From The River To Graduation

 

In the spring of 2020, life handed high school seniors lemons. A big, stinking, rotting bushel of lemons. With the finality of their graduations in sight, Covid cancelled graduation ceremonies, eliminated sports championships, and otherwise wiped out all semblance of the normal rights of passage to adulthood. The only thing resembling lemonade was adult society pissing on these students’ dreams. Even worse, as history shows, all the restrictions, not only during that spring but in the ensuing years of college, were very, very wrong.

You would think that from this mess students would hold fast that, four years later, nothing would screw up their college graduation. For students and many of this country’s elite colleges and universities, you would, again, be very, very wrong.

Let’s be very clear what’s happening on the college campuses from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans: thugs masquerading as social activists are, successfully, shaking down America’s universities to line their own pockets in the form of scholarships for Palestinian students and jobs for Palestinian faculty (courtesy of my alma mater, Northwestern). They are playing on, and winning big, at the game of liberal guilt and its related recoiling at conflict.

But why would college seniors let this issue and these agitators get in the way of their commencement? I won’t romanticize the era of Vietnam protests and the actions of students then. There were, however, direct consequences to graduating, which was that the men would be in the draft and have a good chance of fighting in a rice paddy. There are plenty of students and faculty who have direct or indirect family ties to Israel and Gaza, and this conflict is intensely personal for them. And sure, there are larger geo-political issues at play as well. Still, for the vast majority of graduating college seniors, even from elite universities, the greatest challenge next month is finding a reasonably-priced apartment to rent while working at their first professional job.

So what accounts for the lack of any pushback from the vast majority of unaffected students? I think the answer is students these days have no idea how to oppose. It’s less brainwashing than brain deadening. Students are masters of liking on social media and signing digital petitions. The normalcy of Zoom life has dulled any sense of indignation.

In the big picture, should America worry about a bunch of students who didn’t get to wear a funny hat and walk across a stage to get a piece of paper? No, this class will survive, if not annoyed by yet another disruption to their lives. But America should be very, very worried once this class gets out into the workplace and starts to ascend to positions of leadership. What have been the life lessons from these college year? What examples were set for them? How did they overcome an utter vacuum of adult “leadership” that offered neither hope nor competence? In the next decade or two we will learn how badly these years have thwarted their development. It’s not a stretch to think that this will be in complete contrast to what comes out of China where, for better or worse, nothing gets in the way of their pursuit of global domination.

It is said that West Point’s class of 1915 was the “class the stars fell on” with the record number of graduates becoming generals. Of course these men were at the perfect place in their careers when WW II broke out. Timing, even if they had nothing to do with it, was everything. And it isn’t to say that each and every general (or admiral from the Naval Academy) was the greatest ever. But they were pretty damn good, and rose to the challenge of defeating tyranny across the globe.

For the college class of 2024, they can’t event get a glass of lemonade.

© 2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.