Harvard as Grief Counselor
Since when has it become the role of the university to make its students feel better when something bad happens?
The Crimson reports that some students are frustrated with the University for not publicly expressing its sympathy for the Virginia Tech victims and their families.
The University’s decision not to issue a letter immediately following the events left some students critical of the approach. Harvard officials yesterday posted a statement of sympathy online and announced a service to remember the victims at 10 p.m. tonight in Memorial Church.
...UC Representative Jon T. Staff V ’10 criticized the administration’s approach. “Harvard certainly hasn’t done enough to respond to the tragedies that have happened in Virginia over the past week,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the administration to send some sort of message to the Harvard community and the Virginia Tech community about what happened.”
Um....why? Other than the fact that Harvard and Virginia Tech are both universities, Harvard has no connection to what happened. Why does the Harvard "community" need a statement that "Harvard" is sad? Of course people are sad. But Harvard is not Oprah; its job is not to hold its students' hands and make them feel better. Nor, frankly, would the Virginia Tech community give a damn if Harvard sends them "some sort of message."
This episode suggests two things. First is how completely modern students have embraced the concept of
in loco parentis, in which the university is supposed to play the role of parent to today's youth.
This infantilizing relationship between university and student, so challenged by students of the 1960s and 1970s, has come back in full force. It is only challenged when students lament alcohol restrictions during The Game. Now they want the University to give them a hanky. You can't have it both ways.
The second lesson of this episode is that it is a display in the narcissism of the young. What is so singular about this tragedy that the university must publicly nurse its charges through their grief? The fact that the gunman killed (primarily) students. Yet yesterday 171 Iraquis were killed in a car bomb explosion in Baghdad. Do any Harvard undergrads care? Where, as Bob Dole once said, is the outrage?
