shift to metrics Metrics METRICS--often from those who are quite removed from the classroom--has also played into the despair students are experiencing. They can't just come to an event and connect and enjoy it. They have to perform that they learned something with an assessment and exit survey. They know that they are data, not just to apps but also to their schools.
I think that's one part of a seismic shift towards seeing students as clients who are buying a product. And that product is more a path to a job than an education. There is so much evidence for this - changing coursework to be easier across the board (not just grade inflation), the removal of unpopular requirements, the framing of "safe spaces" as places where you never have to be uncomfortable because of exposure to any difference from yourself (see a more articulate comment from Eric Kruger on this post). Part of this "corporatization" is also reflected in the obsession with startups specifically - not just creating new ideas, products, research, but creating new million-dollar business models.
EDIT: and that separates students from the university - the students don't MAKE the university, they are customers walking through Walmart with shopping carts, necessary for the business but irrelevant to its actual operation. University responses to the protests clearly show that they do not view students as actual contributors.
I agree with you partially, but in 20 years in higher ed, I just haven't seen evidence of coursework being downgraded and safer spaces being used in the ways you describe. Students are treated like customers, but more like customers being surveilled in a big box store than those being catered to in a high-end boutique.
This could be field specific. My highly technical field, which is struggling to gain and retain students, has been continuously downgrading course difficulty in the last decade. College campuses are extremely polarized right now, and in the interest of "protecting" everyone, crosstalk doesn't seem to be encouraged much. And I'm not saying these actions are exclusively bad, nor that they arise solely from the university. Just that they are heralds of a culture change in how students and campuses are viewed.
I honestly think that young people are struggling to find a balance in terms of speech right now. For SO MANY YEARS, marginalization of women and minorities was just something that they had to live with. I think that's part of the lack of crosstalk because people just don't tolerate what they used to.
Now I feel like there's so much emphasis on language and using the "right term" as a reaction to that—but I think it will eventually fall into a more balanced position. But I guess we'll see.
I think one thing that this kind of misses is the fact that the pandemic is still making many college-aged students disabled or chronically ill, which of course impacts the calculus they make daily around engagement etc. Also, this is nitpicky, but many of the students are wearing not surgical masks, but high-quality KN94s or N95s, and from what I've read it's about both avoiding the surveillance state and preventing illness in the ongoing pandemic. Palestine is a disability rights issue, as many will tell you -- many many Palestinians are becoming disabled during this conflict, and covid and other diseases are spreading in refugee camps. The venn diagram of people who care about not disabling others and who care about ending a genocide has a pretty big crossover. That the protests are for chronically ill/disabled folks more accessible due to widespread masking is really amazing to see.
thank you for adding this point — and the surgical mask point was a lost reference to a VERY DRAMATIC picture in the WSJ piece of a surgical mask crumpled on the ground, and in most pictures, students are wearing the high-quality masks you mention
Thank you so much for saying this! I have a junior in college at UMN who is participating in the protests there who is also part of a group of students who continue to mask, test, and try to keep each other safe. Considering all these kids have been through, and how not very carefree their coming of age has been, I’m so proud of them for still caring for others in this ongoing pandemic, and caring about liberation for the people who are being killed, disabled and starved in an ongoing genocide! They certainly haven’t lost their empathy, compassion, and strong sense of what is right and what is wrong!
"here these students were, experiencing their first college lectures over zoom — or, in semesters to come, trying to hear and communicate with classmates through masks." Idk, masks work and are one of the most reliable tools we have. As someone who became chronically ill because of covid, who's here at work wearing a mask, it's really not that big of a deal. But I get that I'm an adult and got the benefit of having formative years in a pre-pandemic world.
I think we can believe in the efficacy of masks (Masks are great!!!) and also acknowledge that it makes some experiences, like attending a discussion section for the first time. Both can be true.
I'm hard of hearing, can confirm. There's no way I could have participated in a discussion seminar where I needed to lip-read had I been a student during the past few years.
Those experiences are extra hard if you have an ESL teacher or are an ESL speaker. Masks are great but they do add a layer of disengagement that, while necessary, still brings challenges and grief
Some of the "antisocial" behaviors described in the WSJ piece are behaviors that the students who are being careful about COVID (and possibly other respiratory illnesses) have HAD to adopt in order to protect themselves/their social group. Universities have not engaged in a mass upgrade of ventilation systems, not even in cafeterias and rec centers, and certainly not in residence hall rooms or classrooms.
My college sophomore wears an N95 in classroom buildings and while picking up their lunch in the cafeteria. Carries a portable small air filter for times when the mask has to come off (eating with friends in the cafeteria or off-campus). Their friend group texts each other about illnesses, shares masks if someone needs one, whoever finds out first about the availability of the updated COVID vaccine lets the rest know .... It's a big adjustment to social interactions, and it really impacts the way they interact with the university and other students (those who are being careful). In this case, they do have a friend in the friend group who developed Long COVID freshman year and while that student is able to still be in college, their ability to focus, their stamina, their clarity of thought were impacted - they know the risk of infections.
Yes to all of this. I graduated last year but became chronically ill from Long COVID while in college and have a number of friends who led student protests on our campus in past years amidst their own disabilities.
I have been really glad to see masking in photos also. Whether they are masking for surveillance or COVID reasons it is a demonstrated care for community and recognition of the intersections present in the ongoing war.
Why not let the college students protest? What is the big deal? The optics? What? Years ago, at a large Southern university in my town, the president was getting flak for letting some protesting students set up tents in a heavily used part of campus. Rather than remove the tents, he talked to the students as people, acknowledged their issues and encouraged them to move to a less traveled part of campus. They did, and they remained there for weeks. The president later said he was worried for the protesters, who were getting heckled and sometimes attacked by gun-toting adults coming onto campus. Campus police protected the protesters from the anti-protesters. People in the community brought the students food and sometimes joined them. Eventually, the tents left. I just don't get shutting up people who have a grievance to air. It makes no sense to me.
Yes! I said yesterday when I heard that Columbia was going to suspend/expel/jail students that the protests were going to escalate. WHAT were they thinking?!
I had a very old-school gentlemanly college president at my state school who would wander the campus and TALK to students. He would have gone over to the tents and heard the students out, even if he disagreed entirely.
I was just abroad in a developing nation and the social ties seemed so much stronger. We asked several people about their government and while some had strong feelings, they were able to have very calm conversations about issues. I think we've lost that in the US. And it's not just kids—I think the older adults are often the biggest culprits. (Not all old people—I think we all know the type I mean!)
I think you've hit the nail on the proverbial head. Despite my questions and concerns about the apparent substance of the protests, I don't understand why the focus of administrators is on making it all go away rather than engagement. So long as others can get into & out of buildings with reasonable discomfiture, let the protests go on.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. It seems like it's more about *control* with administrators being able to show that they have power over the students, but the students have no control over the school.
This really hits it for me. I have an enormous amount of concern over the substance, but that doesn't get solved by trying to shove the problem away. University administrations have a lot to answer for in terms of their complete abdication of care and responsibility to house a healthy academic environment. This is shining a light on how that isn't a new problem, and it's allowing what might otherwise be a normal antiwar protest situation devolve into bigotry and cruelty. It won't get solved without engagement, without challenging ideas, without teaching.
Thank you so much for this essay, AHP. Classes finished yesterday and I am sitting in my darkened living room feeling sad and exhausted, beginning the process of recovering from the last nine months. For those outside academia--we don't actually get summers off, we just get paid to work August through May, and many of us leave campus crying from exhaustion. And that's in a normal year.
I've been doing this for thirty years, and this was the first year I have taken the initiative to meet with our accessibility services and counseling services folks [low-key heroes] because I need help addressing the complex issues I am encountering in and out of the classroom. What a time to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. 🫣
I am on an "elite" campus in the South that was recently the site of some of the worst police violence--it was amplified here because, for well over a year, students have also been organizing protests against the construction of the Atlanta "Public Safety" Training Center, aka Cop City. Last year the police were called to campus to dismantle a small tent protest--there was no violent confrontation, but it was menacing--and that investigation was never resolved.
Last week the Atlanta police and the state troopers were invited to campus to dismantle a larger student protest and tent encampment focused on the war in Gaza AND Cop City. In other words, the militarized group who are the targets of the protest were invited to campus to disrupt that protest--with chemical agents, rubber bullets, and tasers--and good old physical violence. Don't take my word for it--the videos are everywhere.
Day after day we see more and more photos of police violence against students and faculty across the country, and at some point you just need to get those images out of your head. The students are FREAKING OUT. The adults cannot believe this is happening. The disappointment, shame, and shock defy description.
And here is my message. STOP HATING ON STUDENTS. It's a tired trope, as Hamilton Nolan explains more eloquently than I can. Kiese Laymon told Ana Marie Cox in an interview a few years back, "America hates its children." I believe this. CAN YOU IMAGINE what the future looks like to them. Students are disinterested, they are defiant, they are depressed, and they cheat openly. They are glued to their screens. They are somehow both overparented and underparented. [As a nonparent this is confusing to me.] They are also desperate to be part of something that matters and brings even a semblance of hope. They cleave to any adult who will take them seriously and not patronize them, who will tell the truth about the bullshit world they are inheriting. I have been exhausted by my students' pastoral needs. They are CLINGY. My heart breaks.
Please stop hating on the kids. Do better, grown ups. Please.
I think there's been a concerted effort to oversimplify and misstate the stance that many (Democrats and Republicans as well) have about the current state of policing.
For instance - one tenet of the 988 crisis line is that it would enable those in mental health crises to bypass 911, and instead speak with a trained person who knows how to handle a mental health crisis, how to get that person to assistance (expectation, with trained responders where the mental health professional/social worker takes the lead, if in-person response is necessary) .... because being mentally ill is not a crime. So many people in mental health crises have negative or deadly responses from police.
I would encourage you to continue to consider and read up on this topic and weigh what you're reading, because it's not an either/or argument being made by Democrats (and Independents, and some Republicans too). My law enforcement family members are actually both progressive Democrats.
Thank you for this. It's true too of the younger kids--one of my kids is about to graduate from high school, which he entered in fall 2020, and the other is finishing 8th. The HS senior is grieving a high school experience that was vastly lonelier than the one he'd expected, hoping his college experience is less so, unfazed by political engagement on campus because he sees that engagement as vital to creating a better world than the one he sees. The 8th grader's cohort is so smart and funny and battle-hardened and also very tender and raw underneath the scar tissue. I love and respect this generation of kids--I might not get the ways they express themselves, but by and large they are observing the world very astutely and calling us out on our BS. We need to listen.
I've thought a lot about how every age of kid missed some important milestone or experience because of covid. I'm pretty sure there are ages for which it was a lot more difficult than others, but if you were a kid there's almost no way you didn't miss something that mattered. (And I say that as the parent of a kid who missed about as little as possible.)
My high school junior is also very lonely. She's so bright and fun, too—just shy. She is also hoping that college will give her that community. Fingers crossed for all our kids!
My daughter is about to graduate HS, too, and we are both a bit taken aback that the college she's chosen, a private school in the south, is home to zero protests. It's going to be interesting to see whether that is a bellwether of campus engagement. She, too, is craving an active, vibrant campus community after ending middle school / starting high school in her bedroom alone.
My nibling of this age (non-binary child of my sister) and their friends and younger brother: all give a strong impression of solidarity with each other, as well as deep skepticism/ wry humor regarding older generations. This piece touches on so much of what has shaped them. My overwhelming impression is that things like smartphones are actually the absolute least of their problems. They have been working with them since middle school and are pretty thoughtful about how they choose to engage or disengage at different times with phones and with social media. The worst stress they have is managing the very intense and very conflicting hopes, dreams, expectations and projections of older adults. I think they have a very hard time finding any safety or deep understanding in those relationships. The vast majority of people our age (elder millennial) are extremely anxious, or deeply checked out, in denial about world events, or desperately projecting all our hopes on to younger people to save us. The kids, since they were little, effortlessly and easily adopt their friend's pronouns and gender identity, with reflexive solidarity and understanding, and then spend endless energy correcting and explaining these to their parents/ teachers etc. In response, they get hysterical news articles, oppressive laws, a heightened and unreal conversation about young kids' right to exist as themselves. They spend their lives teaching adults how to use and understand new apps and technology, and then are treated to more hysterical news articles about how they are all misinformed babies who believe anything they see online. Projection much? And at this point why would they bother reading news ever? The pandemic was such a crystallization of all these dynamics. It makes sense to expect a micro-generation coming out of this with a reflexive solidarity with others their age and a reflexive disregard of elders and the way things have been done. And with the scars of burnout hitting them before they even reach their twenties.
"The worst stress they have is managing the very intense and very conflicting hopes, dreams, expectations and projections of older adults." WHEW, this right here.
Just to add to this, current college students also spent elementary and high school as the first generation with active shooter drills. They grew up during the heyday of school shootings, and carry that with them to this moment. They have witnessed the absolute failure of universities to address sexual violence. And, they’ve lived through the #BLM and a lackluster national response to police violence. To see them protesting the war makes total sense for a cohort that has collectively survived so much state-allowed violence. As a parent of 2 college students, I loved this piece. Thank-you!
Dan this is utterly off-topic and combative in a way that is not at all in line with our commenting guidelines here at Culture Study. I'm going to temporarily revoke your ability to comment; if you have questions, feel free to email me.
I have been thinking about the protests of my college years (I graduated in 2003) too. Specifically, marches against the impending Iraq invasion were so formative to me / my politics. There was also occasionally anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at the protests, and as a young Jewish person, it was important, hard and messy to my still-forming brain and political orientation to distinguish between the ideas I heard, and what it meant to me to participate in larger movements that also had parts that I didn't love. What great but, again, hard, lessons about collective action! I also remember feeling so bewildered at how people I cared about were *so very mad* at those of us protesting. Many of those memories faded and blurred in the intervening decades, but have been revived by current student protests. It was devastating then to watch my government be so wrong, and it is devastating now, and I'm so grateful for the young people who are making it uncomfortable and even painful for the rest of us to look away.
Older adults were SO MAD!!! Like, how dare they protest this RIGHTEOUS WAR! (Which wasn't righteous at all, turns out!) What an instructive experience that was.
So my boss who is an adjunct or somesuch in a graduate program at Columbia is currently walking around the office ranting because the campus is on lockdown and she can't go to her class today "But none of the students in our program even care about these protests! They just want to have graduation!"
While it is possible that it is the case, I find that the older generation no matter how socially liberal they consider themselves is very quickly adopting the conservative reactionism that's dominating the news coverage. Because the only students you're hearing from are the ones who are loudly proclaiming their allegiance to one side, not the mushy middle. And if students feel like they'll be targeted by their institution for expressing any sort of solidarity, they are unlikely to say anything in front of people in positions of authority or who they consider representatives of the administration. They don't know who to trust! I feel for these kids, because yes their graduation is at risk, but also because they are bearing so much of such intensity.
As another 2003 grad (and from a NYC school so we lost so many alumni and family members on 9/11), I think about how much that post-9/11 pall hung over us for years, coupled with the way the economy was regularly falling apart. It felt like such a struggle for so many of us to find our footing because no one could tell us how to adapt because NO ONE knew how to adapt. These students are in the same boat and I've tried to impart some learned wisdom to my mentee who's in her 4th year of a 5 year program and similarly feels very adrift and overwhelmed by how little support she has had.
I think that students generally, except for the most emotionally shut down, feel the cognitive dissonance. The protests are about SO MUCH MORE than Gaza. And enough with the whimpering about "commencement"--"oh, these poor kids already lost one graduation." Like that's the students' biggest concern. Or ours.
After surviving two school shootings, my college kid could absolutely care less about pomp and circumstance glorifying the university or the university experience. They do however, have a lot of space in their heart for people who are experiencing violence and powerlessness that is caused by something they have no control over.
I laugh because I remember Commencement being so anticlimactic. We sat baking in the sun and then couldn't find our friends to say good bye (lol because we didn't have cellphones) so everyone just loaded up their family's car and went home.
I agree that Commencement is anticlimactic for many, but I do think it's meaningful for some. My HS and undergrad graduations didn't mean much, but I would've been really sad had I not gotten one for my PhD.
hahaha, baking in the sun. My memory is that my roommate got an epic sunburn patch below her mortarboard but only on one side of her face (the sunny side), and we laughed about how funny it looked until 6pm while frantically packing our cars because we had to be out by then.
RE: older generation/reactionism: BIG YES to this! A week or two ago my city was one of the ones where protesters shut down a major highway leading to our airport. Every older person who has brought it up in my presence has acted like those folks should be arrested or jailed for creating discomfort for the people using private transportation to get to the airport. I get that it's uncomfortable and scary to think that something like a protest could prevent you from making your flight(and it makes me uncomfortable too, flights are expensive!), but I think they are missing so many points by just wanting to remove the protesters. What about all the people dying, losing limbs, watching the destruction of their home? What about the simple right to peaceful protest in this country? It's been really haunting me because it feels anti-democratic in the name of some/many people maintaining their comfort.
I think I was luckier than most: I went directly to grad school at columbia and then started working for my boss who was my thesis advisor. But I was there with people who'd lost jobs when the tech bubble burst (sooo many people who relocated from the San Francisco area). I remember thinking at the time how so many of my friends went to law school or business school because there just was nothing out there for them and they didn't know what to do next - and no wonder we're all saddled with massive student debt! But in my first year of grad I also lost my mom to cancer - god just thinking of how stressful and uncertain things were for me is making me sympathize even more with these students. They likely have so many things happening to them and around them!
Thank you for your answer. Those kinds of times make it impossible to heal from the wounds, you're so busy trying to survive... and grad school does that to you regardless. I hope you've found more space now, and virtual hugs for your loss.
Resilience is weaponized against so many people and especially young people. Resilience is something we foster by providing supportive and encouraging environments for people to try new positive challenges. If you want to learn to swim or how to paint or as a child start walking or talking, the idea is to provide an environment where failure is expected and steps toward learning are recognized and built on. Trust and safety both physical and psychological are essential.
People can then apply the resilience to challenge and failure to more efforts to learn and take risks especially independently and creatively (meaning differing from what already exists or is known to them and those around them).
Resilience can be used to deal with traumatic situations. But it’s not something we should be expecting people to cultivate because our society is manufacturing trauma at a high rate and has no plans to do anything about that! Our kids and young adults, our society as a whole, are not lacking resilience. They’re repeatedly traumatized.
You can’t heal from trauma you are still experiencing. The pandemic is not over. Gun violence is not over. Racism is not over. Colonialism is not over.
I started college in 2019 and graduated 2023, so I went through all of the phases of college (except maybe now the protests on campus) Not only was the experience a little disappointing than from what it was pre-pandemic but we were promised every year over and over again it was worth it (!!) I kept on going back over and over again promised a better experience and left utterly disappointed with the lack of support and now were suddenly blamed for the lack of communal spaces, the lack of engagement, the lack of maturity. I hear a lot were a bunch of cry babies for complaining about the college experience we got while not actually listening to all the trauma we had to go through.
Thank you. I’m one of the (probably many) older millennials in this space and you have articulated something that is the same shape as what we’ve observed, even if the specifics are different: it is awful to be trained for a world that no longer exists, often at great personal cost; and MUCH WORSE when the older adults around you insist it doesn’t matter or can’t be the case or worse, is all your fault. I can’t stand the thought that we might perpetuate the same types of arguments weaponized against us, only barely having started to turn the tide of that narrative 15-20 years later.
(I’d also probably say that the specifics are more dire now, so this is not meant to equate the challenges of different time periods, but to say - the general pattern should be recognizable, people!!)
Yes. As Millennials, we graduated into a recession and then were blamed for not having the "maturity" to save up to buy houses. We were broke because the previous generation broke stuff. It feels like this wave of epistemological violence is now rolling over onto Gen Z. I'm sorry that this is happening. It's not your fault.
Wow, so well put. I feel like I was trained for a world that no longer existed as a Millennial, and we're still doing this to the younger generations? And they're being told it's their fault? I'm so sorry this is still happening too.
Yes! Though after I posted I thought, maybe "trained" is exactly the word, but at very least, like ... raised to anticipate a certain reality. And then you make decisions and accept tradeoffs based on that reality (for example: overpacking your schedule during high school because you're told it will be so, so amazing when you finally get to college! Or: taking on enormous amounts of debt because you're told it will pay off for your career!) And those tradeoffs make it hit even harder when the carpet gets pulled out from under you. These were always serious considerations for how to shape the life you want, not just the spoiled youth complaining about a handful of missed parties or indulging in some fluffy useless major. Or whatever. Y'know?
I know there are real issues that we could consider about how young people, or ALL people, are both reacting to and creating modern culture (social isolation, "resilience," tech use, etc). I mean: I parent a teen and I have friends who are educators. Some patterns are worrisome, and it's not like everything is above critique. I also know: dealing with the unexpected is just part of life, you can't plan for everything, and that's fine. But that's not how it pops up in The Discourse. It's pretending that "kids these days" are making different decisions than you did for inexplicable reasons. Or pretending that circumstances haven't meaningfully changed "since I was your age." But there have been wild, axis-tilting changes we need to acknowledge before we can have good-faith discussions of those things! It's THAT part at the heart of the "ok boomer" thing - being stubbornly out of touch, not just "being old." I refuse to be "boomerized" in my reaction to the next gen!
I'm still processing the overwhelming emotions I feel about how we, as a society, are responding to these protests but I just want to say THANK YOU for this beautiful piece. I think more than anything it's been incredibly disappointing to see my generation (elder millennial) and those just above it respond so negatively and condescendingly to the protests. I feel grief for where we lost our curiosity, our empathy, our ability to engage with the shame you mention here. And grief for how we still find police violence an acceptable response to student protest. This piece and the many wonderful comments are an antidote to that grief (as are the protests themselves, in all their messiness) and for that I'm so grateful.
"Legitimate authority" is doing a lot of heavy-lifting in that sentence. At what point does an authority lose its legitimacy? How does it gain it in the first place? Do human beings owe their allegiance to authority or to morality? If your child had been murdered by an oppressive government and someone else's child in a country far away was protesting that, don't you think you'd appreciate that they were standing up to authority in the name of what's right?
If you asked politely and they don't respond, maybe it's time for you to actually listen to their demands and work towards a solution.
This essay makes me so sad. My son is about to graduate from university because he took five years, not four. I'm immensely grateful he had a normal, positive, rah-rah spirited senior year in the class of 2019, then a normal freshman year at college until having to pack up and move home temporarily in March of 2020. He attended CU Boulder, a school big on campus spirit that revolves around sports and less outwardly political or prone to protests compared to others. He joined a frat, which I felt mixed about (since I know the negative aspects of the Greek system, and I went to UC Santa Cruz which banned frats and sororities) but ultimately I'm glad he joined because it led to friendships and social activities. Many studies have shown that one of the greatest predictors of success post-college is not grades or where one went to school, but rather relationships with peers and faculty who are mentors. The isolation you describe is debilitating. My son took a year off because he thought learning online was a waste of time and money, so he worked a retail job that year, which also led to positive relationships. He has only performed average academically, but that's OK in my view, "B's get degrees," and I'm happy and proud he's a "people person" who gets along with a wide range of others. It's incumbent on faculty and leaders in higher institutions to prioritize small classes or groups with an emphasis on working one on one, establishing a rapport and encouraging in-person collaboration. We are so damn polarized. We need to foster "people people" who make eye contact, talk, listen, and relate.
This piece is so beautiful and true. I’ve been so struck by how the college paper I used to work for, the place where I met my husband, has gone from putting out Iraq War editorials on actual paper in the early aughts, when we worked there, to putting out incisive social media coverage on the protest encampments at school, and the school leadership’s unwillingness to protect those encampments from the police. They’re KIDS. Trying to figure out how they feel and what to do to make a difference in a world in which feeling and making a difference seem increasingly hard. They do deserve so much better from us, the supposed adults in the room.
We are in agreement! Just respectfully pointing out that they are mostly not kids - they are young adults and we should be hearing them accordingly. Rather than further infantilizing this generation, we should be acknowledging the voices of voting-age adults of the world.
I think this is a two things are true situation! Most of them are under 25, which we know means their prefrontal cortex is still developing (obviously varies by individuals but speaking broadly here). So they’re more impulsive and make decisions that are more based on emotions, compared to an older adult who can more easily understand long-term consequences and regulate their behavior.
So I think the tendency to view college students as full-fledged adults takes away the grace they deserve, as AHP points out in this piece. I think younger adults deserve space to fuck up and to change their minds, while at the same time deserve to be respected and heard because that they can be capable adults all the same. And being more emotion-driven can be a powerful driver for justice and change, something older adults should admire!
There's definitely two things true... what I remember about 2003 when I entered college was that my opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't taken seriously because I was young/immature/impulsive . But the soldiers fighting on those fronts were my childhood friends and classmates!!! If you're old enough to fight a war, you ought to be considered old enough to protest one!
I love this and would echo it! I teach Gen Z and have enormous empathy and respect for what they can accomplish. And, I also have enormous empathy for how high stakes everything feels for them, and how much maturity has already been expected of them throughout the pandemic era. The stakes are even higher for young adults who have one or more marginalized identities. They are more commonly adultified even before they turn 18 and policed accordingly. I don't think infantilizing them is the answer. But I think we need to consider the consequences of not honoring the relative youth and inexperience of people under 25 -- particularly those who during the pandemic era did not get to have formative, developmentally appropriate experiences IRL with trial and error when they were actual kids. Those consequences have the potential to be far worse for the young adults in question.
Excellent point, and a level of nuance that is SO lost in the media/ popular narratives around college protests. If only every space on the internet could acknowledge that two things can be true... I really appreciate your point about the grace to make mistakes and change your mind as a young person
I agree with you. Also, I suspect some adults are calling protestors "kids" specifically to highlight the power imbalance between the protestors and the highly militarized police. I think folks are looking for a way to acknowledge how vulnerable the protestors are.
In so many ways they may have matured faster than previous cohorts as well. Of course many kids are parentified and caretake their parents while they are young, but this generation feels like they have done that on a generational level, regardless of the dynamics of their individual families.
I think Covid was an experience of seeing that the adults do not have everything under control, and may not be keeping us safe, and are in intense conflict with each other around how to handle it. For some kids I'm sure they had to educate their elders about Covid precautions. It's also that kids were shamed as potential carriers of disease/ told not to socialize normally to protect others/ being blamed as potential dangers to their elders - but then at the same time now being told they are abnormal or developmentally stunted because of all what they went through. It's kind of a double bind, they are blamed no matter what they do. So a typical response to that is to feel very responsible very early for everything, even for taking care of those who are nominally supposed to be taking care of you, and the exhaustion coming from that. Even if in reality this kid is not actually responsible for things, they are emotionally feeling that weight of it, on a society-wide level.
This feels like a really important point -- that what we have is a generation of people who may feel parentified, not just by family factors but by structural factors. (I also know that most people who grew up in parentified roles, including myself, were put in those positions due to the structural factors impacting their parents.) It makes me wonder what healing might then look like, in a world that continues to feel so chaotic and out of control sometimes.
Thank you for this. I work at a university in Texas, and my heart has been breaking for these students for a while. They’re so cool, so funny, and they’re trying so damn hard all the time. There haven’t been protests where I work (yet), but after the anti-DEI bill was passed in Texas last summer, I’ve watched students step up in a big way. Since students orgs are one of the exceptions in the bill, many of the diversity/special interest committees I was on as a faculty member have had to hand over our responsibilities to student orgs, and students are doing that work because they’re angry.
They are angry about the offices and programs that supported our largely first-gen, majority-minority student population being cut or altered into meaningless, angry that their words are being policed by state reps (literally someone was here a few weeks ago taking posters off walls in the counseling center that said things like “you belong.” I’m not kidding). They’re angry that their identities and backgrounds are being treated like divisive concepts while their rights are being stripped away. They are not under-resilient at all, they just have too much to deal with and too many people waiting around hoping to watch them fail just to prove a political point.
One of the powerful things I come away from this excellent piece with is that actually these protests are a sign of resilience -- they're college students doing a very classic college student thing despite all of the wailing about how these kids are different and weaker. And they're doing it over something that is a common thread in so many of the biggest and most famous student protest movements of recent decades: the idea that some people's humanity matters less than others.
FWIW as Columbia students take over a building, I'm remembering a time when I was a kid and my father took me with him to deliver pizza to students who had taken over a building at UMass, where he taught. I don't remember what that protest was about, but it stands out that he 1) was able to approach the building with pizza and send it in and 2) felt safe bringing his kid because there was no thought that police in riot gear were about to storm the place.
Thank you thank you thank you! I'd love to read a companion piece on how corporate-style university leadership and relentless focus on assessment and outcomes is augmenting these problems. I work in public higher education and the shift to metrics Metrics METRICS--often from those who are quite removed from the classroom--has also played into the despair students are experiencing. They can't just come to an event and connect and enjoy it. They have to perform that they learned something with an assessment and exit survey. They know that they are data, not just to apps but also to their schools.
I meant to say that I think this framing of students as data paves the way for a forceful rather than an empathetic response to their activism.
I think that's one part of a seismic shift towards seeing students as clients who are buying a product. And that product is more a path to a job than an education. There is so much evidence for this - changing coursework to be easier across the board (not just grade inflation), the removal of unpopular requirements, the framing of "safe spaces" as places where you never have to be uncomfortable because of exposure to any difference from yourself (see a more articulate comment from Eric Kruger on this post). Part of this "corporatization" is also reflected in the obsession with startups specifically - not just creating new ideas, products, research, but creating new million-dollar business models.
EDIT: and that separates students from the university - the students don't MAKE the university, they are customers walking through Walmart with shopping carts, necessary for the business but irrelevant to its actual operation. University responses to the protests clearly show that they do not view students as actual contributors.
I agree with you partially, but in 20 years in higher ed, I just haven't seen evidence of coursework being downgraded and safer spaces being used in the ways you describe. Students are treated like customers, but more like customers being surveilled in a big box store than those being catered to in a high-end boutique.
This could be field specific. My highly technical field, which is struggling to gain and retain students, has been continuously downgrading course difficulty in the last decade. College campuses are extremely polarized right now, and in the interest of "protecting" everyone, crosstalk doesn't seem to be encouraged much. And I'm not saying these actions are exclusively bad, nor that they arise solely from the university. Just that they are heralds of a culture change in how students and campuses are viewed.
I honestly think that young people are struggling to find a balance in terms of speech right now. For SO MANY YEARS, marginalization of women and minorities was just something that they had to live with. I think that's part of the lack of crosstalk because people just don't tolerate what they used to.
Now I feel like there's so much emphasis on language and using the "right term" as a reaction to that—but I think it will eventually fall into a more balanced position. But I guess we'll see.
I think everyone is very focused on the ROI of college (unfortunately) because it's so very expensive now. I get it but it's truly a loss to society.
I think one thing that this kind of misses is the fact that the pandemic is still making many college-aged students disabled or chronically ill, which of course impacts the calculus they make daily around engagement etc. Also, this is nitpicky, but many of the students are wearing not surgical masks, but high-quality KN94s or N95s, and from what I've read it's about both avoiding the surveillance state and preventing illness in the ongoing pandemic. Palestine is a disability rights issue, as many will tell you -- many many Palestinians are becoming disabled during this conflict, and covid and other diseases are spreading in refugee camps. The venn diagram of people who care about not disabling others and who care about ending a genocide has a pretty big crossover. That the protests are for chronically ill/disabled folks more accessible due to widespread masking is really amazing to see.
thank you for adding this point — and the surgical mask point was a lost reference to a VERY DRAMATIC picture in the WSJ piece of a surgical mask crumpled on the ground, and in most pictures, students are wearing the high-quality masks you mention
Thank you so much for saying this! I have a junior in college at UMN who is participating in the protests there who is also part of a group of students who continue to mask, test, and try to keep each other safe. Considering all these kids have been through, and how not very carefree their coming of age has been, I’m so proud of them for still caring for others in this ongoing pandemic, and caring about liberation for the people who are being killed, disabled and starved in an ongoing genocide! They certainly haven’t lost their empathy, compassion, and strong sense of what is right and what is wrong!
wow that is incredible!! you must be so so proud!!!
I am!! 🙂
"here these students were, experiencing their first college lectures over zoom — or, in semesters to come, trying to hear and communicate with classmates through masks." Idk, masks work and are one of the most reliable tools we have. As someone who became chronically ill because of covid, who's here at work wearing a mask, it's really not that big of a deal. But I get that I'm an adult and got the benefit of having formative years in a pre-pandemic world.
I think we can believe in the efficacy of masks (Masks are great!!!) and also acknowledge that it makes some experiences, like attending a discussion section for the first time. Both can be true.
I'm hard of hearing, can confirm. There's no way I could have participated in a discussion seminar where I needed to lip-read had I been a student during the past few years.
that's such a good point, thank you for raising this.
Those experiences are extra hard if you have an ESL teacher or are an ESL speaker. Masks are great but they do add a layer of disengagement that, while necessary, still brings challenges and grief
YES to this.
Some of the "antisocial" behaviors described in the WSJ piece are behaviors that the students who are being careful about COVID (and possibly other respiratory illnesses) have HAD to adopt in order to protect themselves/their social group. Universities have not engaged in a mass upgrade of ventilation systems, not even in cafeterias and rec centers, and certainly not in residence hall rooms or classrooms.
My college sophomore wears an N95 in classroom buildings and while picking up their lunch in the cafeteria. Carries a portable small air filter for times when the mask has to come off (eating with friends in the cafeteria or off-campus). Their friend group texts each other about illnesses, shares masks if someone needs one, whoever finds out first about the availability of the updated COVID vaccine lets the rest know .... It's a big adjustment to social interactions, and it really impacts the way they interact with the university and other students (those who are being careful). In this case, they do have a friend in the friend group who developed Long COVID freshman year and while that student is able to still be in college, their ability to focus, their stamina, their clarity of thought were impacted - they know the risk of infections.
Yes to all of this. I graduated last year but became chronically ill from Long COVID while in college and have a number of friends who led student protests on our campus in past years amidst their own disabilities.
I have been really glad to see masking in photos also. Whether they are masking for surveillance or COVID reasons it is a demonstrated care for community and recognition of the intersections present in the ongoing war.
<3 <3 <3
Absolutely. Thank you for raising this!
Why not let the college students protest? What is the big deal? The optics? What? Years ago, at a large Southern university in my town, the president was getting flak for letting some protesting students set up tents in a heavily used part of campus. Rather than remove the tents, he talked to the students as people, acknowledged their issues and encouraged them to move to a less traveled part of campus. They did, and they remained there for weeks. The president later said he was worried for the protesters, who were getting heckled and sometimes attacked by gun-toting adults coming onto campus. Campus police protected the protesters from the anti-protesters. People in the community brought the students food and sometimes joined them. Eventually, the tents left. I just don't get shutting up people who have a grievance to air. It makes no sense to me.
Yes! I said yesterday when I heard that Columbia was going to suspend/expel/jail students that the protests were going to escalate. WHAT were they thinking?!
I had a very old-school gentlemanly college president at my state school who would wander the campus and TALK to students. He would have gone over to the tents and heard the students out, even if he disagreed entirely.
I was just abroad in a developing nation and the social ties seemed so much stronger. We asked several people about their government and while some had strong feelings, they were able to have very calm conversations about issues. I think we've lost that in the US. And it's not just kids—I think the older adults are often the biggest culprits. (Not all old people—I think we all know the type I mean!)
I think you've hit the nail on the proverbial head. Despite my questions and concerns about the apparent substance of the protests, I don't understand why the focus of administrators is on making it all go away rather than engagement. So long as others can get into & out of buildings with reasonable discomfiture, let the protests go on.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. It seems like it's more about *control* with administrators being able to show that they have power over the students, but the students have no control over the school.
This really hits it for me. I have an enormous amount of concern over the substance, but that doesn't get solved by trying to shove the problem away. University administrations have a lot to answer for in terms of their complete abdication of care and responsibility to house a healthy academic environment. This is shining a light on how that isn't a new problem, and it's allowing what might otherwise be a normal antiwar protest situation devolve into bigotry and cruelty. It won't get solved without engagement, without challenging ideas, without teaching.
Thank you so much for this essay, AHP. Classes finished yesterday and I am sitting in my darkened living room feeling sad and exhausted, beginning the process of recovering from the last nine months. For those outside academia--we don't actually get summers off, we just get paid to work August through May, and many of us leave campus crying from exhaustion. And that's in a normal year.
I've been doing this for thirty years, and this was the first year I have taken the initiative to meet with our accessibility services and counseling services folks [low-key heroes] because I need help addressing the complex issues I am encountering in and out of the classroom. What a time to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. 🫣
I am on an "elite" campus in the South that was recently the site of some of the worst police violence--it was amplified here because, for well over a year, students have also been organizing protests against the construction of the Atlanta "Public Safety" Training Center, aka Cop City. Last year the police were called to campus to dismantle a small tent protest--there was no violent confrontation, but it was menacing--and that investigation was never resolved.
Last week the Atlanta police and the state troopers were invited to campus to dismantle a larger student protest and tent encampment focused on the war in Gaza AND Cop City. In other words, the militarized group who are the targets of the protest were invited to campus to disrupt that protest--with chemical agents, rubber bullets, and tasers--and good old physical violence. Don't take my word for it--the videos are everywhere.
Day after day we see more and more photos of police violence against students and faculty across the country, and at some point you just need to get those images out of your head. The students are FREAKING OUT. The adults cannot believe this is happening. The disappointment, shame, and shock defy description.
And here is my message. STOP HATING ON STUDENTS. It's a tired trope, as Hamilton Nolan explains more eloquently than I can. Kiese Laymon told Ana Marie Cox in an interview a few years back, "America hates its children." I believe this. CAN YOU IMAGINE what the future looks like to them. Students are disinterested, they are defiant, they are depressed, and they cheat openly. They are glued to their screens. They are somehow both overparented and underparented. [As a nonparent this is confusing to me.] They are also desperate to be part of something that matters and brings even a semblance of hope. They cleave to any adult who will take them seriously and not patronize them, who will tell the truth about the bullshit world they are inheriting. I have been exhausted by my students' pastoral needs. They are CLINGY. My heart breaks.
Please stop hating on the kids. Do better, grown ups. Please.
I'm so glad these kids have you as a teacher!
And yes, great point. They've had to endure the threat of school shootings and now they see the police and colleges turning on them. WTF?!
I think there's been a concerted effort to oversimplify and misstate the stance that many (Democrats and Republicans as well) have about the current state of policing.
For instance - one tenet of the 988 crisis line is that it would enable those in mental health crises to bypass 911, and instead speak with a trained person who knows how to handle a mental health crisis, how to get that person to assistance (expectation, with trained responders where the mental health professional/social worker takes the lead, if in-person response is necessary) .... because being mentally ill is not a crime. So many people in mental health crises have negative or deadly responses from police.
I would encourage you to continue to consider and read up on this topic and weigh what you're reading, because it's not an either/or argument being made by Democrats (and Independents, and some Republicans too). My law enforcement family members are actually both progressive Democrats.
It was already linked in the original post but here it is again.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/college-is-an-education-in-bullshit
Thank you for this. It's true too of the younger kids--one of my kids is about to graduate from high school, which he entered in fall 2020, and the other is finishing 8th. The HS senior is grieving a high school experience that was vastly lonelier than the one he'd expected, hoping his college experience is less so, unfazed by political engagement on campus because he sees that engagement as vital to creating a better world than the one he sees. The 8th grader's cohort is so smart and funny and battle-hardened and also very tender and raw underneath the scar tissue. I love and respect this generation of kids--I might not get the ways they express themselves, but by and large they are observing the world very astutely and calling us out on our BS. We need to listen.
I've thought a lot about how every age of kid missed some important milestone or experience because of covid. I'm pretty sure there are ages for which it was a lot more difficult than others, but if you were a kid there's almost no way you didn't miss something that mattered. (And I say that as the parent of a kid who missed about as little as possible.)
My high school junior is also very lonely. She's so bright and fun, too—just shy. She is also hoping that college will give her that community. Fingers crossed for all our kids!
My daughter is about to graduate HS, too, and we are both a bit taken aback that the college she's chosen, a private school in the south, is home to zero protests. It's going to be interesting to see whether that is a bellwether of campus engagement. She, too, is craving an active, vibrant campus community after ending middle school / starting high school in her bedroom alone.
My nibling of this age (non-binary child of my sister) and their friends and younger brother: all give a strong impression of solidarity with each other, as well as deep skepticism/ wry humor regarding older generations. This piece touches on so much of what has shaped them. My overwhelming impression is that things like smartphones are actually the absolute least of their problems. They have been working with them since middle school and are pretty thoughtful about how they choose to engage or disengage at different times with phones and with social media. The worst stress they have is managing the very intense and very conflicting hopes, dreams, expectations and projections of older adults. I think they have a very hard time finding any safety or deep understanding in those relationships. The vast majority of people our age (elder millennial) are extremely anxious, or deeply checked out, in denial about world events, or desperately projecting all our hopes on to younger people to save us. The kids, since they were little, effortlessly and easily adopt their friend's pronouns and gender identity, with reflexive solidarity and understanding, and then spend endless energy correcting and explaining these to their parents/ teachers etc. In response, they get hysterical news articles, oppressive laws, a heightened and unreal conversation about young kids' right to exist as themselves. They spend their lives teaching adults how to use and understand new apps and technology, and then are treated to more hysterical news articles about how they are all misinformed babies who believe anything they see online. Projection much? And at this point why would they bother reading news ever? The pandemic was such a crystallization of all these dynamics. It makes sense to expect a micro-generation coming out of this with a reflexive solidarity with others their age and a reflexive disregard of elders and the way things have been done. And with the scars of burnout hitting them before they even reach their twenties.
"The worst stress they have is managing the very intense and very conflicting hopes, dreams, expectations and projections of older adults." WHEW, this right here.
Thank you for this, so elucidating.
Just to add to this, current college students also spent elementary and high school as the first generation with active shooter drills. They grew up during the heyday of school shootings, and carry that with them to this moment. They have witnessed the absolute failure of universities to address sexual violence. And, they’ve lived through the #BLM and a lackluster national response to police violence. To see them protesting the war makes total sense for a cohort that has collectively survived so much state-allowed violence. As a parent of 2 college students, I loved this piece. Thank-you!
Dan this is utterly off-topic and combative in a way that is not at all in line with our commenting guidelines here at Culture Study. I'm going to temporarily revoke your ability to comment; if you have questions, feel free to email me.
I have been thinking about the protests of my college years (I graduated in 2003) too. Specifically, marches against the impending Iraq invasion were so formative to me / my politics. There was also occasionally anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at the protests, and as a young Jewish person, it was important, hard and messy to my still-forming brain and political orientation to distinguish between the ideas I heard, and what it meant to me to participate in larger movements that also had parts that I didn't love. What great but, again, hard, lessons about collective action! I also remember feeling so bewildered at how people I cared about were *so very mad* at those of us protesting. Many of those memories faded and blurred in the intervening decades, but have been revived by current student protests. It was devastating then to watch my government be so wrong, and it is devastating now, and I'm so grateful for the young people who are making it uncomfortable and even painful for the rest of us to look away.
Older adults were SO MAD!!! Like, how dare they protest this RIGHTEOUS WAR! (Which wasn't righteous at all, turns out!) What an instructive experience that was.
Yes! It was the most jarring when my fellow students suddenly spouted the same rhetoric as my parents, though.
And it's so upsetting because I feel like we learned nothing from the terrible aftermath of 9/11 and are repeating so much of it again.
So my boss who is an adjunct or somesuch in a graduate program at Columbia is currently walking around the office ranting because the campus is on lockdown and she can't go to her class today "But none of the students in our program even care about these protests! They just want to have graduation!"
While it is possible that it is the case, I find that the older generation no matter how socially liberal they consider themselves is very quickly adopting the conservative reactionism that's dominating the news coverage. Because the only students you're hearing from are the ones who are loudly proclaiming their allegiance to one side, not the mushy middle. And if students feel like they'll be targeted by their institution for expressing any sort of solidarity, they are unlikely to say anything in front of people in positions of authority or who they consider representatives of the administration. They don't know who to trust! I feel for these kids, because yes their graduation is at risk, but also because they are bearing so much of such intensity.
As another 2003 grad (and from a NYC school so we lost so many alumni and family members on 9/11), I think about how much that post-9/11 pall hung over us for years, coupled with the way the economy was regularly falling apart. It felt like such a struggle for so many of us to find our footing because no one could tell us how to adapt because NO ONE knew how to adapt. These students are in the same boat and I've tried to impart some learned wisdom to my mentee who's in her 4th year of a 5 year program and similarly feels very adrift and overwhelmed by how little support she has had.
I think that students generally, except for the most emotionally shut down, feel the cognitive dissonance. The protests are about SO MUCH MORE than Gaza. And enough with the whimpering about "commencement"--"oh, these poor kids already lost one graduation." Like that's the students' biggest concern. Or ours.
After surviving two school shootings, my college kid could absolutely care less about pomp and circumstance glorifying the university or the university experience. They do however, have a lot of space in their heart for people who are experiencing violence and powerlessness that is caused by something they have no control over.
OMG, two school shootings?! I'm so sorry. And your kid sounds great.
I laugh because I remember Commencement being so anticlimactic. We sat baking in the sun and then couldn't find our friends to say good bye (lol because we didn't have cellphones) so everyone just loaded up their family's car and went home.
I agree that Commencement is anticlimactic for many, but I do think it's meaningful for some. My HS and undergrad graduations didn't mean much, but I would've been really sad had I not gotten one for my PhD.
hahaha, baking in the sun. My memory is that my roommate got an epic sunburn patch below her mortarboard but only on one side of her face (the sunny side), and we laughed about how funny it looked until 6pm while frantically packing our cars because we had to be out by then.
RE: older generation/reactionism: BIG YES to this! A week or two ago my city was one of the ones where protesters shut down a major highway leading to our airport. Every older person who has brought it up in my presence has acted like those folks should be arrested or jailed for creating discomfort for the people using private transportation to get to the airport. I get that it's uncomfortable and scary to think that something like a protest could prevent you from making your flight(and it makes me uncomfortable too, flights are expensive!), but I think they are missing so many points by just wanting to remove the protesters. What about all the people dying, losing limbs, watching the destruction of their home? What about the simple right to peaceful protest in this country? It's been really haunting me because it feels anti-democratic in the name of some/many people maintaining their comfort.
Thank you so much for this comment - what ended up helping you to adapt?
I think I was luckier than most: I went directly to grad school at columbia and then started working for my boss who was my thesis advisor. But I was there with people who'd lost jobs when the tech bubble burst (sooo many people who relocated from the San Francisco area). I remember thinking at the time how so many of my friends went to law school or business school because there just was nothing out there for them and they didn't know what to do next - and no wonder we're all saddled with massive student debt! But in my first year of grad I also lost my mom to cancer - god just thinking of how stressful and uncertain things were for me is making me sympathize even more with these students. They likely have so many things happening to them and around them!
Thank you for your answer. Those kinds of times make it impossible to heal from the wounds, you're so busy trying to survive... and grad school does that to you regardless. I hope you've found more space now, and virtual hugs for your loss.
Resilience is weaponized against so many people and especially young people. Resilience is something we foster by providing supportive and encouraging environments for people to try new positive challenges. If you want to learn to swim or how to paint or as a child start walking or talking, the idea is to provide an environment where failure is expected and steps toward learning are recognized and built on. Trust and safety both physical and psychological are essential.
People can then apply the resilience to challenge and failure to more efforts to learn and take risks especially independently and creatively (meaning differing from what already exists or is known to them and those around them).
Resilience can be used to deal with traumatic situations. But it’s not something we should be expecting people to cultivate because our society is manufacturing trauma at a high rate and has no plans to do anything about that! Our kids and young adults, our society as a whole, are not lacking resilience. They’re repeatedly traumatized.
You can’t heal from trauma you are still experiencing. The pandemic is not over. Gun violence is not over. Racism is not over. Colonialism is not over.
The kids are alright but they’re not ok.
Yes. We use resilience (a very real and powerful thing) as an excuse to not have to make a better world for the most vulnerable among us.
When it comes to the pandemic and colonialism, I feel like Noah in The Notebook, passionately saying: “It wasn't over. It still isn't over.“
(But then nobody kisses me in the rain.)
YES, THIS.
I started college in 2019 and graduated 2023, so I went through all of the phases of college (except maybe now the protests on campus) Not only was the experience a little disappointing than from what it was pre-pandemic but we were promised every year over and over again it was worth it (!!) I kept on going back over and over again promised a better experience and left utterly disappointed with the lack of support and now were suddenly blamed for the lack of communal spaces, the lack of engagement, the lack of maturity. I hear a lot were a bunch of cry babies for complaining about the college experience we got while not actually listening to all the trauma we had to go through.
Thank you. I’m one of the (probably many) older millennials in this space and you have articulated something that is the same shape as what we’ve observed, even if the specifics are different: it is awful to be trained for a world that no longer exists, often at great personal cost; and MUCH WORSE when the older adults around you insist it doesn’t matter or can’t be the case or worse, is all your fault. I can’t stand the thought that we might perpetuate the same types of arguments weaponized against us, only barely having started to turn the tide of that narrative 15-20 years later.
(I’d also probably say that the specifics are more dire now, so this is not meant to equate the challenges of different time periods, but to say - the general pattern should be recognizable, people!!)
Yes. As Millennials, we graduated into a recession and then were blamed for not having the "maturity" to save up to buy houses. We were broke because the previous generation broke stuff. It feels like this wave of epistemological violence is now rolling over onto Gen Z. I'm sorry that this is happening. It's not your fault.
"epistemological violence" - this is a term I will be using now, thank you for describing it in such a clear way.
Wow, so well put. I feel like I was trained for a world that no longer existed as a Millennial, and we're still doing this to the younger generations? And they're being told it's their fault? I'm so sorry this is still happening too.
Yes! Though after I posted I thought, maybe "trained" is exactly the word, but at very least, like ... raised to anticipate a certain reality. And then you make decisions and accept tradeoffs based on that reality (for example: overpacking your schedule during high school because you're told it will be so, so amazing when you finally get to college! Or: taking on enormous amounts of debt because you're told it will pay off for your career!) And those tradeoffs make it hit even harder when the carpet gets pulled out from under you. These were always serious considerations for how to shape the life you want, not just the spoiled youth complaining about a handful of missed parties or indulging in some fluffy useless major. Or whatever. Y'know?
I know there are real issues that we could consider about how young people, or ALL people, are both reacting to and creating modern culture (social isolation, "resilience," tech use, etc). I mean: I parent a teen and I have friends who are educators. Some patterns are worrisome, and it's not like everything is above critique. I also know: dealing with the unexpected is just part of life, you can't plan for everything, and that's fine. But that's not how it pops up in The Discourse. It's pretending that "kids these days" are making different decisions than you did for inexplicable reasons. Or pretending that circumstances haven't meaningfully changed "since I was your age." But there have been wild, axis-tilting changes we need to acknowledge before we can have good-faith discussions of those things! It's THAT part at the heart of the "ok boomer" thing - being stubbornly out of touch, not just "being old." I refuse to be "boomerized" in my reaction to the next gen!
Thank you! I wish more Boomers took this approach!
I'm still processing the overwhelming emotions I feel about how we, as a society, are responding to these protests but I just want to say THANK YOU for this beautiful piece. I think more than anything it's been incredibly disappointing to see my generation (elder millennial) and those just above it respond so negatively and condescendingly to the protests. I feel grief for where we lost our curiosity, our empathy, our ability to engage with the shame you mention here. And grief for how we still find police violence an acceptable response to student protest. This piece and the many wonderful comments are an antidote to that grief (as are the protests themselves, in all their messiness) and for that I'm so grateful.
"Legitimate authority" is doing a lot of heavy-lifting in that sentence. At what point does an authority lose its legitimacy? How does it gain it in the first place? Do human beings owe their allegiance to authority or to morality? If your child had been murdered by an oppressive government and someone else's child in a country far away was protesting that, don't you think you'd appreciate that they were standing up to authority in the name of what's right?
If you asked politely and they don't respond, maybe it's time for you to actually listen to their demands and work towards a solution.
This essay makes me so sad. My son is about to graduate from university because he took five years, not four. I'm immensely grateful he had a normal, positive, rah-rah spirited senior year in the class of 2019, then a normal freshman year at college until having to pack up and move home temporarily in March of 2020. He attended CU Boulder, a school big on campus spirit that revolves around sports and less outwardly political or prone to protests compared to others. He joined a frat, which I felt mixed about (since I know the negative aspects of the Greek system, and I went to UC Santa Cruz which banned frats and sororities) but ultimately I'm glad he joined because it led to friendships and social activities. Many studies have shown that one of the greatest predictors of success post-college is not grades or where one went to school, but rather relationships with peers and faculty who are mentors. The isolation you describe is debilitating. My son took a year off because he thought learning online was a waste of time and money, so he worked a retail job that year, which also led to positive relationships. He has only performed average academically, but that's OK in my view, "B's get degrees," and I'm happy and proud he's a "people person" who gets along with a wide range of others. It's incumbent on faculty and leaders in higher institutions to prioritize small classes or groups with an emphasis on working one on one, establishing a rapport and encouraging in-person collaboration. We are so damn polarized. We need to foster "people people" who make eye contact, talk, listen, and relate.
This piece is so beautiful and true. I’ve been so struck by how the college paper I used to work for, the place where I met my husband, has gone from putting out Iraq War editorials on actual paper in the early aughts, when we worked there, to putting out incisive social media coverage on the protest encampments at school, and the school leadership’s unwillingness to protect those encampments from the police. They’re KIDS. Trying to figure out how they feel and what to do to make a difference in a world in which feeling and making a difference seem increasingly hard. They do deserve so much better from us, the supposed adults in the room.
We are in agreement! Just respectfully pointing out that they are mostly not kids - they are young adults and we should be hearing them accordingly. Rather than further infantilizing this generation, we should be acknowledging the voices of voting-age adults of the world.
I think this is a two things are true situation! Most of them are under 25, which we know means their prefrontal cortex is still developing (obviously varies by individuals but speaking broadly here). So they’re more impulsive and make decisions that are more based on emotions, compared to an older adult who can more easily understand long-term consequences and regulate their behavior.
So I think the tendency to view college students as full-fledged adults takes away the grace they deserve, as AHP points out in this piece. I think younger adults deserve space to fuck up and to change their minds, while at the same time deserve to be respected and heard because that they can be capable adults all the same. And being more emotion-driven can be a powerful driver for justice and change, something older adults should admire!
There's definitely two things true... what I remember about 2003 when I entered college was that my opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't taken seriously because I was young/immature/impulsive . But the soldiers fighting on those fronts were my childhood friends and classmates!!! If you're old enough to fight a war, you ought to be considered old enough to protest one!
This, definitely. Two of my high school boyfriends were among them.
I love this and would echo it! I teach Gen Z and have enormous empathy and respect for what they can accomplish. And, I also have enormous empathy for how high stakes everything feels for them, and how much maturity has already been expected of them throughout the pandemic era. The stakes are even higher for young adults who have one or more marginalized identities. They are more commonly adultified even before they turn 18 and policed accordingly. I don't think infantilizing them is the answer. But I think we need to consider the consequences of not honoring the relative youth and inexperience of people under 25 -- particularly those who during the pandemic era did not get to have formative, developmentally appropriate experiences IRL with trial and error when they were actual kids. Those consequences have the potential to be far worse for the young adults in question.
My 16-year-old has said on occasion when she's done something silly: "If only my pre-frontal cortex was fully developed!" It makes me chuckle.
Excellent point, and a level of nuance that is SO lost in the media/ popular narratives around college protests. If only every space on the internet could acknowledge that two things can be true... I really appreciate your point about the grace to make mistakes and change your mind as a young person
I agree with you. Also, I suspect some adults are calling protestors "kids" specifically to highlight the power imbalance between the protestors and the highly militarized police. I think folks are looking for a way to acknowledge how vulnerable the protestors are.
In so many ways they may have matured faster than previous cohorts as well. Of course many kids are parentified and caretake their parents while they are young, but this generation feels like they have done that on a generational level, regardless of the dynamics of their individual families.
Interested in knowing more about what you mean. Are you perhaps referring to being "educators" to older folks around COVID?
I think Covid was an experience of seeing that the adults do not have everything under control, and may not be keeping us safe, and are in intense conflict with each other around how to handle it. For some kids I'm sure they had to educate their elders about Covid precautions. It's also that kids were shamed as potential carriers of disease/ told not to socialize normally to protect others/ being blamed as potential dangers to their elders - but then at the same time now being told they are abnormal or developmentally stunted because of all what they went through. It's kind of a double bind, they are blamed no matter what they do. So a typical response to that is to feel very responsible very early for everything, even for taking care of those who are nominally supposed to be taking care of you, and the exhaustion coming from that. Even if in reality this kid is not actually responsible for things, they are emotionally feeling that weight of it, on a society-wide level.
This feels like a really important point -- that what we have is a generation of people who may feel parentified, not just by family factors but by structural factors. (I also know that most people who grew up in parentified roles, including myself, were put in those positions due to the structural factors impacting their parents.) It makes me wonder what healing might then look like, in a world that continues to feel so chaotic and out of control sometimes.
Thank you for this. I work at a university in Texas, and my heart has been breaking for these students for a while. They’re so cool, so funny, and they’re trying so damn hard all the time. There haven’t been protests where I work (yet), but after the anti-DEI bill was passed in Texas last summer, I’ve watched students step up in a big way. Since students orgs are one of the exceptions in the bill, many of the diversity/special interest committees I was on as a faculty member have had to hand over our responsibilities to student orgs, and students are doing that work because they’re angry.
They are angry about the offices and programs that supported our largely first-gen, majority-minority student population being cut or altered into meaningless, angry that their words are being policed by state reps (literally someone was here a few weeks ago taking posters off walls in the counseling center that said things like “you belong.” I’m not kidding). They’re angry that their identities and backgrounds are being treated like divisive concepts while their rights are being stripped away. They are not under-resilient at all, they just have too much to deal with and too many people waiting around hoping to watch them fail just to prove a political point.
Basically the burnout I experienced at 29, my kid experienced at 19. There's just only so much you can power through.