The Changing College Campus

“Be trendy but not too trendy, modest but not too modest, fit in but be unique,”  says Trisha Addicks, CEO of the Georgia-based sorority consulting firm It’s All Greek to Me, where parents can hire her firm for a mere $4,000 to cover such topics as what to wear, how to act and what to say in preparation for sorority rush.

Addicks is part of an emerging industry that offers advice and provides emotional support to women who want to avoid missteps that threaten first impressions.  As noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, admittance into a “sorority has become nearly as competitive as acceptance into top universities.”

Meanwhile, college enrollment has been dropping like a brick thrown from a fourth-story window.  The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center cited undergraduate enrollment dropped by more than 650,000 students from the spring of 2021 to 2022 and some 14% in the last decade.

Liberal professors hector students about toxic masculinity, gender studies proliferate and of course, the root cause is white privilege.  At the same time, since 2020, the proportional-representation admissions quotas have expanded into “reparatory admissions” where “marginalized populations” are being admitted at levels greater than percentages in the general population.

Does anyone see the disconnect that while American universities are rushing to eliminate meritocratic standards by eliminating test scores, the requirements to “rush” a $4,500-per-semester sorority are becoming more restrictive?

The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released its 2022 campus free-speech rankings, which evaluated 486 U.S. colleges and universities. The survey found the overwhelming majority of these schools restricted free speech in some fashion with nearly 20% receiving a “red light” ranking , i.e., the institution advocates policies that clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech.  At the same time, a whopping 66% received the “yellow light” ranking for institutions, where official  policies restrict ‘only’ certain areas of protected expression and use vague official language that allows school administrators rather than the Constitution to decide what is protected expression and what isn’t.

When 86% of the colleges surveyed maintain policies that infringe on free speech rights it should concern us all.   And here are just a few examples, i.e., students reported for “bias” are subject to “remedial and supportive actions” such as “education and training” – translation – wrong-thinking students will be “reeducated” until they acknowledge the newly defined nature of pronouns.  Ask yourself, how different is this from a Chinese re-education camp?  One university prevents students from using campus Internet to cause “offense to others” — huh? – so who decides what’s offensive and what’s not?  And another major university actually requires students to notify the police 48 hours in advance of their intention to use the campus “free speech zone” where demonstrations are allowed—imagine that.

~ Can you spell hypocrisy? ~

In another age these restrictions on free speech would have caused outrage and protests, but not in woke America.  Unsurprisingly, a recent Knight Foundation survey found that 58% of college-age women believe “inclusivity” on college campuses is more important than freedom of expression.  But apparently inclusivity doesn’t apply to women looking to pledge a sorority because sororities are very exclusive.  According to a recent Princeton University survey, 95% of the members of college sororities come from the wealthiest of American families while only 5% are from lower to middle class families.  Yes, college campuses are changing, they’re becoming more hypocritical.

Quote of the day: “Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners” – George Carlin