It's hard to read this as anything other than nakedly punishing noncompliance, to filter out who gets an education. The donor part is intriguing. I wonder if a student could donate a single dollar to the university to claim donor status and therefore policy exemption. Great job exposing this nonsense.
Boomers are a plague and the world will be better when they're gone. The way they cheerfully sacrificed the physical and mental health of the youth on the altar of their hypochondria is just the latest manifestation of their generational selfishness. They'd already ruined our civilization by giving away our countries to foreigners, so what's a little bit of crashing the economy, shoving needles in kids' arms, and driving them to suicide?
Regarding Western, whatever the outcome I look forward to it. If they expel 20% of the student body they'll hole their finances below the waterline ... maybe not this year, if they refuse to refund tuition, but recruitment will be a bitch the next year. If they crack, that symbolic victory will be a black eye for the covidians. Either way I'm good. Gonna keep the popcorn on hand for this one.
I think blaming the Boomers while absolving the Zoomers is a mistake. It seems to me the problem is that the Zoomers by in large backed the worst class of authoritarian Boomers and put them into power. It isn't as though Zoomers are majority freedom loving independents who just happened into an authoritarian state; in most cases they demanded the social justice, the protection from freedom, the suffocating woke nonsense. One can argue that they were crippled in their youth, but still, it didn't have to be this way. The young could have and still can choose to stop supporting their destroyers.
The zoomers have no institutional power, however. As Chris notes, it was the boomer professors who pushed for this policy. Generally my experience has been that it is the boomers who are the loudest and most intransigent supporters of this tyranny.
Further - who taught the zoomers? Granted they've got their issues, as do millennials. But they didn't raise themselves.
Well, the Zoomers have a lot more institutional power than they believe, largely in their role as customers. Most of what is sold as "this is a good idea" in institutions is sold as such because it will appeal to the youngin's. The young ones are also the commissars whose complaints enforce the rules. If they stopped complaining to HR or whomever every time someone used the wrong pronoun or whatever much of the problem would freeze. If they started complaining about being forced to get shots, or diversity hires, or whatever, it would push things back the other way.
We can talk about who taught the Zoomers, who were their parents, who taught their parents, but that is just an infinite regression. The final accounting, as always, comes down to the individual. Fighting old vs young does nothing if you are not fighting against tyranny. A young tyrant is every bit as bad as an old one, and will be old soon enough.
I'm not so sure. I work at a university, and talk to a fair number of students. The majority I've talked to resented the hell out of the vaxx mandates, thought the masks were stupid, and considered remote learning a waste of time. The boomer profs on the other hand, will hear no dissent.
Could the zoomers flex if they pushed back en masse? Yeah, they could. Why don't they? Well, they weren't raised like we were. Their schools drilled political conformity into their heads. The one lesson they all learned was that disagreeing with the consensus earns nothing but swift and merciless - 'zero-tolerance' - retribution. Those kids went to police state schools, under the watchful eye of social media cancel culture in which those of their peers who went the hall monitor route could count on the absolute support of authority figures to punish every and any infraction. The difference with my own formative years is pretty stark. I had absolutely no compunctions about being politically incorrect, and neither did my friends. We pushed back against our liberal teachers on a regular basis, and often won. We didn't grow up in a spiritual police state.
Blaming zoomers for having adapted to those circumstances, which they did not create and have had no power to change, isn't remotely fair. Especially not when it's the boomer gerontocracy that created and controls the institutions.
Coda: millennials also play a giant role in this, and they suck even more than boomers, to be fair. Although again: who raised them?
Second coda: zoomers have basically zero consumer power. Wealth is almost entirely controlled by boomers, along with everything else.
America Jr universities are now competitive with US universities in the one factor academia cares about now, woke authoritarianism. An insufferable lot
Why would anyone, of any category, of any vocation, submit the sovereignty of their health to the diktats of faceless, feckless bureaucrats? Non-compliance or no compensation.
Great, albeit lengthy article. My only criticism would be trying to use logic against the Branch Covidian Death Cult. It hasn't worked so far, but maybe that 0.0001% will, maybe.
Canada has long been anti science. I first heard of it with Jordan Peterson and the pronouns for imaginary genders. Then Trudeau and his vaccine mandates for vaccines that do not stop any covid wave. Still continuing to this day. woke is anti science, it's about believing.
Great article as usual. I am sorry your alma mater is actively shooting off its toes a few at a time to prove they are the craziest.
One thing to note about the Zoomers getting crapped on by the Boomers: While true, it is largely because the Zoomers are formally requesting it. Gen-Xers are not the ones who pulled hard left for the most part; it's the Millenials (or Zoomers, or whatever) pushed wokeism, and rewarded the Boomers who did as well. They could have demanded freedom, denounced the actual racism of the Kendi's of the world, questioned the authoritarians who demanded they fall in line with the science. Instead they demanded protection from freedom, anti-racism, more authoritarianism to make sure everyone makes the same decisions they abdicated. Two sides existed when the Zoomers came of age, and en masse they chose to support the wrong one.
It isn't that the old people are screwing the young, it is that the young lined up to put the most abusive old people into positions of power. I hope they stop, but they are the victims because they demanded to be victimized while demonizing everyone who warned them it was a bad idea. Hard to generate a lot of sympathy for that.
It's hard to read this as anything other than nakedly punishing noncompliance, to filter out who gets an education. The donor part is intriguing. I wonder if a student could donate a single dollar to the university to claim donor status and therefore policy exemption. Great job exposing this nonsense.
I was gently rebuked yesterday for using the word "moron" and I replied it's my new most favoritest word, because morons are everywhere.
I enjoyed your use of "retarded" throughout this post perhaps a little more than a nice old lady ought to.
Next time someone complains about using moron or retard, just reply you are following the science. They were both technical terms in their day. :)
Well, I wouldn't want to be imprecise. There's the morons I wouldn't wish to insult, and those I would...
Fair enough; you can be stupid or an ass hole and it is forgivable. Both at the same time is not. Especially if you are smart enough to know better.
Boomers are a plague and the world will be better when they're gone. The way they cheerfully sacrificed the physical and mental health of the youth on the altar of their hypochondria is just the latest manifestation of their generational selfishness. They'd already ruined our civilization by giving away our countries to foreigners, so what's a little bit of crashing the economy, shoving needles in kids' arms, and driving them to suicide?
Regarding Western, whatever the outcome I look forward to it. If they expel 20% of the student body they'll hole their finances below the waterline ... maybe not this year, if they refuse to refund tuition, but recruitment will be a bitch the next year. If they crack, that symbolic victory will be a black eye for the covidians. Either way I'm good. Gonna keep the popcorn on hand for this one.
I think blaming the Boomers while absolving the Zoomers is a mistake. It seems to me the problem is that the Zoomers by in large backed the worst class of authoritarian Boomers and put them into power. It isn't as though Zoomers are majority freedom loving independents who just happened into an authoritarian state; in most cases they demanded the social justice, the protection from freedom, the suffocating woke nonsense. One can argue that they were crippled in their youth, but still, it didn't have to be this way. The young could have and still can choose to stop supporting their destroyers.
The zoomers have no institutional power, however. As Chris notes, it was the boomer professors who pushed for this policy. Generally my experience has been that it is the boomers who are the loudest and most intransigent supporters of this tyranny.
Further - who taught the zoomers? Granted they've got their issues, as do millennials. But they didn't raise themselves.
Well, the Zoomers have a lot more institutional power than they believe, largely in their role as customers. Most of what is sold as "this is a good idea" in institutions is sold as such because it will appeal to the youngin's. The young ones are also the commissars whose complaints enforce the rules. If they stopped complaining to HR or whomever every time someone used the wrong pronoun or whatever much of the problem would freeze. If they started complaining about being forced to get shots, or diversity hires, or whatever, it would push things back the other way.
We can talk about who taught the Zoomers, who were their parents, who taught their parents, but that is just an infinite regression. The final accounting, as always, comes down to the individual. Fighting old vs young does nothing if you are not fighting against tyranny. A young tyrant is every bit as bad as an old one, and will be old soon enough.
I'm not so sure. I work at a university, and talk to a fair number of students. The majority I've talked to resented the hell out of the vaxx mandates, thought the masks were stupid, and considered remote learning a waste of time. The boomer profs on the other hand, will hear no dissent.
Could the zoomers flex if they pushed back en masse? Yeah, they could. Why don't they? Well, they weren't raised like we were. Their schools drilled political conformity into their heads. The one lesson they all learned was that disagreeing with the consensus earns nothing but swift and merciless - 'zero-tolerance' - retribution. Those kids went to police state schools, under the watchful eye of social media cancel culture in which those of their peers who went the hall monitor route could count on the absolute support of authority figures to punish every and any infraction. The difference with my own formative years is pretty stark. I had absolutely no compunctions about being politically incorrect, and neither did my friends. We pushed back against our liberal teachers on a regular basis, and often won. We didn't grow up in a spiritual police state.
Blaming zoomers for having adapted to those circumstances, which they did not create and have had no power to change, isn't remotely fair. Especially not when it's the boomer gerontocracy that created and controls the institutions.
Coda: millennials also play a giant role in this, and they suck even more than boomers, to be fair. Although again: who raised them?
Second coda: zoomers have basically zero consumer power. Wealth is almost entirely controlled by boomers, along with everything else.
Great read as usual Chris, keep being amazing!
America Jr universities are now competitive with US universities in the one factor academia cares about now, woke authoritarianism. An insufferable lot
Why would anyone, of any category, of any vocation, submit the sovereignty of their health to the diktats of faceless, feckless bureaucrats? Non-compliance or no compensation.
Great, albeit lengthy article. My only criticism would be trying to use logic against the Branch Covidian Death Cult. It hasn't worked so far, but maybe that 0.0001% will, maybe.
Canada has long been anti science. I first heard of it with Jordan Peterson and the pronouns for imaginary genders. Then Trudeau and his vaccine mandates for vaccines that do not stop any covid wave. Still continuing to this day. woke is anti science, it's about believing.
Great article as usual. I am sorry your alma mater is actively shooting off its toes a few at a time to prove they are the craziest.
One thing to note about the Zoomers getting crapped on by the Boomers: While true, it is largely because the Zoomers are formally requesting it. Gen-Xers are not the ones who pulled hard left for the most part; it's the Millenials (or Zoomers, or whatever) pushed wokeism, and rewarded the Boomers who did as well. They could have demanded freedom, denounced the actual racism of the Kendi's of the world, questioned the authoritarians who demanded they fall in line with the science. Instead they demanded protection from freedom, anti-racism, more authoritarianism to make sure everyone makes the same decisions they abdicated. Two sides existed when the Zoomers came of age, and en masse they chose to support the wrong one.
It isn't that the old people are screwing the young, it is that the young lined up to put the most abusive old people into positions of power. I hope they stop, but they are the victims because they demanded to be victimized while demonizing everyone who warned them it was a bad idea. Hard to generate a lot of sympathy for that.
Great article!