The Woke Weapon on Campus: ‘Danger’

The cause of sparing anybody discomfort over anything is making college life miserable — for everybody.

C ollege students face “danger” everywhere they turn. A comment that makes you uncomfortable, an unsavory name on a building, a mask that fell under the nose, a nonprogressive comment in class.

Danger to college students (the woke ones in particular) is subjective — danger to me is danger to all.

The most recent and obvious such danger on college campuses is Covid. Even as the less-virulent Omicron wanes, hospitalization rates plummet, and state and municipal mask advisories are lifted, college students continue to face intolerable levels of Covid precautions.

One Harvard student and former classmate, Julie Hartman, decided to bravely question Harvard’s overzealous Covid policing. On Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, she wrote about pandemic-related changes to Housing Day, a Harvard tradition put on hold for the past two years:

Sophomores, juniors and seniors storm freshman dormitories to tell first-year students which of the 12 “houses,” essentially big dorms for upperclassmen, they will live in for their remaining time on campus. Having lost two of these days during the 17 months that Harvard sent us home, I was excited to participate in one more traditional Housing Day my senior year. Instead, the student government said it would likely be a modified outdoor event.

According to Julie, the decision was announced by “student government representatives” after their meeting with Harvard’s Committee on Student Life.

I spent my last two Housing Days online after being sent home from Harvard in March of 2020. Given the realities of Covid at the time, this was a prudent decision that fell within the bounds of a reasonable risk calculation. There was a risk; we were unvaccinated and the Covid strain was more deadly.

But what happens when a danger is back under control again?

Today, 65.1 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. In Massachusetts, 95 percent of the population of all eligible ages has at least one dose. For those five and older, 82 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. Pretty good, huh? Harvard’s stats are even better: 98 percent of students and 97 percent of employees are fully vaccinated and are now required to be boosted.

The Harvard student is more protected than the general population of Massachusetts. And yet, the level of danger from Covid on college campuses is amplified and distorted.

Julie expressed that she feels like she and her peers have been cheated by the enduring Covid protections. And it’s no wonder, especially after what she calls “a long list of Covid-related excesses”:

Harvard has required students to get vaccinated and boosted and test for Covid twice a week, hectored us to wear masks nearly everywhere, and banned students from several communal spaces, including dining halls at one point, and from having informal campus gatherings indoors with more than 10 people.

These excesses are all the more frustrating because, as Julie writes, “many of them do little to protect public health.”

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health stopped recommending indoor masking for fully vaccinated individuals (who are not immunocompromised) on February 15. Cambridge will be a month late to the party, not lifting its mandate until March 14. For Harvard students, who are, overall, among the most medically protected demographic — between their age and vaccination requirements — pretty much any major Covid restrictions should feel excessive.

Yet most students are unwilling to speak up against “Covid-related excesses.” Julie noted that her peers “acknowledge the excess” but “shrug it off.” On campus, there’s a sense of “resignation, learned helplessness and reluctance to dissent.”

Julie attributes the mindless obedience to Ivy Leaguers’ tendency to err on the side of conventional achievement and people-pleasing:

Our life’s mission has been to please those who can grant or withhold approval: parents, teachers, coaches, admissions officers and job interviewers. As a result, many of us don’t know what we believe or what matters to us.

Regardless of their actual feelings about Covid, students like these are willing to fall in line to maintain their reputation, their good standing. Given the distortion of the meaning of danger on campuses, these students’ behavior actually amounts to rational risk calculation. They don’t want to be labeled careless with the health of others, no matter how small the risk.

Julie wrote:

There is a smaller group at Harvard that apparently find pleasure in these restrictions. These students will chastise you for not wearing a mask correctly and called one of my brave peers who publicly denounced Harvard’s Covid restrictions a “eugenicist” because he supposedly showed insufficient sensitivity to immunocompromised people. They love Covid for the moral high ground it gives them to condescend to and control others.

Despite near-perfect vaccination rates, several students on campus have relayed stories about being shamed by their peers to wear their masks correctly. During my time at Harvard, there were students who operated social media on which they posted videos of their peers at gatherings, whether on or off campus, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.

In this way, passive compliance is wholly rational for students seeking a smooth path to success and a pleasant college experience. They want the banking job, the consulting role, the grad-school acceptance. They want to be in a social organization, admitted to an exclusive extracurricular.

And there’s nothing wrong with that; what’s wrong is the persecution of others for noncompliance — be it with needless Covid rules or ever-changing social protocols. By wielding the language of danger, woke administrators and students give themselves a pass to dictate on-campus regulations and social norms of speech and conduct. They are “protectors” from a new kind of danger — the danger of discomfort of any kind. And if you go against their protection, you’re a threat to the whole.

The control of danger — what it means and how you are to be protected from it — is their key to power. It’s often closely linked to controlling discourse itself. You don’t want to say something “dangerous” and risk making somebody uncomfortable.

In the Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt establish the idea of “safetyism,” noting that colleges are more and more concerned with the emotional well-being of students. This often comes at the cost of open discourse.

Last month, Colorado State University posted a sign offering resources to students affected by — wait for it — free speech:

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In a statement to Fox News, CSU officials said they “recognize the power of speech to impact people deeply” and “are committed to supporting all of our students.”

What they’re really trying to say is that free speech can sometimes be offensive and can make people uncomfortable. And being offended or uncomfortable is simply too dangerous for college students.

By equating free speech with danger, woke administrations and students alike can start to control narratives. Incidentally, what is “dangerous” is usually a belief or observation that challenges a progressive agenda.

When I was on the Crimson’s editorial board, the board published an op-ed that advocated abolishing the university police:

Policing is problematic not just in its often violent and discriminatory practice, but also in theory; the issue is not a few rotten apples, but of a rotten tree.

This became a debate topic at Harvard and on many other campuses. Any disagreement implied sympathy with an irredeemably racist institution.

There are certain topics you simply cannot question on progressive campuses without risking being labeled a “racist” or “sexist” or “elitist” or (insert derogatory “-ist”/ “-phobic”). Covid restrictions have the same power — Julie’s peer was labeled a “eugenicist.” If you’re a normal, risk-averse student, inviting labels like those would be social, professional, or academic suicide.

The real danger is not what you say; the real danger is the consequence should you say it.