As college students around the country have coped with the election of Donald Trump — with mechanisms that range from Play-Doh and hot cocoa to “cry-ins” and violent protests — Ivy Leaguers have opted to take their rightful place as leaders of the safe-space movement. A Washington Post headline reads, “Ivy League Students, Professors, Alumni Ask Schools to Be Sanctuaries for Undocumented Immigrants.”
Of course, universities do not set or enforce immigration law, and Donald Trump has explicitly stated that deportation agents will focus on dangerous criminals, not college students. But the way the Post describes students at Harvard makes it seem that they are getting ready to man the barricades:
They asked Harvard to do things such as commit to support the students enrolled by hiring a dean of equity, diversity and inclusion, create a fund to help students with legal expenses, hire a counselor to work with students facing immigration-status stress, and proclaim Harvard Memorial Church a refuge for students facing deportation.
Have you ever noticed that hiring a bunch of new people is always the end-game? The proliferation of diversity officers goes hand-in-hand with endless initiatives to make these campus bubbles even more comfortable and cloistered. While these bureaucracies grow (and costs skyrocket), colleges have to maintain the illusion that all of this is actually necessary to the goal of higher education. That is how they all keep their jobs — and why they don’t treat their students as adults.