Banzhaff On The Adorable Unicorns of GWU

In a shocking turn of events, students at George Washington University marched on the White House to demand rainbows. According to the school newspaper, the GW Hatchet, the demand might be a bit unrealistic.

Student organizations including the Feminist Student Union, GW Voices For Choices and Fossil Free GW came together to ask administrators to take drastic steps to ensure the protection of minority students, undocumented students and students otherwise marginalized in higher education. The list of demands, among other things, also called for the University to protect students by re-channeling resources.

But with demands must come a well-researched plan of action. Students need to present definite timetables and requests for officials to modify existing policies that would still operate within accepted higher education norms. Unfortunately, rather than talking about feasible and legal ideas, students from the national movement and GW’s specific movement are calling for measures that could have the University breaking the law, like noncompliance with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Students should have set out demands that were more realistic to accomplish.

Somebody figured out that the sanctuary campus movement is, well, not gonna work. Who would have guessed? But that was just one of apparently a laundry list of demands by the 400, according to GW lawprof John Banzhaf.  The demands are, well, interesting.

Indeed, in addition to shielding them from enforcement of immigration laws, many students want a complete and total sanctuary campus where students would be protected from enforcement of underage drinking laws (because students “would feel safer” if they could drink and go to parties without breaking the law), from efforts to collect their student loans, and from having to take exams.

What is remarkable is the lack of imagination on the part of GWU students. If you’re going down the road of absurdity, why not go big? Demand the elimination of gravity, old age, war, hunger and pestilence? Why not? I know I would “feel safer” if I knew I wouldn’t eventually die. Right?

Otherwise, GWU may join other institutions of higher education where presidents and faculty are toppling like flies, where professors are told not to use words like “violated” (as in “she violated the law”) or “niggardly” (which has nothing to do with race), students are being offered play dough and bubbles to help them cope, and faculty are subject to investigation – sometimes based upon anonymous complaints – for expressing opinions with which a few students disagree.

This new tactic clearly represents a more worrisome form of PC –  Political Craziness – not only because the demands are so bizarre, but also because the reasoning behind them is completely illogical.

These aren’t new tactics at all. Kids demand the things they believe in, that best serve their interests, whether personally or to satisfy their need to be white knights to the downtrodden. There is nothing new about this at all. But that doesn’t change the fact that their demands are untenable, whether because they’re illegal, silly or violate the laws of physics.

But of the various ridiculous demands, perhaps the niftiest one relates to campus police:

It says “placing us in [the care of GWU campus police] is an act of violence, especially for Black students,” because one of several organizations of law enforcement officials supported Trump.

That none of GWU’s officers may belong to this one organization, or that many GWU police officers are themselves Black, seemingly makes no difference to them in radically redefining “violence.”

Without any explanation, the students claim the appropriate remedies for this “act of violence” are more student aide [sic] and multicultural centers.  Another remedy for this violence, they say, is that the university “must acknowledge white supremacy and racism.”

A few missing steps in the logic? A curious disconnect between the claim of “violence” and anything remotely reflecting intelligent life on campus? A solution of “acknowledg[ing] white supremacy” because . . . who the hell knows why? This is great stuff. Utterly insane, but great. And it goes well with underage drinking (didn’t anyone think to include a mandate for pretzels? After all, what’s a drink without a nosh?).

Banzhaf’s point here, beyond indulging in his own flavor of name-calling, is that college administrators need to be the grown-ups, telling their charges that they’re not going to get what they want, rather than enablers of the radically entitled.

Eventually, somebody needs to play the grown-up and tell the snowflakes that unicorns don’t exist. Make sure you have puppies and Play-Doh on hand, because they’re going to be very, very sad when they learn you’ve failed them.

 

6 thoughts on “Banzhaff On The Adorable Unicorns of GWU

  1. Mike

    Hell, why didn’t they ask for free recreational drugs while they were at it. Makes as much sense as the rest of their demands.

  2. Jim Ryan

    “Voices for Choices” – alliterative and sounds good but unsure what it actually means if anything.
    And protection from underage drinking laws? Gee, what could we call that? How about: “Shots for Snots”?
    Oh and BTW, I need protection from overage drinking laws, perhaps called “Drinks for Extincts”.

  3. B. McLeod

    What’s really funny is there can’t ever possibly be enough jobs at ABA Journal for all of these kids.

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