A couple days ago in The National Journal a Harvard Law Review editor wrote an op-ed explaining why students at elite liberal schools -- law schools, no less -- are showing their strength by asking for their final exams to be delayed:
Over the last week, much has been said about law students’ petitioning for exam extensions in light of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police officers. Students at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law Center and several other schools requested that their administrations allow extensions on final exams for students who have been confronting the aftermath of the recent failed grand jury indictments of the officers who killed the unarmed black men.Noting that many commenters had suggested that the students seeking extensions are "coddled millenials," third-year Harvard Law student William Desmond contends that the requests reflect "strength and critical awareness:"
Although over the last few weeks many law students have experienced moments of total despair, minutes of inconsolable tears and hours of utter confusion, many of these same students have also spent days in action—days of protesting, of organizing meetings, of drafting emails and letters, and of starting conversations long overdue. We have been synthesizing decades of police interactions, dissecting problems centuries old, and exposing the hypocrisy of silence.The piece goes on in badly written, overwrought splendor until readers inevitably reach the conclusion that these aren't coddled millenials, they are this country's greatest, bravest, most wonderfullest generation ever.
Yeah, that shit blew up. Pretty much everybody who is not himself a special snowflake punk-ass loser, or an enabler of special snowflake punk-ass losers, has branded this guy and his partners-in-wussiness as special snowflake punk-ass losers:
Surely, the sweetest justice that could emerge from Desmond’s plaintive op-ed is for him to see that he has set his cause back significantly. The only valuable lesson that a law student could learn from this episode would be that making flawed and unconvincing arguments (not to mention employing laughably tortured metaphors) has consequences. To even condescendingly congratulate Desmond on his failed but noble effort would be a lie. Decency demands that this argument be rejected in whole, and its author shamed for crafting an ersatz intellectual argument around lethargy.That post at Hot Air includes a host of tweets slamming Desmond's attitude that are well worth following the link to read. Twitchy has a pretty good collection of tweets, too.
The requests for special treatment aren't limited to law students, though. Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com brings us a tale about a freshman at Oberlin College who sent an email to one of her professors in which she asked him to delay exams, but only for minority students since it
has come to the attention of students that students of color, particularly Black students, who have suffered significant trauma over the past few weeks due to the Grand Jury decisions are not at all in a place to take their finals right now. I am not among these students, and as a white, middle-class person, I have to privilege of being able to step away from these events and put enough energy into schoolwork and finals to assure that I will pass my classes. That is not the case for so many of my peers.That shit didn't work out too well, either. And, yeah, it inspired great mockery in the Tweetisphere.
I'm sure that the author of the request, Della Kurzer-Zlotnick, is not a racist because she assumed that her fellow students, because they are "of color," would lack the emotional maturity or internal fortitude to "step away from these events" merely because they aren't white, middle-class persons such as herself. Was it her class or her race that makes her superior in her mind, do you think? The entire email, which Della posted publicly on Facebook with a "trigger alert" warning for people to delicate to handle the response, is pictured here:
In retrospect, I think I missed the boat on this whole too-traumatized-to-go-on thing. When I was a second-year law student, in April 1994, Kurt Kobain ate the business end of a shotgun only a couple weeks before exams. Naturally, I was traumatized. I realize that simply being a music fan would not be enough to make this tragedy more traumatic for me than for others, but I used to be in bands, too, so this tragedy affected me far more deeply than it might have other, non-musician law students. I was actually in a band at the time, making the event that much more traumatic for me. I can't believe I didn't ask my professors to delay my exams while I recovered. I'm sure they would have complied.
Or maybe the very next semester, when Susan Smith murdered her two young sons by letting her car roll down the boat ramp into a reservoir with the boys, ages 3 years and 14 months, seat-belted inside. She did this only weeks before exams and, once again, I was traumatized. Not only am I a former child, I had a very young child myself. It's amazing I was able to carry on. Again, I am certain my professors would have gladly delayed my exams. After all, as fellow former children -- and for all I know, parents of young children -- they probably were traumatized, too. Maybe even too traumatized to administer and grade those exams. In fact, I think that means I was insensitive to not ask to delay the exams. They were suffering, too, and it was extremely selfish of me to put them through that. I'm sure they would have not just complied with such a request, but would have thanked me, too.
Of course, they might have told me to grow a pair, that life is full of ups and downs and maybe I should just suck it up and deal with it. Of course, nowadays they would never say such a thing -- and certainly not without a "trigger alert."
No comments:
Post a Comment