College campuses, it seems, are a mess these days: sexual assaults, protests over race, and fights over political correctness.
There are lots of reasons why this stuff is going on, but most of them go back to the sorts of places college campuses are.
They’re enclosed places, throwing lots of different people together in close quarters. Yet they’re also supposed to be safe places, where students can find food and shelter in order to maximize learning.
They’re places of cliques, as like-minded students tend to congregate in smaller groups and informally keep outsiders away.
And, finally, they’re hormonal places. They’re populated by the young and restless, for whom passion is a new and thrilling experience.
Once upon a time, college campuses prevented the problems that would arise from this explosive mixture. They solved the hormonal problem by keeping women safely tucked away from men after dark. They solved the clique problem by making sure that everybody on campus came from the same backgrounds and had the same skin color.
But that was over 50 years ago, and none of those solutions are possible these days, and I’m not sure we would want to go back to those olden days, anyhow. So we have to try to manage the problems we have, coming as they do with this strange blend of idealism, hormones, and cliques.
Solutions to these difficulties are impossible. Nothing straight, said Isaiah Berlin, can ever emerge from the crooked timber of humanity.
I’m Tom McBride, and that’s my Perspective.
