Didn't the New York Times run all sorts of stories about "hate" on campus after the election, and yet several of the incidents turned out to be big nothingburgers? For example, there were two articles about two guys from Babson who were accused of driving around Wellesley's campus celebrating Trump's victory; but that turned out to be, even in Massachusetts, still legal.
And there was the Samoan-American female rugby player who was accused of building a "wall" down the middle of a Mexican-American coed's room by laying sneakers end to end:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyts-1-pro-trump-hate-crime/
Perhaps tolerance should even be extended to pro-Trump students?
I would suggest a required presentation during freshman orientations, on Jeremy Bentham’s notion of the Panapticon and how that relates to power structures and the internet. It might save some grief for some students to learn about the instruments and techniques of surveillance. It is an exposure I wish I had early in my life.
https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/panopticon-digital-su...
1
'Because in 1985, a college student could get a little self-righteous, make a bad decision, face consequences and then go home, having learned a “valuable lesson.”'
And of course what you do now, counselling college students, really makes use of your talents and passions, brings about fundamental change, makes the world a better place.
I put it to the author that far from being a dumb mistake, the only meaningful act in the author's life may have been the night he gave way to his righteous indignation and, for the first and last time in his life, he tried to change the world.
McDonald's, Nestlé, Coca Cola, Pepsi and all the other giant food and beverage multinationals have been poisoning us, destroying the planet, exploiting human workers and non-human animals, creating millions of tons of plastic waste, much of which ends up in the local waterways and finally in the oceans, where the tiny pieces of plastic kill millions of mains animals annually.
McDonald's and their ilk are the nutritional equivalents of the the notorious big six in the global tobacco industry.
Two decades ago in the UK, Helen Steel and David Morris stood up to McDonald's and in response were sued by McDonald's.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
Was this also merely youthful naivety? It would seem that the author and most other commenters would have us believe so.
3
"Corporate Deathburgers" It was brilliant and I love it!
Jim Reische, Yes young folks do make mistakes but they can also be a fount of creativity and daring.
6
It today's world, even high school students can't make mistakes. Witness students admitted to prestigious schools whose admittance was later revoked after a Facebook post because politically correct admissions boards can't tolerate a drunken thought from a 17 year old.
I graduated college in 1984 and am amazed at some of the old photos that turned up on my Facebook page from friends who tagged me, and of course my kids have seen them. In 1984, who would have thought that photos of you at a party would be visible for the world to see?
It seems to me that college admins are ideologues who are every bit as fundamentalist as your fundamentalist Baptist preacher. The college admins simply have the blessing of the PC crowd, and they want to convert others toward their beliefs.
7
I had well-respected parents who taught in a major medical school, but were too busy or too drunk -- to keep track of my doings.
The police never came around to our house; apparently, law enforcement preferred to let things be.
I'd been an obedient girl through high school, coping with family dysfunctions, because we had no choice.
Once in college, life changed. Liquor laws were not obeyed. I was three years underage. We drank until closing time, and my brother had always put the chain on, forgetting that I'd asked him not to. So I'd ring the bell until the entire household woke up. At 4 a.m.
Sometimes, I fell asleep on our front lawn, and was surprised that the police didn't wake me. But the police didn't want to disturb this affluent suburb. In part, it was respect. But property taxes also helped provide town services.
Once I became of age, I was a responsible drinker. After awhile, drinking too much at 17 loses its luster.
If any of this had been broadcast on social media, it could have altered the trajectory of my life.
Thank dog we only had word of mouth and a single landline. Plus, nobody wanted to bother the kids whose parents were doctors. So much for having been raised in 'one of the better homes.'
I don't think broadcasting stars' drunken episodes all over the internet benefits anybody. It's noise we can live without.
In the end, my sibs and I turned out just fine.
But I am grateful that nobody ever knew about any of this.
Until now.
15
Hey Jim, here’s another take. When you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to be held accountable for your viewpoints, and your actions. Like, say, vandalizing someone else’s property.
7
As long as they don't play with dynamite...
1
Scrolling through the opinion section, Frank Bruni has an opinion piece two articles down about a hispanic student’s college paper which says “of all the white people I’ve met, about a dozen rise to the level of ‘decent.’”
You’re right, it is time we reclaim the privilege to make mistakes as young people without being shamed by the entire nation. And, more importantly, it’s time we expand that privilege.
2
How big of this typical liberal to allow free speech mistakes for topics other than sexual violence or racial hatred. It's very liberal of Williams college to allow free expression for things like criticizing businesses. How did they summon the courage?!
4
Privacy. A thought that is not even in the lexicon of young people today.
They give it up freely, post the details of their lives, and then don't understand that any stupid, wrong thing they do is going to be there - forever.
We used to send letters to each other - notes, which could be circulated between a few people - people who knew each other - probably knew you. Not private, exactly, but you were supposed to keep those messages between you - to not observe that was considered a violation of privacy.
Now you "post".. What does that even mean? That you literally want everyone in the world to have access to your all your thoughts and actions?
Then you reap the consequences.
4
Interesting how you describe your history of vandalism and other unnamed anti-social acts for which you dodged jail time as "bad choices." I call it "criminal behavior." I also call not getting caught "luck." Most college students aren't experimenting with riotous living and flunking classes - it is those who we should give a break, like cancelling their student loans. As for the preening student "activists" who imagine the rules don't apply to them, they deserve having to explain to future employers why they played the role of parasite in college.
And why do you think imposing limits on free speech is an error? Why should hate speech be tolerated? Sweden, Norway, Germany among others have such limits and their societies are arguably more free and 'democratic' than ours. Bully for the students that had the guts to call out the tired ACLU 'free speech' ideology for the gross distortion of democratic values it is!
3
This doesn't quite get it.
Many things are not "innocent mistakes". They are not necessarily justifiable or excusable. But they might be forgivable. Forgiveness is for injuries that are neither justified nor excusable. The problem is that we want to expand the group of things that are excusable beyond plausibility, because forgiveness is actually hard work for someone who feels injured. One of the good insights of some religions was finding a way to embrace that reality rather than eliding it.
2
As counterintuitive as it might seem at first, there is no learning without failure. The Miles quote adds a great deal of depth to the concept.
A parallel thought is that when someone makes a mistake, we shouldn't disavow all the good they have done and skills they have mastered. We can't afford to throw away valuable contributions because of imperfection. I'm thinking of you, Senator Franken.
13
A very important point that would go a long way towards getting the correct perspective on these mistakes is to remember that the principles in our Constuitution apply at all times in all cases. That is not just a legal document it is a manual for how to live ones life.
If you are stuck on the slavery bits then you aren not paying attention and ignoring the corrections towards a "more perfect union" that have taken place which were accounted for by the design of the document from the start.
Thank you for the Miles Davis quote
2
College students are not CHILDREN, nor are those who are not in college or serve in the armed forces. I'll grant the pass on making young mistakes, but the internet has also simultaneously given young adults a platform to vent their young errs, youthful transgressions, while the internet has also, in a degree of similar self-importance, been ushered in as "the standard" through which our culture is driven, thereby lowering the maturity of popular intelligence---much the way campaign speeches are delivered to appeal to a less than 5th grade mind.
1
Too many mistakes to list--and with my real name on here, I am still embarrassed to admit them. Some are listed by Jim Reische here. Live and learn are my watchwords. Has brain chemistry been mentioned? These actions by kids are not the result of reasoning but of split-second decision-making by a brain which is refashioning its circuits. At 71 I'm taking a first-year language class. The teacher simply says, "Cell phones off now." They all turn them off. Adults need to learn to be role models, which seem to be increasingly hard to find these days, judging by the government. I worry for these kids, but most will survive to become more knowledgeable.
3
Bryan Stevenson: "We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. ..The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.”
Worthy discussion. Thank you. All.
3
We need new laws to curtail the extend to which technological advances can upend our lives.
Europe has laws such as "right to be forgotten", which allows their citizens to remove personal information from Google, laws for disclosing and limiting cookie tracking, and laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that aims to give control back to citizens over their personal data.
There are no such laws in the US, which means anyone can use the Internet to find out where you live, how old you are, who your spouse is, your political party affiliation and so on. Companies such as Google and Facebook, and now your cell phone company can build dossiers on you and sell them to other companies. We need Europe-style laws here in the US.
5
Imagine a traditional hunter-gatherer community or even a typical small-town. Imagine how incomprehensible the idea of "the right to be forgotten" would sound to them.
Joseph said he wants to be forgotten.
What?
Yeah, he told Luke he wants people to forget him.
He wants to be exiled?
No, just forgotten.
What?
The idea that you live in a community that doesn't know everything about you, that you can do something that won't be part of who you are for your entire life, is not the normal state of human affairs. Exile was really the only option to escape this and then there was the difficulty in building trust with a new community.
Urbanisation, fuelled by the industrial revolution, drastically reduced the difficulty in moving between communities or even existing as different people in different groups in the same city. Living a professional life, a private life, and even a secret life at the same time became normal. But, we invented computers, and our ability to remember and locate information has caught up with the scale of cities. For better or worse, the information revolution has effectively undone the isolation of the industrial revolution.
Everyone in your small town and 7 billion other people all know everything about you and will never forget it. The only escape is to flush your identity and start over, the modern equivalent of exile. It will get to the point where people that don't have a public history of stupid mistakes simply won't be trusted.
2
Had I come of age with all this tech, I would not have survived at all. I was given 2nd, 3rd, 20th chances. I made enemies. I made even more friends. But it was all confined to my little world - and because of all those "mistakes", my little world expanded to a huge one that I now enjoy in NYC with access to the entire globe.
I pushed envelopes and demanded my university bend to my will. I was hated by the administration and department heads in my school; at graduation barely any of my professors and advisors would do more than shake my hand and say congratulations. They were happy to see me go. BUT - I didn't care because I'd received the education I wanted and knew it could never be taken away from me.
The result? My course of study is now an official dual concentration at the university. Students need the freedom to buck the system because hopefully, they leave the institution a better place - sour grapes and all.
2
Timely article.
I have had the experience of performing an internet search of my "identity" only to be horrified of the mistakes that I have made. I'm surprised that I have been given a second chance to reach my professional potential and contribute to society. I have often thought of younger people in similar circumstances. I imagine that their path to a second chance is getting harder and harder with each passing day. Our on line footprint gets more intrusive daily. I suggest a european approach to personal privacy. Restrict personal information , save egregious criminal behaviour. And even then, impose a time limit. Give everyone the opportunity to recover from his mistakes and become the person that he wishes to be. Remove the shameful internet albatross from becoming a life long ball and chain. We have too many good people making errors of judgment that should not prevent them from reaching their goals and contributing to society.
3
You are so right, Jim. How fun to read this and 'hear' your voice! Beyond the impact of technology, the idea of education as a product to be consumed - a chip to cash in at the end of four years - is influencing our students' ability to try out new identities and ideas in their college years. They don't have the time or the freedom to fail at anything. We shall not discuss my dumb mistakes in college. But there were MANY. Nobody died, and i learned a lot.
Not much has really changed. There is a permanent record of your arrest (presumably you pled guilty and had to pay a fine) that you have to list on most job applications.
Even though searching is much easier today, that is compensated by the fact that the mass of searchable data conceals almost every individual fact. If you don't know in advance what you are looking for, you won't find it even if it is there.
One of the reasons the Wellesley student newspaper's editorial attracted so much attention off-campus is that in the political monoculture of the modern American campus dissent is frowned upon. When I was a student in the late 1960's there was lively discussion and dissent about the issues of the day. No longer; it is socially unacceptable to question the official line (promulgated by administrations as well as student opinion).
2
Sorry Jim but you are SO wrong for so many reasons. Women, people of color, and the working class don't get the same forgiveness. If you were spray painting McDonalds I am guessing you grew up in a middle class household where your parents didn't hold you properly accountable for your actions. So what happened? You made life altering mistakes as an adult. I am guessing Al Franken had the same upbringing. Bet your sister (if you have one) didn't do that stuff. Girls didn't get those messages in my day. You seem to think college kids(men?) of privilege have the right to make serious mistakes and get out of it. You are still lost in the privileged past that you grew up with. Times have changed and the standards are different and I am glad!
3
I was an editor at Arizona State U's student paper (State Press) back in the mid-60s and when a conservative activist (in Arizona, those days, most were) unfoiled a huge sign during a visitor's well publicized speech -- revealing a gross expletive and the rest of the day's conspiratorial messages -- he was hauled out by police. The event caused me to write an editorial critical of the police and defending speech. Because it was red-hot the editor-in-chief and I were called in by the university's president... a Mormon... and I figured we'd be out of business. He asked us to support the removal. We said we couldn't. He asked us not to do the same thing the next time some heartless lunatic made a mess in a public speech, and we said we couldn't promise that either. He wished us luck and offered a handshake. I went on to a 30-year career in journalism.
1
This is too US focused. The competition for our young adults is worldwide. I spent a great amount of time in Europe. The maturity of young Europeans attending university, not to mention those in Asia, greatly exceeds the average American student. Thinking outside the box is great, spray painting and almost going to jail a few times is not.
Use the European method. Take a gap year or two to decide whether you should be at university or not. If you don't, don't complain about your student loans.
1
There are probably multiple new groups and/or renamed groups that plan to do the "Deathburger" thing, or it's equivalent, in the waning weeks of the current semester. This will continue until the "hard labor" gets harder, say 5 days (8 hour variety - no breaks except water and bathroom) per offense and continue until the surfaces are pristine. I predict a sharp drop in new offenses. Why should anyone else have to clean up their mess?
Thank you, Mr. Reische, for your insightful and timely article. Certainly, when students make an ill-conceived decision on campus, the world sees and sneers. Cue the pundits to decry the "Liberal rot" in our Universities, etc. etc.
I agree that technology may be the lead actor in this drama, as you say, but I wonder if Universities unwittingly contribute to this climate? Today, a student needs to try exceptionally hard to fail a class. We have moved to a "client centered" model of education that offers students a host of services outside the classroom, to the point that the professors/administrator ratio has effectively reversed over the past 40 years. Universities used to see themselves as clearinghouses of diverse ideas, good and bad, where students and faculty throw themselves into open debate and discourse--and may the best idea win. Now, many professors tiptoe around their students, apprehensive about upsetting their feelings or their coddled senses of self-entitlement.
I'm not saying I know how all the dots connect in this puzzle, but I do think it's more than a technological problem. I wonder if our universities contribute to a climate where bad ideas should no longer be open to debate, but rather, where students are simply expected to toe a moral line and sing in harmony from day one.
The trick in this conversation -- already seeping out of the comment section -- is where the line is drawn between forgivable and unforgivable youthful errors, and who gets to draw that line. The left will find leftward errors of judgement forgivable, but not those on the right; the right will find rightward errors of judgement forgivable, but not those on the left. It's easier to criminalize ideas and actions we are opposed to than to mount a good argument against them, and social media makes mob justice easy and impersonal.
1
Wow, aren't there at least a couple of enormous elephants in this room? The idea that college students (already privileged to be so) should get more passes for indiscretions because they are college students smells like a big pile of elitism to me. What about their non-college-student peers? Should different standards apply to those who are out there in the real world where there are laws, common standards of behavior and consequences? And where does the 'lead up' (such as binge drinking, for one) to all of these youthful 'mistakes' fit in here? Or are we supposed to ignore the ubiquity of binge drinking--and its cascade of destructive effects--with a wink and a nod, since we may have done the same and 'turned out okay? Maybe the adults in the room should stop hearkening back to their own experiences and focus on how to prepare our young--college-coddled or not--to be part of the world as it is now, rather than groom them to be a special subgroup that need not respect the same rules as the rest of society.
3
I take issue with the basic premise of this piece. That we can only make mistakes between year X and Y. Thats absurd and puts too much pressure and undue expectations on the college experience.
What are we doing pre-college, if not also making mistakes? What about post-college, when we learn that the work world is so not what we expected, or as its preached to be. Romantic relationships in our teens, 20s, 30s...and beyond...full of mistake opportunities. Sure, we should be making fewer of the more obvious ones as we age (maturity is a whole other topic) but sometimes we have not encountered certain situations until we've been not just around the block a few times, but well out of the neighborhood.
Not sure who said it; If you aint making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.
2
I have no pity. If they have ankle bracelets on, it's because they put them on themselves. If you want to write a controversial article for the student newspaper and try out an idea without receiving disproportionate backlash, find a pen name (as people have had to do throughout the centuries long before the age of technology) and deactivate your Facebook account.
And vandalism? Also no pity. I am college age, and I don't get to make any of these mistakes because I had to leave home at 19 and now I have to keep my full-time job and finish coursework for my degree at night. I have to keep my income to pay my bills and my tuition, and if I can do it without police brushes so can the kids being bankrolled through college. I don't understand why it's so radical to demand adult behavior from adults. High school? Make all the mistakes you can. After high school? Get yourself some responsibility.
4
We all do stupid things at one time or another. Publicizing those things adds a whole new layer to stupidity, but then that in itself will provide one of those "valuable lessons."
The original error is believing there is anything social about “social media”.
Those who have shunned Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whodunit, Fastsnatch, etc. completely often find their lives are richer for it. It’s a world where 99% of judgment and righteous indignation vanish into thin air.
The other 1% is that which matters.
So many of these comments want to be sure that the student is punished for graffiti. The author was punished. An arrest with handcuffs and a night in jail is scary and is punishment. The point is that the perpetrator learns from his mistakes without his life being ruined by the righteous who throw stones from their glass houses. He did not go on as a career vandal. A sense of proportion is missing in the wish for vengeance against a not yet matured college student.
5
What happened to owning, or at least owning up to, your actions?
At the least, Reische seems inconsistent. Learning from "mistakes"? That requires some feedback that causes the student to recognize what they did might have been wrong. Living and writing (and vandalizing) in a bubble only serves to insulate students from consequences. And why the arbitrary threshold of "sexual violence and racial hatred"? Are not immature "young humans" more likely to commit these and other regrettable acts, some criminal and others distasteful?
On the other hand, if college students, and others of the same age, are not fully responsible for their actions, then what is their proper legal status? We have legal and social distinctions for those not fully capable (and culpable), like minors and those with diminished capacity. And we limit the legal actions for these people, from voting to signing contracts.
So which is it? Is a 20 year old student an adult or a child?
1
Who says these are mistakes? Or dumb? And why do only younger people get to make them?
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." (MLK Jr.)
2
I was at UoM in 85. I don't remember reading about your spray-painting in the Ann Arbor News, but I would have applauded.
1
I am 59 years old, and I often ask myself why my generation raised such mistake and failure averse kids. It seems that all that play dating, helicoptering, constant texting, emailing and calling, and being involved with way too many aspects of our children lives for far too long has made them so risk averse and quite frankly, fragile.
My generation was raised at a time when experimenting, mistakes and failure were the pathways to learning and discovery, and ultimately, success. Taking risk, screwing up and discomfort were all part of the process. How is it that we just did not pass this down to the next generation?
As editor-in-chief of my community college paper in 1982 I allowed an ad for a deaf students event to appear with the drawing of an old man holding a huge horn next to his ear. A stereotype of the deaf I had grown up with in the media, not ever having actually known any deaf people at that point in my life. Bad idea! The outrage crushed me. I never, ever meant to hurt anyone. We immediately published a heartfelt apology the next week. I learned a lesson in my twenties the hard way. As I approach sixty and read this op-ed I think: wow, that wasn't on the syllabus! If that happened today I would be publicly ostracized as you aptly point out. And who knows if my college career would have ended right then and my life irrevocably changed. I tis not that I have never offended anyone since but I certainly have improved awareness and consider my actions before acting. School is for learning in and outside of the classroom.
30
Well said, and thank you for your candor! Imagine a high-level university official who, back in their day, flunked out of college - that's a great comeback.
Sometimes reinventing the wheel is necessary in order to appreciate the value of roundness, I've often said. I believe we are at at risk of becoming a society of risk-averse, high achiever wannabes who would rather set the bar low and succeed rather than set the bar high and learn.
4
There is a difference between a youthful mistake and doing something that truly hurts or damages a person or people. We all make mistakes in things we say and things we do. And we all deserve a chance to live them down. But a college student who brags on social media about having sex with another drunken student ought to be censured. First for having sex with someone who is drunk and second for putting it out on social media. And someone who lets everyone know that he/she spray painted swastikas somewhere needs to learn, if they don't know, what swastikas mean in today's world and why it's wrong.
But what I see with students who are in grades K-12 is parents protecting them from the consequences of their actions. If I, as an adult, say anything to them or their child I'm told in the vilest language possible to shut up and mind my own business. Never mind that their child may have tripped over my feet or bumped into me and hurt me, or even slammed a car door into my car door. It's my fault for being in their child's way. That's how some parents protect their child from dealing with the consequences of his/her actions.
What's important is the kind of mistake one makes. But that presumes that one has learned earlier in life the rudiments of responsible behavior and how to think before one acts. Too often today's parents protect their children from every unpleasant experience they can by interfering. Dumb mistakes are fine but harmful ones are not.
4
There are some mistakes one cannot recover from and a wise parent or a professor may be able to tell the students the difference between the mistakes that you can recover from and the ones that you cannot and be marred for life.
Growing up does not mean that one does not heed advice from parents and professors (if any). Colleges are not places to do whatever one wants but places to learn discipline and respect esp. for the learning process.
5
Without the ability to "screw up", we lose the ability to advance.
It's called "evolution" - and it is how the world works best.
8
One of the reasons why dumb mistakes were also possible a generation or two ago was because a smaller portion of the populace was enrolled in college. This generation enrollments are higher and there is less cache in college attendance. For this reason I am not sorry to see the privilege of failure go as it was never very equitably applied to young people. If a high school student, Khalil Reische or Jennifer Reische, had access to this type of failure, I would more readily agree with the author. Try being a black person especially or woman while committing property damage and let me know how that goes. There are some good points here with the social media story but otherwise this piece is tone deaf.
4
Funny. You're reading this column as applying only to College students. I read it as the author using the environment in which he is most familiar to illustrate a point that could be applied throughout our society today.
I also take exception to your statement "I am not sorry to see the privilege of failure go as it was never very equitably applied to young people" That is a very small minded way to approach societal issues. In other words you don't care if things improve or get worse as long as everyone else is as miserable as you are. Wouldn't it be more constructive to work to improve the lot of everyone rather than applauding the degradation of even more people?
4
The young who are poor and not going to universities are at greater risk of having their lives burdened by unfair societal responses to their youthful nonsense. A young college student who gets caught taking drugs gets an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal when his lawyer petitions the judge. A young ghetto dweller gets a criminal record. Broaden your concerns to the wider set of youth who are at risk, Mr. Riesche. It's not all about the youth of the privileged class in your elite college. Most of them are guaranteed to be alright.
5
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canadian icon, paraded around in a Nazi uniform in his teens as a tow-headed lad in Montreal, -obviously an egregious error in judgment. Would any politician survive today with the disclosure of such a picture? If we cannot allow, i.e. erase, forget, delete, youthful "dumb mistakes", do we condemn our youth to live with the deliberation of an old man? Best way to kill classical liberalism, progressive politics, etc, is in the crib.
I don't get it. I am no longer young but I don't think that spraying deathburgers on a McDonalds is a mistake. Its a perfect role for a college student. McDonalds needs young people to scrawl things every now and then to keep them honest and restrained.
9
I agree. Except nothing will keep McDonalds honest and restrained. Just look at the the 50 billion farm animals whose deaths it contributes to in a very unrestrained way, or the immigrant laborers whose injuries it causes in a very unrestrained way, or the unrestrained environmental degradation in which it participates.It would be nice if we all had the moral fortitude just to stop patronizing McDonalds, and for it to die a quick and unceremonious death of its own.
1
Out of respect to millenials please change their mission from
lux and veritas to LOL YOLO
3
Wait, this is the Wellesley editorial thatJim Reische calls "mature and well reasoned"?: "...our Wellesley community will not stand for hate speech, and will call it out when possible."
Condemning hate speech and speech that provokes violence against oppressed minorities is anything but immature, and far from poorly reasoned. But, as usual, The Times is larding its opinion pages with just one side of the issue, pretending that white supremacists who incite violence against minorities on college campuses and who characterize African-Americans as inferior are practicing "free speech" and should be honored.
In fact, it is The Times that is not practicing free speech, publishing overwhelmingly one point of view on this issue in its pages. Let's see The Times condemn campus Republicans who spend big money to bring racists, bigots, and white supremacists to college campuses.
The Wellesley editors are to be praised for their insights, and for calling incitements to violence what they are. Times editors should read Wellesley's editorial and take heed.
4
There is no "hate speech" exception in the first amendment, nor should there be, for if there were the people in charge--imagine them as people you don't like, which will almost certainly be the case at least some of the time no matter who you are--get to decide what "hate speech" is and then punish people for the act of emitting words from their mouths, or typing them into a computer. Anyone who knows history should find that terrifying.
And nobody has a first amendment right to be published in the New York Times--surely you know that, right? Was that mere rhetoric? But in any case the New York Times has certainly published people who agree with your position. Frankly there are few of them outside of a few universities. And I say that as a commited liberal.
'Wait, this is the Wellesley editorial thatJim Reische calls "mature and well reasoned"?: ...'
That's exactly the opposite of what Reische said. Reische asked a rhetorical question to which he answered "No".
Read the OpEd again -- carefully.
2017-12-10 16:18:15 UTC
1
Sorry, but sharing ideas does not give you a pass on felonies. Vandalism and hooliganism is what gave us Charlottesville.
10
steve,
this post would be one of those mistake things the author was talking about. It is tone deaf and missed the point entire. Your post is about what is going on in your own mind not what the author has said here.
1
"... sharing ideas does not give you a pass on felonies. Vandalism and hooliganism is what gave us Charlottesville."
There are no such crimes as "Vandalism and hooliganism" in VA. If you want to argue the law, learn the law.
2017-12-10 16:33:01 UTC
A newspaper editorial on free speech (even if you disagree with it) is not a mistake. Vandalism via spray paint IS a mistake and maybe a misdemeanor. Is the author equating an editorial to a dumb mistake?
6
context context context.
It was a school paper which was given far more weight than it should have been given is the point. If it were the NYT or WaPo or SF Chronicle or Chicago tribune etc then the hubbub would have been the right reaction.
But to react as if this young adult who is just out of childhood article in a school paper was anything but....Come on THIMK! [sic]
2
Deathburgers-4-Ever!
4
This article is a stupid mistake and, of course, he may learn from it.
Like having a secret webcam in your dorm-mate's room and then "broadcasting" his private sexual life and gay-shaming him? That's worth a try, right?
NO! We need to teach kids right from wrong at home. And not have them experiment with boundaries that they can see plainly as getting them into trouble. What is it about vandalizing private property the author did not get from home?
4
This is a truly nonsensical piece of writing. First, how does Mr. Reische propose to provide such safe spaces? Will the university have a 'practice' Internet where actions of students are posted, but not distributed to the rest of the world. I don't understand what the author is proposing as a solution. More important, the article reeks of privilege. College students should have a license to do dumb things without suffering consequences? You know, I'd prefer to reserve my sympathies for Rohingya refugees with real problems than privileged college students who think they should get a free pass. I am reminded of the idiots recently arrested in Thailand for posting selfies of themselves mooning in a Buddhist temple. They were let off lightly by the Thai government. Or the basketball players arrested in China. I find this article offensive (and yes, I was once a college student).
8
Good thing there are still non elite colleges that none of you people care about.
2
I couldn't agree more with the author's thoughts in this article, but what seems left unsaid is that the students are often the ones putting themselves and each other on social media. While the greater point is about how larger outlets place microscopes on these mess ups, I think students need to want this space to fail and not exploit it by filming and posting others (and themselves) screwing up. How do we teach them the importance of having this space? Beats me, but I think it has to be part of the solution.
3
Dumb, youthful mistakes I made that were not documented on social media? Hmm...well...why would I wish to document them now? Ain't falling for that trick!
I still make mistakes as an adult, but I don't DO social media, nor do I allow myself to be involved in others, unless I mistakenly walked into it. I avoid peoples phones when they start bringing them out...I refuse to be photographed on them, as I do not know what the owner will do with it. Period! Its not hard to avoid. I have no desire to be "selfied".
My youth was filled with mistakes...be they opinions,acts or ideas-philosophies about how the world and people work. I made relationship mistakes. Many, and thankfully, they were not recorded, in media that was easily broadcasted to the world. Photos might have been taken, letters/cards written, etc...but nothing easily made public.
Adults need to communicate to their young charges, the importance of privacy. But more so the importance of controlling ones personal presentation to the world. That its important to keep the deeply personal - personal. To learn to discern what is for public consumption and what is better left for trusted personal relationships. That blurting things out without consideration of not just the personal impact, but its effects on others is what defines a SERIOUS person. (see NYT Trump story re;same idea)
Young folks want to be taken seriously, but they need be guided as to how to be a Serious Person. Its not an inherent human skill.
2
I totally and wholeheartedly agree. But I would add another statement: 18-22 year olds who are not in college should be granted the same latitude to make dumb mistakes and learn from them as college students. Not everybody gets the opportunity to attend, and privileged youth shouldn't get special treatment.
4
I just quit going to my college TYPING class and received a F back in the '70's! It effected my GPA. When I finally became a serious student, I was angry with myself. Just plain stupid.
3
I thank whatever powers that be that I'm the only one who remembers my college follies. If anyone else remembers them, I'm sure the person they remember is "that idiot girl." I resent the censorship that social media induces, but I feel for today's youth who don't have a memory hole available to them.
4
Jim, your personal nostalgia for those crazy days when you were young is no excuse for a 22 year old painting swastikas to intimidate or a wasted fraternity bro decides to test the legal distinction between date and date rape. College behavior is not some biologically driven necessity but rather encouraged by some combination of irresponsible college administrations and media driven Animal House entitlement. College should be preparation for the world not an island of stupidity. As a former 18 year trustee for a selective institution, college can be a place of near limitless learning, creativity, and a foundation to shape society of tomorrow without sanctioning bad bro behaviors
1
College kids can make dumb mistakes - but there is a short list of things they can't make dumb mistakes about: Free Speech; Equality for All; Rational Dialectical Argument.
The difference between now and when Jim was frosh idiot (btw - I was one too) is that I assume none of his cohorts were focused on curtailing the open expression of a multiplicity of ideas.
3
Corporate Deathburgers. Thanks for the well needed laugh.
2
people are just too uptight these days.
3
I wish that your willingness to allow space for college students to make dumb mistakes could be extended to all people of college age. Had you committed a similar crime and been a McDonald’s employee instead of a college student, your actions would more likely have earned you more than a night in jail, Many of the commenters who want to give college students some space would be pointing out that you are just a loser and/or a thug.
11
I hope that Frank Bruni reads this. The column he just wrote about that college kid's article in the Texas State newspaper just expanded the landscape of his learning curve to the pages and of The New York Times.
2
Thank you Mr. Reische - I am hereby in favor of #CorporateDeathburgers trending.
1
Is and ought.
'Corporate Deathburgers' is the name of my band
5
Twenty-five years from now that unbalanced college girlfriend is going to have her way with you.
For years now an increasingly law-and-order society has demanded police charge every alcohol and drug infraction, and drag away students involved in low-level fist fights in high school and college—matters dealt with extra-judicially in the 60s and 70s when I offended. Thank God.
With one’s barcode imbedded in the machinery of technology after a scrape with the law today that would have been dealt with, say, by the informal “impoundment” of one’s bag of weed in the 70s by the officer who had also once been young and stupid (provided one showed the badge proper respect and got smarter and didn’t get caught again) a permanent and public record is now created which can screw up a young person’s life going forward.
I wish we could bring back the choice of electing to receive no-record, no-due-process swats over after-school detention that my generation had.
But there is no turning back the clock. Sorry, kids.
4
I certainly don't want to catalog the hideously dumb mistakes I made growing up in the 1970s, as a high school, undergrad, and later grad student, or the far less dumb ones I made in the 1980s, and 1990s. And I made some colossal ones that changed the trajectory of my life.
But there are mistakes that are forgivable and mistakes that are not. I was lucky, in that my horrible, idiotic choices did NOT ruin my life and I could learn from them.
So I think of other peoples' choices and how it messed them up. Expressing ideas that are unpopular is the American Way. But if you're marching in Nazi rallies, a party that started the biggest war in human history, you're toast, or should be.
Then there are activities that hurt other people: Rape, hazing, etc. Those should NOT be protected and seen as "youthful mistakes" but as crimes.
25
I agree. And it would be a mistake on my part to pretend it’s always easy to know how to discern the tolerable mistakes from the intolerables. Sometimes, as you say, it seems clear. Other times not, or we can’t even agree on who should decide. That’s why I’m so concerned that we’ve moved into a culture of snap judgment, or, worse still, snap condemnation and punishment. Real learning, like real democracy, is messy and takes time. Have we unwittingly created a world of social impatience—that’s in too much of a hurry? What are the uncounted costs?
3
As if any Williams student would "slum it" at the North Adams McDonald's.
I went to MCLA. Students only made the local news when they got drunk, started fires, or both.
1
The article is an expression of a child-raising culture where everybody is a winner. There is no such thing as shame, because that would be cruel to children. Children remain children forever, and it does not matter that they have physically left their homes and parents. Colleges function in loco parentis.
The author created and still remains in this world. It is the only created world in which he and the children he cares for can survive. Economically, this created world survives on the production and support of the outside, "real" , world.
Specifically, it survives on paid tuition, and donations from private individuals and the state.
That support is not sure, as the outside world realizes it is getting poor value for these investments, and the educators' and children's' created world is an illusion, and subversive of the greater society.
4
Funny, most of the dumb (and criminal) mistakes I saw and see then and now had and have to do with underage drinking.
6
Where, exactly, are the golden arches in Williamstown?
It's about 6 miles east, in North Adams.
1
Great quote from Miles.
1
Eventually a new form of dementia, digital amnesia, will be the coolest millenial fad.
3 likes.
1
It's not the students' fault; blame the parents.
Why is spray-painting “Corporate Deathburgers” across a McDonald’s a “lack of judgement” and a “bad decision?” How much has McDonald's done for good nutrition since 1985? Bad diets and obesity make ill and kill people and graffiti is one way of letting the world know. Ok, graffiti is illegal, but deathburgers ought to be.
1
These larval sages (right-wing, left-wing, anarchist, libertarian, whatever) and their affectations, pomposities, harangues and little journeys of self-discovery serve a valuable purpose, which is to amuse normals.
It is also important to grow up and avoid making dumb mistakes like that in college. Trashing the McDonalds, etc. in college is nothing to boast about later in life, as this author appears to be doing.
Trashing other people's property is anti-social and undemocratic.
4
Jim, I'm with you as to the dangers our students face when their blunders fall into the megaphone of social and conventional media. And I agree that they will earnestly blunder, with the best intentions, so far as they discern them. But you describe, through your own association with U of M and with your present employer, universities of elite privilege, and students with, generally, little financial worry, and likely considerable resources to extricate themselves after a misstep.
Here at State U in Chicago, in my bailiwick in the business school, we see almost none of the self-centered errant behavior you showed (as did I, in my youth) and which we may assume you describe of your present very entitled students. Rich or poor, everybody makes mistakes. But rich children often escape judgment, and by the time they get to you, they understand their relative power and what they can get away with, good-hearted or not. My students are not from privileged backgrounds, most work at least 20 hours per week, and they struggle for what they earn. Nobody has time or money for bail, court, attorneys, etc. There are simply fewer "degrees of freedom" for kids from working class families. And you will see the same in engineering schools, medical schools, and other profession-oriented programs regardless of elite status. Work your students harder, demand more, and you will see idle idiocy decline. With your liberal artists at play in a coddled thought experiment, not so much.
5
Innocent mistakes? Our young are not always lambs when at High School, let alone College. On the eve of an important philosophy test at boarding-school, I placed a stocking over my head and knocked on the door of my best friend who was seated at her desk with a large Latin dictionary. "What gives" she asked, irritated by this interruption, and without blinking an eyelash.
Disappointed by her lack of reaction, I tried this little prank on another student who let out a shriek on opening her door. The next morning, while 44 of us were occupied for two hours filling four pages with drivel, a nun was seen to be pacing outside the classroom with my victim; a highly anxious peer.
Now. She never informed the supervisor of what had taken place the night before and that I was the cause of her being unable to address this important task essential for our Finals. It was dumb on my part.
As for other mischief, well, I am not planning to reveal all my secrets to the New York Times. But it is not surprising that at a late age, I am still known as a bit of a prankster.
Years later in America, 'Your godson is in awful trouble', wept his parent on the phone. Serious, studious, a fine student, it was a stretch to figure out his mistake. When an explanation was given, I offered to call the Office of the Chancellor of the Board of Education.
He took a hand buzzer to school, a metallic device, and I thought this was pretty tame, while he decided to become a gifted rapper. Kudos.
"What dumb mistakes did you make when you were young that you are glad didn’t get documented on social media (or did they)?"
NYT, are you really asking me to do what Jim Reisch is bemoaning for today's youth? Shame on you.
As an educator responsible for teaching students about truth, lies, propaganda, etc, ..., I have been asking the same question over the last decade: Who enjoys more freedom, you today, or me in the 1980s? At the beginning of the unit they are 100% agreement that they are more free because of all the internet's myriad information. Orwell's, 1984, swings them all towards my 1980s freedom being greater; however, it's not until they learn about how coders are hacking their brains with the Apps they use: FB, snapchat, instagram, etc, ... that they begin to see how controlled they are. A few understand the complexities involved with their complicity and swear off technology--not one has lasted more than a few days.
Today's youths have more than their dumb mistakes to fret over, today's tech promotes 'dumb mistakes' with the world's peer pressure. Compare that to our measly few friends we showed off in front of.
2
Wish this had a better headline. There is more to this article than the title suggests.
1
Good piece. Now rewrite it with many of the same arguments and judgements under the title "The Importance of Dumb Mistakes in Men."
2
How true. The only one unable to make mistakes is the one sitting on his/her behind...doing nothing. Mistakes are made by all of us, however unaware or unwilling to admit it. And provided we learn from them, and hopefully not commit them again, we are better for it. And more prepared for future challenges. As an extension to 'mistakes', if we are ignorant and don't ask or study the answer, we shall remain dumb wiilfully foe ever; and that would be a colossal waste. If you don't believe me, just look at the disgrace we have in our vulgar 'know-it-all' president, so incompetent and corrupt that no college would claim to have served him...with a straight face.
1
If you ever have the slightest urge again to spray paint “Corporate Deathburgers” at a McDonald’s, please let me know. I’m almost 71 and have never been arrested for anything. Of course with maturity comes stealth. We might actually get away with it.
5
It isn't technology that is the evil, it is the "Gothca" movement. Every dumb thing a person does is used to demonstrate what others want to believe about the institution, want to use as propaganda.
So the right can grab the "Deathburger" incident to show that colleges are radicalizing our youth into vandals who'd take jobs from millions to promote their vegan commie views. And the left would grab the punishment of the "Deathburgee" to show our militarized death-dealing and hollow exploitative society.
Students should be able to survive doing dumb things, but there is just too much interest in using dumb things to justify a worldview. So we have incidents of right-wing students pushing their agenda in left wing enclaves to prove that universities are hotbeds of intolerant Liberalism. The Left is meanwhile out chasing microaggressions and slights in everything from the reading for the curriculum and Halloween costumes.
And it all is used as political fodder. Social media and the speed of communication wouldn't be an issue, if we didn't have people trying to find every incident they can twist to prove themselves right.
3
If a student wants to "grapple with balancing free speech and appropriate behavior", that's a subject for an essay or a term paper - not for the college newspaper which is a mouthpiece for the entire campus.
As for graffiti, vandalism and other offenses - those are crimes and the perpetrator should be prosecuted and punished accordingly. That is a far different example than simply writing dumb ideas in a paper.
4
I think anonymity done properly on the Internet is invaluable to a proper investigation of ideas by young people. A little mischief seems to lead to more socially aware people in my view, and I've also heard the same from very prominent psychological studies. I've also seen it in my children, that sometimes they have to do bad things to see how it makes them feel. Personal investigation and a search for an internal moral compass rather than an external, forced moral compass makes for better people and better citizens.
I have a lot in common with this writer, by the way.
I think a lot of people would not want to be me given my experiences, but I also think my lessons in life have actually shaped me such that I can be a very positive force for good if I can keep my head screwed on strait.
I'm rambling...
Back to the internet, I think it is an unfair medium and something should probably be done about it legally. Prominent people like Mark Cuban use apps that create ephemeral content for legal purposes, and I think over time we're going to have to build something into the infrastructure of our memory devices that allows the creator of content to eliminate it if so desired, not just from devices they control, but from devices they don't control, but only after a certain length of time. This is similar in intent to the statute of limitations, I think.
Build it right in to devices. It won't happen for decades, but I like to think that far ahead.
Williams College must fire this hooligan immediately. We cannot allow this kind of behavior to stand unpunished.
Well, these days folks are saving up their dumb mistakes for a time when they should be contemplative adults,(ie, the election of trump). But then again, there is the fatal hazing of fraternity members.
1
Reische: "We must expand this universal right to develop and grow."
There is no such "right". And a "universal right" cannot be "expanded", because it is already fully "expanded" -- that's what "universal" means.
A "chief communications officer" should be able to express himself more clearly.
2017-12-10 01:04:05 UTC
1
"Nothing lasts forever".
Except anything that is digitized. THAT will be there for all to see. Future employers. The government. Your present friends and family. Your future friends and family. Your children. Your children's children.
Ya know how uncomfortable it can be looking back at your high school or college yearbook? Now EVERYONE can see you, read what you wrote after just a few too many jello shots and it will live forever and ever. Every ill advised decision is now enshrined and just a Google search away...from anyone.
3
Having come of age before the Internet, I am so very glad there is no permanent, publicly-available record of any of my mistakes and failures as a young adult. From huge relationship mistakes, to career gaffes, not to mention that quasi-illegal stuff that most people engage in at one point or another. At one point my life was by many estimates a mess, of which I was fortunate to dig out before the mess got too deep. Thankfully, I learned from it all. It's ironic to me now that I am seen as some type of role model. If they only knew!
I only hope today's generation has the same opportunity to dig out, but I am not sure if they do.
3
It's more than just the technology - though that is certainly a major component. It is also the economic world we have created in which every step of a child's life has been plotted out starting in grade school, leading up to his or her preselected career. Electives chosen, clubs and other after-school activities, all are selected not because the student is interested, but because they have been identified as the "correct" items to be listed on the resume in order to enter the "right" university, and get the "right" unpaid internship that will lead to being hired for the "right" job. Any misstep along the way can derail the entire train off the track. In my day, I was able to drop out of college and go to work at a blue-collar factory job until I figured out what I really wanted to do with my life. At which point I went back to school, finished my degree, and embarked on the career that really did fit my life and personality. How possible is that for a young adult today - even without having anything particularly dumb preserved forever on social media? Once a student steps (or falls) off the preplanned career track, how quickly will he fall so far behind that there is no longer a possibility of getting back on? My unionized factory job paid enough to fully finance my second shot at college. A minimum wage McJob won't do that.
3
Just the thought of a McDonald's getting into Williamstown — that's a good one!
Fine piece, Jim. Miles Davis nicely takes us out (and further).
Is the author talking about healthy intellectual risks like the Wellesley opinion piece or vandalism, flunking out of college and narrowly dodging more jail? While the author emerged out of his clearly tumultuous young adulthood, many back in the 80's might not have been so fortunate despite the lack of internet and social media. Poor choices have always had consequences, some quite dramatic.
3
We learn from mistakes. Though you don’t make mistakes without attempts, you cannot improve your skills and knowledge. Especially when you are young, try and make mistakes for your success in the future.
Return the power at Universities to the Faculty.
The success of the American higher system has been to go back to the basics - teachers & students. Everyone else is 'support staff'. The exalted 'Deans', 'Chancellors' etc of the old world were glorified administrative staff. However, these administrators held the purse strings and have become more and more powerful with time. The focus of the University system is changing - from a place of scholarly pursuits, some universal, some edgy, some cutting edge, to a glorified play-pen for young adults who are given strict boundaries. Legal liability is holds sway over radical ideas. Administrative jobs have become the last refuge of the most mediocre academics and they reward themselves with hefty paychecks and perks. At some institutions there are more administrative staff than there are faculty.
2
The ubiquity of smart phones and the prominence of smart phones has made the internet a crowd-sourced big brother. Not just for college students. It no longer matters if you did something wrong. The perception is the only thing that matters. We are all public figures now.
1
I'm wondering whether future politicians will be disqualified from office on the basis of a photo, video, or text message from high school or college, that violates whatever the norms turn out to be 5, 10, or 20 years from now. Or will we give a free pass to mistakes people made before the age of 25 or so? I can only imagine what exists in cyberspace and what might come back to haunt people, however unfair that might be.
4
Interesting pushback against the typical criticism of colleges as bubbles and sheltering cribs that prevent students from learning about the real world.
Yes I've made dumb mistakes when I was younger. Used to play video games a lot and streamed them. Turns out an employer found out. They thought it was 'funny', but by no means did I.
It took a lot of fighting with YouTube and Google, emails to YouTube video creators, but it all came down. Then it took a while for Google's search engine to stop recommending my real life name with Internet aliases. I went as far as removing myself from all the website personal info aggregates (Spokeo), putting everything on hidden, from my Facebook having no info and my LinkedIn being hard to search for. It's been around 4 years, but it is all cleared up, but you get PTSD and have to remember your entire life can be ruined by just one thing on the Internet.
The biggest problem is this: Google, Microsoft, et al, seem to believe that the burden to remove is on you. People can literally post anything they want on the Internet, type your name and your profession and ruin your reputation. Worse yet, there are projects like 'WayBackMachine' which thinks they have the right to store everything.
These companies try to hide behind 'we're search engines' but have an obligation to monitor what is being returned. Honestly, they really don't care about you or anyone, just your info, how accurate the results are about you. This needs to stop.
1
This article should have contained more reflection about all the young people not fortunate enough to go to college, or to be white. Those people surely deserve to be cut some slack before the children of the moneyed, white classes. Right now, thousands of disadvantaged young African-American males are serving prison time for the same minor marijuana offenses that are being practiced routinely by wealthy frat boys while the police avert their eyes.
3
Ain’t that the truth, Mr. R. With everyone, and I mean everyone, becoming connected about a decade and a half ago, we thought the sky was the limit and nothing could go wrong. But then it turned out reaching for the sky may land you in an embarrassing gaffe, broadcast over and over - on a global scale. How do we cope with the internet’s sheer public power and our kid’s right to be kids? We’re entering a new world, Mr. R. Maybe we’ve been there a while and we’re only just noticing. Either way, it’s a world I’ll remain weary of. A world where risk, healthy risk mind you, is stifled. I don’t know if I like it.
1
The dumb mistakes of a college student, often shared with pride years later, are far less likely to interfere with the progress of his or her life than the dumb mistakes of a young person who does not or cannot go to college.
The public nature of mistakes is here to stay, even if a person does not himself have a social media account. People can talk about him and even lie about him using their accounts.
Given the only very small chance that social media will lose its special talent for shining a spotlight on mistakes and embarrassments, we might seize the opportunity to better develop our capacity to forgive and our responsibility to help the young come back from their mistakes into a fruitful, pro-social life.
While I like the general sentiment of forgiveness, and share some frustration with social media -- a nuance of college student condescension may lurk here. College students are legitimately where they are, as we all are (I'm 69 and still making a lot of dumb mistakes, forgivable and not.) But, yes, college should be a safe place to think, argue, explore -- without some of the national exposure media, not just social, now brings with some mistakes.
I have triplet college seniors, all dealing with social media in different ways, just as they're handling life's issues in different ways. Fortunately, they're all bad at spray-painting, but they're all politically very active. They would concur with Miles Davis' statement, I hope. Yet, even at 22 it's hard for the brain, especially male brains, to foreseen consequences effectively.
Social media is here to stay, and to expand. Let's "deal with it" in ways we have yet to comprehend. We excoriate it yet we give kids and ourselves virtually no platform or tools to live with it reasonably and get on with our lives. We demonize it as though it caused our earthly problems, rather than digging into seeing it as symptomatic of our ennui and anxiety.
No one is arguing there shouldn't be consequences for irresponsible or destructive decisions. But internet mob justice is not justice.
2
We all made varying degrees of mistakes in college and yes, that should be allowed. The problem comes when actions from youthful arrogance are politicized and selectively punished.
Social media certainly plays a roll but it’s up to college administrators like Reische to judge consequences. The Kafka esque nature of current college campuses is the main driver in the no tolerance world of youthful mistakes. And then we wonder why they are so fragile yet angry.
Yes, it's hard for many to learn the difference between occasional, immature mistakes of youth...and hard headed idiocy, continuously repeated. And having it all on the web in some form is tough, no doubt.
That many transgressions will forever be available for the world to see isn't going to change. All you can do is warn your students to stop before they do something and ask, what will the consequence be if it's forever on a server.
I've taught as an adjunct at several colleges for decades, and while there are today in my experience a fair number of honest, hardworking and good students -- too many aren't, can't self reflect and haven't a clue as to what they don't know.
What's frightening is that we're clearly moving into a kind of intolerance and policing of thoughts and actions unseen in centuries. A vocal minority of students today are for free speech as long as they approve of what you say. And think this is perfectly fine. And spineless administrators back them up.
The immature who by definition have almost no life experience or wisdom, are having an outsize influence on what's taught and how university business will be conducted.
They should be given a chance to express their opinions, like everyone else. And most mistakes will be forgiven, unless it's an accusation of harassment. Then the new standard of no due process, just "I said it happened, so you are guilty" is here. A system of "justice" based on that standard is the biggest mistake of all.
1
Nice, thoughtful piece, Mr. Reische. I hope your feelings about McDonald's haven't changed.
4
The problem really starts at the top - in our courts, with the idea that even a 14 year-old is fully responsible for his/her actions.
3
I have a 21-year-old son who is a junior (by my count) in college. Thank you for reminding me to be patient - and supportive. The memories of all those dumb things I did have come flooding back. ...
1
Mr. Reische, I could not agree more. Nicely said.
1
During my junior year of college (2013), I got into a bit of a fight with some campus Republicans. They wanted to join the student organization that I led, but my organization voted -- democratically -- not to admit them, because their mission was not aligned with the greater group. In the aftermath, one of them went on a smear campaign against me which was picked up by a number of conservative blogs. The results are now visible to every prospective employer who Googles my name.
It strikes me that, had this happened 10 or 20 years before, things would have gone down very differently. Maybe our campus newspaper might have published some of her accusations, but everyone who read them would have forgotten them shortly. My prospective employers would not have easy access to lies made by an upset 20-year-old in the heat of the moment.
5
My favorite corporate death burger in college was the quarter pounder with cheese. Yum!
But I don't eat many corporate death burgers these days.
When I was of high school and college age in the early to mid 1970's it was amazing how easily we could be forgiven. There was also far more courtesy around. And sensibility. It was a time when people weren't so uptight. At age 17 I was caught smoking pot with a friend in my Dad's car. The cops searched the car and found a pound of pot we had just purchased ($90) in the trunk. The two cops took us to the police station and called our Dad's. When they arrived the four of us stood before the desk sergeant to get what I thought would be very bad news. The sergeant held up a lid bag of marijuana and said "we caught your sons with this marijuana but because they're only 17 were going to let them off with a a warning". My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief. Neither of our fathers were especially upset. There was no punishment meted out. Except for the pound of marijuana the cops apparently kept for themselves, which we were glad to donate to our general education on life.
Today, we live in a different world. A rather thick book could be written about "why" this has happened. But, in short, we started demonizing again. The Reagan's demonized drugs and ballooned our prison population. Republicans demonized Democrats and ballooned our National Debt. Trump is demonizing Muslim's, Mexicans and anyone who dares to challenge him. So yeah, bad Republican leaders is the problem. It trickles down. Now they're demonizing taxes, again. I wouldn't want to be college age today.
1
Well said. But the same must apply to students who make other kinds of mistakes, too, not just those intended to address injustice.
At Fordham University two years ago during Halloween, an undergraduate displayed a lynched ghost from her dorm window, apparently thinking it was appropriately scary. From the ground, oddly enough, the effigy looked very much like a black body hanging from a rope and alarmed reports to campus police were instantaneous. Sooner after, the offender was swiftly disciplined and then briefly became a symbol among outraged students and faculty of all that was wrong with the school, its culture, and its administration.
Students make lots of mistakes. Rather than punishing them, we should use their mistakes to teach and encourage them. That's our job. Our own mistake is to fail to distinguish between poor judgment and insidious, anti-social behavior.
4
I once read that I am glad that I am old enough that every stupid thing I did when I was younger did not recorded or posted on the internet. Mr. Reische is correct. People need to be able to make mistakes to learn. If you do what you know, you do not learn new skills. Mistakes and failure are essential to learning.
1
experiments are good, but they need to be smart: reasoned and thoughtful. Dumb mistakes are always dumb, and nobody should be encouraged.
As a freshman living in a dorm we would get stoned practically 24/7 ( 1972) and get the munchies. We ordered about 4 pizzas and "Marc" our wheelchair bound cerebral palsy dormmate distracted the delivery guy while we boosted the remaining pizzas from the poor guys car. It was mean and thoughtless but it was a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers moment and we thought it was very funny at the time running thru the woods with the pizzas. But it was mean and it was theft and I have remorse about this . To the pizza guy : I'm sorry.
1
You picked a bad time to admit that you vandalized a McDonald's while in college. We've suddenly decided to define people solely by the stupidest thing they ever did. Or at least by the stupidest thing they admit to. (Sorry, Al Franken.)
In keeping with the New Puritanism, you'll be fired when you show up for work tomorrow.
5
50 years ago it was “Don’t trust anyone over 30” that seems to hold true again.
1
or "don't trust anyone under 30" after we all turned 30
And what to say about Donald Trump who has been making “mistakes” ( lying scamming, stiffing, predatory sexual behavior and racial discrimination etc.) most of his adult life not only without suffering any major ill consequences but by being rewarded with the presidency. The vindictive bullying Trump of seventy seems little different from the agressive second grader who punched his teacher in the face.The power (and lawyers) that great wealth confers means that people like Trump can keep making “mistakes” that hurt the rest of us and they never even have to say they’re sorry.
"But last year, when Wellesley’s student paper ran an editorial wrestling with this same idea — and advocating limits on hate speech — it was widely read and criticized in the media as if it were enormously consequential."
If you analyze that event for the source of the overstepping, it's of course lay in: "... widely read and criticized in the media as if ...." And if you drill down on that and ask how do things come to be in the media, the answer for the most part is the pressure to please advertisers. Junk news (fake news is unprofessionally presented junk news) exists to make money.
That said, if our society lifts dumb mistakes to a higher level of exposure, the cure is a higher level of disregard in response. We are in the phase where viral means something be cause viral is a new and shiny object. This too shall pass. In the meantime kids are just going to have to learn to live with some embarrassment until the adults grow up and stop trying to cash in on cheap journalistic paydays.
One wonders how forgiving Mr. Reische would be if some "college kid(s)" vandalized his or his family's private property. Would he as forgiving then? And,what if they were not attending college, or, gasp, college dropouts?
3
They need not wait for college to make a mistake.
Rumors and allegations on social media have pushed children as young as 8 to suicide.
And those that started the rumor skip happily down the lane with no real punishment.
everything now "Goes into your permanent record".
Don't we wish that Steely Dan's Pepe existed?
" Do you have a dark spot on your past
Leave it to my man he'll fix it fast
Pepe has a scar from ear to ear
He will make your mug shots disappear" …
Throughout my time at a prestigious American college, I felt reluctant to speak publicly because of the internet's indelibility. Online, even our non-malicious mistakes and miscalculations may be permanently preserved. We will continue to lose experimental, independent voices as young people become more self-conscious of how everything online will follow them forever, hunted by the swift societal judgement of Twitter's impulsive talons.
Those who came of age before the internet: imagine applying for a job and knowing with absolutely certainty that when your potential employer Googles your name, they will see your LinkedIn, followed by a link to your Dumb Mistake. People make swift and unconscious judgements; this is an event in your life that will always be attached to your name thanks to algorithms. We lose privacy, the benefit of the doubt, and the forgiveness of time and experience. We deserve the chance to be modestly young, stupid, and confused without the omnipresent threat of a social media bodyslam—a public archeology that preserves all the outrage and none of the good lesson you learned.
We should be brave enough to speak, and compassionate with young people who are still evolving and learning the way. Dialogue, not diatribe.
"Because in 1985, a college student could get a little self-righteous, make a bad decision, face consequences and then go home, having learned a “valuable lesson.”."
Mr. Reische is not a person of color. Back in 1985, if he were, then the chances are, as he writes later on, that he would have learned a different lesson, been arrested and possibly had his life ruined. I am going to venture a wild guess and state that today, that situation would be the same in many places. White student gets reprimand and walks away, student of color gets arrested. And the same for the local non-student.
Situations change, Mr. Resiche. Students even in the 1970s (when I went to school in the US) did dumb things. You do something dumb, there might be a price to pay, 1970's. 1980's or now. That is part of growing up and learning to face reality.
It might be a game, but there are rules and often also losers. Errors indeed might be necessary as part of the progress, but sometimes, so is paying the price even for a stupid (non-violent) action.
1
Miles Davis "left behind" an observation or, perhaps, a comment. Mr. Reische quotes Miles Davis. Unless Miles Davis was himself preserving something said earlier, he did not leave behind a "quote."
This is the sort of writing we can expect from a "communications officer" in the increasingly corporate culture of higher education.
1
The author's comments are generally refreshing and timely.
But even he, with his ideal vantage point, illustrates in his own thinking some of the problems that he points out.
Whenever the word "balance" appears, we know that we are losing something. The "balance" between free speech and behavior has pretty much been settled in the real world - free speech is protected even when it is hateful. It is disturbing that students in his institution are still grappling with it.
It seem that "privilege and power" are still occupying too much of the attention of students and staff at his institution, and the conclusions are doctrinaire. There are other vital issues for students to be dealing with as well.
The problem is not "technology" but how it is used. There is no requirement to be obsessed with what anonymous idiots are saying on social media. Of course young people, following the herd, are caught up in it, but one of the roles of an educational institution should be to provide a voice of good sense. And I doubt that "outraged calls and emails and tweets" to the institution about Deathburgers would be coming from sources that the college should care much about. But apparently it does.
The college should be functioning as a voice of calm and reason in the midst of a world of outrage and furor. If it is caught up in this chaos as well, it is not doing its job.
What about 20-year olds who aren’t fortunate enough to be students or 40-year olds who have finally been able to save enough to go to school? I am opposed to carving out exceptions for one category of adult over another. From campus “courts” to calling undergraduates “kids“, America is raising an entire grneration of manchildren. It’s gross.
14
It is neurologically accurate. Parts of the brain involved in foresight and decision making change significantly in young adulthood, not reaching mature form until 25. Maturity matters. Experience matters. Anybody who is mature and experienced knows these things.
What's gross in my opinion are mature adults who want to claim equivalence to 20 year olds, merely because the law draws some arbitrary line.
2
The starting point for this discussion is this: technology is NOT going away. Therefore, the best you can do is limit their time with it as much as you can when they are young, then coach them yourself and find great mentors for them before releasing them to college.
We will undoubtedly raise a generation of kids who fear failure. They will probably be less creative and less willing to take risk. I don’t believe there is any way around that. “Sexting” earns a child a conviction for child porn, toying with programming tools freely available in gaming forums online earns him a criminal conviction for hacking, and even mere ideas immortalized online forever can come back to haunt them, limiting job prospects and relationship opportunities.
I hate it, and I’m sad for them, but I don’t see a solution except to protect them and teach them for as long as possible.
1
The importance of them is to learn from others not to do dumb things. They are not "mistakes" since almost anybody knows that they are wrong. Possibly illegal, and stupid. I did not do this but back in the day frats guarded a statue and others tried to harm it. Some idiots tried to burn a concrete statue with gas, burned them selves. Dumb and very dangerous. Then the defenders did something even stupider, they delivered punishment before getting them medical help. Too stupid to be in college by my standards, both groups.
A breath of fresh air! Please make sure Frank Bruni reads your column. Thank you for acknowledging that students are young people who are testing out ideas. That's true for kids on the left and on the right. I would add that they often seem to be young men--specifically, to my jaded eyes, young men in need of attention.
1
When I was a sophomore in college, a famous writer Immanuel Velikovsky came and gave a lecture. I had researched one of his books and wrote a letter to the campus newspaper detailing how he had misrepresented his claims. He wrote a long response to the newspaper Lesson for a sophomore when he threatened to sue if it was not published. It was a personal attack rather than a refutation. I ended up requesting two professors in the field to write their opinions in rely. They did and were in agreement with the points I had made. One of the Professors is an icon in Egyptology, John Wilson. Without this experience I would never have talked with him. Without the experience I would not have gained a campus name recognition to get elected a class officer, and that led to activities that helped me get into medical school and have a life in psychiatry and a life long interest and study of Egyptology. So public scrutiny can sometimes be helpful.
7
In my college teaching career spanning over 4 decades, I told my students not to fear failure and the college years were the right time and the place for failing. Learning without failure, or mistakes is transient. It is the failure that makes learning rooted because we know what does not work and why. Is there anyone who has learned that touching a hot stove burns without at least minimally experiencing it?
To all college students, may you fail and fail soon, then get up a wiser person. Not learning from failures is indeed a failure.
27
Right. Only college kids should have this opportunity
Jails are full of kids who did not go to college and made smaller mistakes
Keep in mind colleges already protect their students from arrests for rape, hazing, and drugs.
Just another reason to really dislike these folks.
10
I take it you didn't get too far in the piece, specifically, the part where the author acknowledges that he had an advantage being a white UM student, and that young people who were not in his position would have learned a different lesson than he. He then goes on to advocate for higher education as a universal opportunity for all people to be able to learn from their mistakes.
The author also said that this tolerance of mistakes cannot enter the realm of sexual assault.
Another reason to really dislike these folks? Is it their fault you cannot critically read something more than 140 characters long?
2
I shutter at the mistakes I made when I was growing up. Some of which could have put me in jail (or at least got me in trouble with the law) had they been known. But I am absolutely certain that I never would have posted online what kids today post. Why? Because I grew up in a small town and I know how powerful gossip is and how the town stories and reputation never really go away. I think the kids who post everything grew up in the rootless suburbans of America with the weak connections and they just don't know a good story is forever.
8
An excellent article. One additional point: let's not forget who's not letting the kids who write the dumb articles or spray paint the McDonald's off the hook. It's the people, often the students' peers, who, whether for political, personal, or other reasons, are raising a hue and cry and forming the cyber mobs. Often they are anonymous. Almost always they are nasty. The troll mentality has been with us a long time. But the trolls have never before had such a long reach.
5
I teach at least 30 first year college students every semester, and I have for almost 20 years. They are a reason to get up in the morning. They are thirsty for the answers, for friendship, for some clue to what they are meant to be and do. My deep respect and affection for my students does not mean that I accept their technology compulsions, their need to cradle their phone in their crotch as they miss another explanation of the arguable thesis.
Mr. Reische misses the point. Kids behaving badly are victimized by other kids who photograph and upload every moment of their own lives and the lives of as many others as they can.
I feel an increasing duty (yes, I mean duty) to make the classroom a phone-free space. Their phones are killing them, and sometimes they use their phones to hurt each other in ways I could never have imagined as a college student.
72
MeISA, I couldn't agree more. I'm down the ladder at the elementary level, teaching reading. My "babies" are so fascinated with my phone when I use it to time reading fluency passages. They often proceed to tell me about their own phones. When they do, I'm thinking, "Why does a 7,8 year-old need a phone?" Mobile phones have altered our lives in good and questionable ways. I don't think we yet realize what the long-term impacts are.
Yesterday, I read an article about how American children were bested by Russian children on measures of reading; that we've again taken a slip in these international rankings. As an educator of 33 years, I can't help but wonder if the rapid advance of technology in the last 10 years (mobile phones in particular) is having an impact on said reading measures; if watching the latest video has supplanted the hard work of learning to read and think.
1
Is it not possible we’re both right? Yes, I see kids (I don’t mean so-called young adults, even, but children, like your students) doing this to each other. And every day I also deal with the consequences of adults heaping scorn on “young learners “ of every age. Like any type of tool, a phone or social media account can cause inadvertent harm or be used as a weapon. But are we really going to claim that students deserve sole blame? We need to teach before imposing responsibility and accountability. Many teachers like you are on the front lines of this shift and working hard. But it can’t be fixed in the classroom alone. We need to reaffirm our social compact and commitment to learning.
2
I'm not sure "Mr. Reische misses the point." His point was on target. Yours is as well, but it's a different point. Both valid and both on target.
2
Me, in the spring of 1971 I caused a near riot in the upper class dorm which resulted in a couple hundred men stampeding to the women's dorm (that certain Jesuit institution in the Bronx.) I wound up in the "Dean of Discipline" office next morning, threatened with expulsion. All parietal rules were obeyed.
It seems to me that the author is entirely too sympathetic to the vacuous banalities that pass for passionate politics on campus today. His vandalism of McDonalds and today's hair-trigger-high-dungeon-as-critical-thinking confusion on campus are rediculous. If the academy and the left think we're going to change the world let's first get a sense of proportion and priorities and act practically to influence change rather than wallow in our own rightiousness with no effects other than to energize the Trump-Moore-etc haters. On the right we see the emergence of hate and dogma unmatched since the 1930s in central Europe but on campuses today we see all the self-congratulatory but vineer thin rhetoric targeting "micro aggressions" and "trigger topics." There is real evil in the world and a march by the womens studies department to support trans students' protests of a video about gender free grammar (which happened last month) isn't taking on that evil in any meaningful way - all that is doing is giving the right ammunition and contributing to grade inflation on campus.
6
Hmm, 'giving the right ammunition'? That's an interesting way to look at it.
So college students are not yet adults, not yet mature, can make stupid mistakes and learn from them, but they are old enough to carry guns.
8
I taught high school for a few years, and tried to get this idea into the kid's brains.
I grew up in an age when, if you had your record expunged, someone literally went to a file cabinet and removed the files - your record was gone. You had a fresh start.
Now the file cabinet is permanent - the files can't be removed, and you get no second chance. It's too bad, but it's real.
61
The new reality of a world where everyone is connect 24/4 and privacy seem quant is that young people need to understand the consequences of their actions. While the author's point about learning through making mistakes is valid it seems naive to expect the world to become more tolerant. If anything it is only going to get worse.
2
I like the provocations in this piece. However, there is little evidence to support that "Technological connectedness has made it much harder for them to make mistakes and learn from them." I presume the the first "them" refers to young students and the second "them" means the mistakes. Indeed, there are just different kinds of mistakes that tech users make, and new opportunities that await them.
Of course people make a whole spectrum of "dumb mistakes" throughout life. The question becomes whether we gain perspective from those mistakes, and if they provide additional pathways to deeper problem solving.
We must also be careful how we categorize mistakes, and be sure not to conflate moral shortcomings with legal judgments, and technological exploration with cybercrime. In the end, we should take responsibility for what we say and write, and know we can be held accountable for our words. Let's face it though: the young we often expect to stumble--and by the look of our country, the adults are rewarded for it.
2
Excellent article. When I was much younger, I asked a mentor what the point of education was. His answer, "To teach people to think for themselves." He, of course, was correct. Some of those independent thoughts led to the civil rights marches and to the anti-war protests during the Viet Nam war. That made many people uncomfortable, so in many places, education was changed from "teaching people to think for themselves" to "teaching them what they're 'supposed' to think. Or to quote a representative here in AZ, "we don't want colleges teaching our children things we don't want them to know about."
And, yes, this happens on both ends of the political spectrum. Anti-Trump people are threatened for the sin of daring to disagree with the ideas of those who support him. That's not new. It goes at least all the way back to the civil rights and Viet Nam war protests where the power of the FBI was used to try to squelch dissenting opinion. On the left, political correctness is used for the same purpose.
Why are we so afraid of dissenting opinion? Truth often appears in the conflict between opposing ideas. Have a good chat with someone who disagrees with you. You'll probably learn something if you stop arguing long enough to listen.
4
Vandalism is hardly the same as experimentation with ideas. One would hope that the author made restitution for his crime. That being said, it is concerning that in this age where people feel the need to digitally record every waking moment or thought that such activity can cause them and others harm now and forever. I had a student who thoughtlessly posted a picture of herself which was read by a few as suggesting something other than intended. The resulting uproar she is still living with a year later. The problem with the digital age is that such things live forever in the cyberworld even when supposedly removed by the author.
4
There is value in a measure of circumspection without paranoia, but I think young people cannot avoid risks they cannot imagine. Young people who have relationships with mentors might find it valuable to know people who have seen a bit more of the road ahead. But I feel for today's college students. We are a permissive, yet intolerant society. We demand perfection but reward the most base and ignorant behavior. Instead of building communities, we strengthen resumes. What are they learning about life, and what should we expect for them in the future?
2
Technology is one piece, but our litigious society is another reason kids aren't offered the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Whether it's a neighbor whose father is a lawyer and can push to prosecute the 12 year-old for toilet papering his house, or the cops use of excessive force on a drunk college kid -- our legal system has replaced the opportunity for parents to reasonably discipline if given the opportunity to respond to the situation rather than responding to the over-used court system.
1
I absolutely agree with the conclusion of the author, that today's college students deserve the opportunity to make mistakes and do stupid things without earning them the wrath of the entire internet. But it won't happen.
Why not? Because today's generation of young people not only don't value their own or each other's privacy, they actually have no idea what privacy is or why it is so valuable. They willingly embrace every gadget that records every bit of data about them that it can; they willingly participate in every social media platform in existence, knowing that every keystroke they type remains "in the cloud" forever.
The world has changed, and in my opinion not for the better. But they are stuck with it, unless they are willing to fight to change it themselves.
1
I completely agree with the writer. And, like most, I made huge dumb mistakes - all of which went under the radar, but some of which I could have been arrested for - but it was very easy then to learn from the mistakes and move on to become productive members of society. I fear, like the writer, for the kids of today. One false move and you are marked for life, it seems.
5
More importantly perhaps, students should have a chance to make "dumb mistakes" in college without having to be saddled with huge debts when they finish--or if they CAN finish.
Getting caught doing pranks is the least of their worries today.
Remember when state universities charged less that $100 a credit, or even less than $50 in some places? The exponential increase means if you get into a major that doesn't suit your abilities or the job market, you could really be paying for your "dumb mistakes" for a long time!
And it looks like we're about to make the lives of students--especially grad students--even harder.
If we really do want this economic growth we keep hearing about with the new tax bill(s) these days, shouldn't we be doing more to HELP students? Don't most of the well-paying jobs today require at least some advanced education, and doesn't good pay lead to greater productivity and more consumption?
6
The problem here isn't modernity, or students, but the Internet. The Internet is modern society's Id, and it will simply behave the way it does. Of course, the fact that so many individuals feel free to behave like a psychological construct once the shackles of identity are removed is a problem in itself. The Internet is undoubtedly changing the way society behaves out in the open, and arguably not for the better.
1
I am a geezer but not that old a geezer. Just old enough to remember life before social media, back, way back, say, in the mid 00s.
Your question is about what I did when I was young that I'm glad hadn't been documented for posterity.
I want to answer this question from another perspective. About a month ago, I posted something on FB which triggered the Great FB Computer Profiling Device and got my account closed for reasons I still cannot understand. My occasional "FB vacations" were liberating but I always came back with my tail between my legs.
I was offered the opportunity to "appeal" the Device's ruling--behind which I am convinced there was never any human involvement. I did not take advantage of the opportunity and, so, my forced retirement from social media, however long it may last, has caused my blood pressure to drop and my happiness to soar.
6
The "dumbest" mistake that college students can make is to forget that the primary reason for being there is to prepare oneself for earning a much better than average living after graduation. Leaving out the rare few who enjoy ancestral trust funds, that would mean making oneself more marketable to those potential employers who pay well and offer opportunities for advancement. That selling job is not advanced by portraying oneself as a rowdy enemy of those who hold the keys to ones future. There comes a time in life to grow up and face economic reality. That should occur at about age 18. What you will have to sell is "you" as a desirable employee -- a fact that cannot be avoided.
4
The main reason to go to college is to learn. If it was all about making more money, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg would not have dropped out and anybody smart enough to be a professor of anything would instead get an MBA and go to Wall Street. Of course, this would mean that even MBA candidates would be taught by those too simple-minded to get themselves jobs at large corporations with lots of opportunity for advancement. And we could close down the History, English and Art departments.
1
I am all for making mistakes, and being lenient with people who make them. We all make mistakes throughout all of our lives. Husbands and wives spent their lives forgiving their mutual mistakes. The same goes for parents and children. However, there are mistakes and mistakes. In the case of university students, two come to mind: One thing is to paint some graffiti (vandalize property), but a very different one is to assault a fellow student who had too many drinks at a frat party. Yes, both are "youth" mistakes, but one cannot be lenient with the second one. The difference needs to be made clear, very clear. "Dumb" mistakes can be forgiven. For grave mistakes "zero tolerance" should apply.
4
Absolutely. I remember seeing a fellow student in the 80s argue rudely with a professor at a political rally. I imagine he's embarrassed looking back at it. At the time, there were about 20 witnesses. At my daughter's college a couple of years ago, a student lost her temper at a rally and rudely shouted down a professor, and made some dumb comments. Pundits all over America, especially on the right, shared the video and vilified her. She was shamed nationally, found it hard to leave her dorm room, became overwhelmed by anxiety. It was social media combined with the easy cruelty of pundits.
1
Certainly college students find campuses as a place to find their way. To try new things and to create their moral, ethical, and philosophical personae. As it should be. And when they make mistakes along the way during those years, they learn from those mistakes. But then they turn on the evening news and discover that you don't have to recognize when you've gone to far. You can double down on your interpretation, never admitting you are wrong. That, just maybe, addressing grievances by ruining a company's reputation or degrading an individual is OK after all . That is what we have in the White House. For Trump saved his spray paint until he became president. Clearly, he was too busy pursuing other things in college to learn any of life's lessons back then. For going too far never enters his mind. The adult in the room is no long there to lead by a positive example. Perhaps, like many others, Trump will become a visiting scholar or a college president after his political career. And show inquiring minds how adults are supposed to behave. Creating a whole generation of trumps. God help us.
1
I have to say, as a current college student that I do not really agree totally. I think that social media is extremely problematic and I am not in favor of the focus put on Facebook, Instagram et. al. But, I also think that a lot of kids make really stupid decisions that are not worth rationalizing. Or at least, the argument should not be that the bad behavior is okay. The idea that all kids are just kids and everyone does criminal things is just wrong. Plenty of people manage to control themselves and not give in to substances etc. Bad decisions should be recognized as such, and we should be judged by them. (Though perhaps without the megaphone of social media.)
28
Nice reaction—except that when one is a college student one is no longer a “kid.”
2
Our daughter is a college freshman in Paris, France currently. She does not use social media, and I am not sure what she is up to day in and day out, and that is the point of her going to college. Away from mom and dad. This is her time to grow and experience life, and we try to stay out of it as much as possible. That being said, we hope that she makes good decisions and doesn't try to knock off a bank or create a national outrage. She feels as though she is accepted as an American, although questioned frequently about our politics. She reminds them that she was not of voting age for this election. Seems to work for her. She was very worried about that actually, which is something, I would think, most college kids do not worry about. But I digress.
You talk about teens 18 and 19 and young adults age 20+ as though they are "kids". At some point, they must be allowed to be adults and make adult decisions. And then live with those consequences. The era my daughter was raised in was fraught with helicopter parents who swoop in at the first sight of trouble, making sure their prodigy does not fail or face punishment. And this is the major difference between the generations. They may be scolded perhaps on social media, but most this are not. They face no consequence. Most have this carefully crafted facade of perfection. Which is troubling. Most are not allowed to fail and that has led to nothing more than an increase in adolescent suicide, drug use and antidepressants.
4
College student here.
A few months ago I deleted all of my social media; this has undoubtedly been a great decision. I've never been addicted to a drug, but I'd imagine the first few weeks without social media are similar to the first few weeks of rehab.
I am a much happier person now because of it. I don't spend my time comparing myself to my peers, and in fact, contrary to what most my age would believe, my relationships with others have deepened because all of my interactions with my friends (my true friends) are limited to in-person.
Social media is toxic. I've seen friends go depressed over it. I'm not going to lie though, I've filled the void with the NYT and Economist. I don't think my generation yet realizes how damaged the world we will inherit is going to be.
182
"I don't think my generation yet realizes how damaged the world we will inherit is going to be."
...it's not just YOUR generation. Look at the president.
1
Congratulations!
1
It doesn't have to be toxic. Like alcohol, some of us can handle it. I have Facebook for family--only post to share something one of my aunts might like, or share an (approved) pic of my teenagers. Don't compare myself to others--never did, but certainly could have prior to Facebook if I wanted to. I use Twitter to follow other academics. Rarely tweet, but find things I wouldn't otherwise in the narrow confines of my specialty. Follow my kids on snapchat. They don't post that often either. Everything in moderation, and don't rely on others for a sense of self-worth.
3
Not much more than a century ago a 15 year old was treated as an adult- now our legal definition has been pushed up 6 years, but our culture still lags behind the science- a 21 year old is not yet equipped with a fully devweloped brain and very important intelligences are not yet connected and functional.
When I was 21 this was unknown but when my son was 21, 6 years ago, he was fully aware of this intellectually, but didn't really believe it. He was pretty sure his brain functioned better than mine, and it probably did- but it still was not an adult brain.
Now he seems like an adult to me and his frontal lobe fully functional. Before empathy may have been feigned but it seems genuine now and he has a much better understanding and concern for the motivations and emotional needs of his peers and himself (and his parents... yay).
Adulthood does not proceed a fully functioning cognitive system and it is time for society to catch up with the science. Even the crimes of a 21 year old should probably be viewed differently than those with fully assembled brains. Of course we should expect and accept different behaviors from college age people and not judge their thinking and actions the same way we do at that indeterminate moment their minds are fully assembled.
5
Our brains develop alongside our behaviors. If we had the ability to scan brains 100 years ago, who's to say a 16-year-old brain back then didn't look like a 21-year-old brain today? Surely the way in which our brains develop depends on a much more complex array of social and societal factors than the assumption many modern neuroscientific studies seem to rely on -- namely, that each brain is an individuated entity that causes our outward behaviors. We are fundamentally social creatures.
This is a long way of saying: If we tell a generation they don't have to grow up until their mid-20s, their brains are sure as heck not going to beat them to it.
1
Jacob, conservatives are making a similar argument to justify trying 15 year old murderers as adults -if we let children off lightly for violent crime many believe they are more likely to commit them.
Of course our brains develop alongside our behaviors and the behavior of a 21 year old is strongly affected by their level of brain development. An awareness of long term consequences of behavior (long term planning) has been proven to require a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex, which usually occurs sometime after age 25. Empathy appears to also require this.
If the goal of prison is reformation and ultimately transforming a criminal into a law-abiding and productive citizen, of course brain development information should be included in criminal science to determine how to produce the best and most efficient rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, for clear thinking taxpayers, America has a primitive eye-for-an-eye, revenge on criminals culture, so we spend many times more on our criminal justice system than other modern nations to emphasize revenge rather than rehabilitation so I've little hope of this idea going anywhere here.
I'm not suggesting we should require less responsible behavior of young adults, just that we need to understand the difference in their perceptions in order to properly address misbehavior and encourage good.
I'm not sure what issue the author is concerned with, but I personally could care less what college students spout off about. They're supposed to have simplistic ideas on complex subjects.
The issue is when they demand to have their ideas influence school policy, and weak-willed administrators kow-tow to them. Like any generation, of course their ideas can help move things along. However, they can also be immature and short-sighted.
4
Kids who dislike reading and school work should not be pressured to go on to higher education. Ever. In America far too many people consider college as their ticket upward but don't reckon with the true value of higher education, to teach them critical and analytical thinking skills. Too many students in far too many schools that water down the value of a college degree like some absurd 1920s stock issue. Without viable alternatives such as technical training or apprenticeships in an artisanal trade, we have oversold college. That's the dumbest of all mistakes.
5
The war on college by those who believe their degrees will be "watered down" continues.
The working class gets vastly more benefit from a college education than the upper middle class. Many of these students are underprepared, but recent studies show they gain the most from college, both economically and intellectually. The New York Times has a series on the working class colleges--they give more value added than the Ivies.
If you are so against college, please don't go, and tell your own children not to go. But don't do what most of the upper middle class anti-college types do--go yourself, then send your own kids (!), all the while complaining about others trying to get what you have. That's hypocrisy.
Hmm, I did go--in a country where higher education is completely subsidised (Canada). And a much lower percentage of kids exercise the option to go to university (Canadians say that, not going to "college" which may mean their grade 13.) As in Britain college prep vs tech academic tracking begins at level 5 (8th grade). College was never intended for everyone and we need to reward those whose lives and their experience have enriched them without the "benefit" of professor-initiated personality cults and mind games...
1
Like the author, I too did something that "seemed like a good idea at the time." In 1983, my roommate and I took a ladder from our college's physical plant and then went to the local hotel to steal the flag off the flagpole. I got caught (my roommate didn't) and got charged with "criminal possession of stolen property," a misdemeanor. I did 25 hours of community service, which I actually enjoyed, so I continued to do volunteer work after my 25 hours were complete. Similar to the author, my family never found out (not sure about the school). And, I have reflected upon what would have happened today in the age of the internet. I survived and am a productive member of society, and have a freshman son in college. I worry he makes a mistake in less anonymous society.
5
What dumb mistakes did you make when you were young that you are glad didn’t get documented on the internet/social media of today?
My whole life can be considered a dumb mistake and one of the biggest problems prior to internet and social media is that society (religion and/or state) has always operated along the lines that it knows what is right and what is a mistake of youth, and this tendency is apparently only being reinforced by the internet and social media, which is to say rather than by internet and social media society possibly being mistaken for this or that, the tendency seems to be to intrude as much as possible into the lives of the young and point out this and that mistake more severely than in the past and to herd youth into the "correct" social pattern.
In short, it's a serious question whether the internet/social media are liberating and operating toward knowledge and analysis of society in total and reframing of society or if operating along constrictive, in fact totalitarian lines, catching out people for infractions as young as possible and holding them to account all their lives. My life, again, can be considered in entirety a dumb mistake. I never fit in when young and this has only gotten worse the more books I have read, the more I have taken pleasure in thinking and writing.
Strangely, the more I have learned, the more knowledgable I become, the less I seem able to become an employer or employee and the more I stand apart from society.
5
Depends on the deed.
You weren’t potentially harming others with drugs nor crossing the lines of personal space with inappropriate gestures nor remarks, but some actions should require the permeant removal of the student from the campus. If they’re not mature enough to be there yet they can go home, reflect, mature and move forward elsewhere.
1
It has always been axiomatic that trial and error is the basis of all human knowledge. Yet we often don't apply this perspective to those we believe to be beneath us in age, education, gender race, etc. We are the ones who are hurt by this point of view. We are those who suffer from the loss of other's experience/knowledge. One of the world's greatest documents was created after a lengthy and often violent "illegal" journey-THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
1
Students do deserve a chance to make mistakes, but why does the author assume that proposing limits to hate speech is a mistake? Other countries have limits on hate speech. At least one has updated its law for social media and their platforms to the irritation of Facebook, you know, the people who helped turn our election making hate speech available.
1
Doubly true in high school! Typically, our students' lives are micromanaged by parents these days (and you haven't seen shame until you've seen the opprobrium heaped on parents who don't helicopter-parent their kids), but the stakes are now so high, the room for error so small, that the parents' behavior is utterly rational. In the long run, of course, society ends up with anxious, decision-phobic, and entitled beings, a result good for neither the kids, nor society.
57
I couldn't agree more. It's an age for some adventurous souls of trying out a variety of extreme positions. One is often recently torn from the family bosom and exposed to a heady rush of new people and ideas. That's college! Alas, one also often has a terrible sense of momentousness at that age, heightening the negative experience if a public attack is the response to one's earnest bloviating.
3
I'm in the camp of the hyper-litigious society we live in is less free than the one I grew up in...fewer than two decades ago.
I've also been bitten by the hyper-righteous societal complex that scours social media for wrongs to be righted.
All of it makes no sense. And the kids' maturation is being stunted and twisted as a result.
I'm a proud Luddite at this point, despite the irony of typing this response here.
2
The examples you used were rather tame. People that work in HR tell story after story about the kinds of things people post displaying their own bad behavior, behavior that can be disqualifying for any reasonable job. Perhaps if your charges would refrain from posting their silliness online, and even competing with each other to see how outrageous and silly they can be, and then posting the results, they'd have less to worry about.
Apparently many have forgotten that one need not participate in the rush to either post online or read the posts of others. You used the example of the editorial on free speech; the wisdom displayed was widely debated, but I have no idea who the authors were. I'm sure I could find out, but I don't care to. What should be the subject of an editorial is why we increasingly live in a world where holding certain opinions or political positions, rather than one's actions, good or bad, is the basis of censure or support.
1
I couldn't be a college student today. There were no social media for my early mistakes. I survived, as did my classmates and dorm mates. Today's children and youth deserve room to make mistakes and grow.
4
I made what most people would call a really dumb mistake when at 22, just before my finals for my BA, I skipped out, burned my books, left that fall for a two year walkabout through Europe, Middle East, and Asia, hitching my star to whatever wagon came along.
It was the best decision I ever made. Changed the trajectory of my life that had seemed set in stone with no way out. B.A. leading to Mrs. then into a pastel colored bungalow, 2.5 kids, PTA meetings, office Christmas parties at hubbies workplace, and drunken afternoons dancing in tears to Marianne Faithfull's Ballad of Lucy Jordan.
"At the age of thirty seven
She realized she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair"
Well I did ride through Paris, not in a sports car, but a VW van with the side door open, and had adventures in far away places that are now far too dangerous to dance through. But they were considered that back then too. I went anyway. It was fabulous.
When I did later go back to school, marry and have children, set out to forge my own way as a self employed artist, it was on my terms. I still dance and weep to Marianne Faithful's fine ballad, but its for the joy for having followed that yearning and discovering my soul.
The young need to throw caution to the wind and follow their bliss sometimes and as I've discovered, the rest of us do too.
60
It was not a mistake I bet, you thought about your future and took a chance. Much different than say doing drugs.
1
Agreed, but less us not forget the stories where it does not end so well. For some, skipping out on finals, zipping around the world wherever the wind takes them, and chasing the dream of being a self-employed artist ends in relative poverty, with faint memories of happier times.
3
@vulcanex. I did take drugs, and that wasn't a mistake either.
@ Jerry B, I didn't chase the dream, I worked for it. And yes, spent a lifetime of living well below the poverty line which I found to be more than adequate. No faint memories of happier times for me.
I know, stories like mine should end up as cautionary tales, not bold statements of triumph. I heard' stories where it does not end so well' all through my childhood. Grimm stories about what happens to little girls when they go into the woods. But times are changing. Rapidly. People are going to have to take a few chances now and again to crack us out of the morass we're in.
4
At many ages we deserve the right to make dumb mistakes and not be attacked by angry mobs. How is growth possible unless we make and learn from mistakes? Our culture at the moment does not allow for this. (One exception: Trump's base forgives him everything, and transforms his "mistakes" into brilliant ideas.)
3
this article strikes a chord. if we pigeon hole our children in their behavior, how can a child learn to express themselves or experience for themselves the ability to see and understand a negatively or positively outcome situation, and if they personally liked the outcome. acts of corpate punishment breathing down their neck does not curtail the behavior, the allowing of experience and processing the ramifications of the given situation does.
1
I'm not sure spray-painting "Corporate Deathburgers" on McDonalds was a "mistake." If you really believed this, then you were engaging in political resistance. A youthful mistake is drinking a six pack and having a bad hangover. I made that youthful mistake when I was 16 and never again. In my generation we did those "stupid things" in high school where we could retreat to the safety of our parents' homes. Today overprotected teens make those mistakes in college, pass out in a dorm or frat house and are raped. Today's problem isn't technology; it's that youth are growing up more slowly and doing "stupid things" when they are chronologically adults and the stakes are higher. As for what would have happened if someone had documented my drunkenness on a cell phone, since most of my peers had done the same thing no one would care and in my era people weren't so keen on humiliating each other.
1
I agree in part. Private sins should be kept private. But where students act publicly - by shouting down a speaker, or participating in a Twitter-shame mob, or occupying the college president’s office - they don’t deserve anonymity.
3
Ironically, the author's college, Williams, would never consider admitting someone who made such mistakes in high school. Of course we have a risk averse and fearful younger generation-the college admission process tolerated nothing else. Young applicants today grew up one screenshot away from ruin and banishment from their dream college.
I agree. And the article’s sentiments, of course, do not only apply to college students. Cutting all those irritating young adults some slack, providing guidance and understanding instead of quick judgment, should do us all good.
1
We don't make mistakes, mistakes make us. This is what Shirley MacLaine's character said in a movie, recently. And that is the problem with today's young people. Parents are constantly hovering over them to prevent them the suffering of making mistakes. They prevent their kids from the joy of discovery and exploring on their own the choices in life. Success is overrated, failure is devalued.
Thank you, thank you. Well said.
I made one or two mistakes at college, too. No, I made /lots/ of mistakes in college, most of them affecting no one but myself. Truth be told, I still make mistakes.
It's hard to know exactly what's a mistake, even in retrospect. I have only somewhat changed my political views (still a socialist, no longer a Leninist). Was occupying the MIT President's office a mistake? It could have gotten me arrested, but it was in a good cause (against war research), and there were no injuries. Later, I /was/ arrested, for Unlawful Assembly (while rallying for rent control in Cambridge). That's been a minor pain in the neck in my adult life, but I don't think I did anything wrong. My worst mistake, I think, was getting too interested in computer programming (and in the campus radio station) and neglecting the study of math.
The problem is not mainly about social media. Kids are taught to shun mistakes through grades (nobody gives As for mistakes), and especially these days through cutthroat competition in college admission, which could be better with some changes in admissions policy. (I tried, on the Berkeley faculty committee on admissions, but was outvoted.)
Training about social media won't help. Kids get that starting in elementary school. Goes in one ear and out the other.
Privilege: Yes. As an urgent matter, we need a way for college-age kids not in college to get the same protection against their mistakes that college kids get.
1
To continue the reference to jazz ...
We really should tolerate more improvisation. That's where new ideas come from.
Phil Schaap replays Charlie Parker's squeak admiringly, not for the mistake, but for the way he played through it, incorporating it into the music.
It matters the seriousness of the mistake and of the punishment.
An 18 year old college student knows a lot. Spray painting a non-threatening denunciation of a big corporation is forgivable. Spray painting a racist slur is not. They know this. Trying to kiss on a first date when one's partner is not of like mind is forgivable. Date rape is not. They know this.
And there is a lot in-between that requires more thinking. Learning to distinguish among these more nuanced levels goes on all our lives. Learning to tone down our rhetoric needs to start immediately.
And certainly the punishment must fit the crime. A night in prison for non-threatening spray painting is fine. Such a sentence for rape is not. Wishing someone harm, if kept private, although not nice, does not require punishment. Beyond that it gets serious, but still at various levels worthy of different levels of response. College students know that. We all need to help each other learn the in-betweens.
George, of the Seinfeld show, once figured out that he was always wrong, and by doing the opposite of what he thought he should do he would be always right. Maybe we should put a negative before everything we hear from Trump to begin to establish general guidelines. But for the rest of us it is not so easy.
Toning down the rhetoric, pausing and reflecting before acting, getting off Facebook, doing away with tweets, going on a national cold turkey de-tox might be asking too much, but may be needed.
33
You live in a very hard world if you think "spray painting a racist slur" is "unforgiveable."
I grew up in a place in which I heard such slurs used nearly every day. I always hated them, but it was only when I went off to college that I realized how really harmful they can be.
Mistakes take many forms. Some students learn the power of words faster than others. Teaching and forgiveness are more effective than punishment.
excellent comments...especially your last paragraph. I will volunteer!
1
On the modern American campus rapists don't even suffer a night in jail. They may be expelled, but they are protected from criminal prosecution. Victims are discouraged from going to the police (yes, that's obstruction of justice, but laws don't apply to college administrations).
In 1984 I was in a contest with a friend to see who could get the most letters to the editor published. The New York Post was the easy mark, but sometimes there were others. I had a letter published in Time Magazine. It was a ridiculous letter. And I knew so at the time, but I just wanted my name in print. I had no idea that two decades letter it would become immediately available from a google search. And so now I must live with that ridiculous letter for eternity.
2
How ironic that Reische would defend the right to be dumb enough to call for hate speech curbs, without noting that most genuine (rather than faked) offensive speech on college campuses is also the result of youthful stupidity. Our contemporary notion of Zero Tolerance for a few foolish words that make someone else momentarily uncomfortable is the biggest threat of all, to young people being able to learn by living. We are not the dumbest thing we ever said.
Thanks for this. I am about the author's age - I graduated from nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985 and spent time at Williams College - in particular, seeing Gang of Four on campus.
Online, I go to websites that help out teens and 20-somethings and it's funny the mistakes they make. It's like watching a sitcom.
But, something I stress over and over is to be careful about the Internet. My God, these kids are "sending nudes" like it's nothing. I tell them repeatedly: "Everything you do on the Internet will live forever." I also echo what my old boss told me about email and the Internet: "If you don't want it to appear in The New York Times the next morning, don't do it."
I will be using this article when teaching these kids going forward.
3
A wonderful piece. Someone needed to say this!
My brother and I went to the same quasi military academy. Both had some jail time over a weekend, different incidents. I swear our Dad knew or knew someone who knew every Judge in MA. We got bailed, and heavy restrictions at the academy, but not expelled. Squeaked by, graduated. Brother retired from the Energy Department, had two engineering degrees. I went on to a successful career in the Construction business.
If it weren’t for Dad and some level headed tolerance from the Academy Administrators not sure where we might have ended, but am convinced it would not have been as good as where we are today. Oh, and our whole class went on a hunger strike in our senior year over the poor quality of food. What we ate there made those “Deathburgers” at McDonalds taste like French cuisine.
4
My biggest mistake in college was letting myself be dissuaded from pursuing a B.M. in Music Education and waiting till my Master's to major in music theory. When I later did some subbing I discovered I actually loved teaching at that level. I realize this probably isn't the kind of "dumb mistake" we're looking for here, but I'm not about to divulge all over the Internet, at least not specifically, the kind I'm requested to. I made most of those in my junior and senior years in high school, some of them involving the police, some of them involving controlled substances, some of them involving girls. The problem is that I don't really consider them mistakes at all. Sure I'm aghast at how naive and reckless I could be then, but pretty much only in the way that I'm now amazed at how fast as a child I could climb a rope. I would never now do anything like some of the things I used to do in late high school, but, for that matter, I couldn't now climb a rope to save my life. We change.
By the way, I love this quote: “It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note — it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.” Life is improvisation.
3
Making mistakes is a necessary condition to learn and to grow:
If everything you do is right, you don't know what's wrong.
If you have no room for mistakes, you cannot move.
Maybe this is where the desire for safe spaces comes from?
1
We could start by not coddling all millennials like if the smallest uncomfortable experience will destroy their souls. We have to let them make mistakes and be uncomfortable - that's the only way to learn.
5
The province of puerile mistakes has a population with a large male majority. The impulse that caused Jim to spray paint " corporate death burgers" is related to the impulse that causes young males to importune women.
That is no excuse. But now it will be more difficult for males to survive mistakes because of too much testosterone and an underdeveloped judgment faculty in an age of instaneous information sharing.
Women mature earlier and are more circumspect. The college years are more difficult for males in many ways. Nowadays many young males are stuck in "Guy Land," while young women obtain better marks and matriculate to graduate school.
You might say that for many boys, the digital realm has turned their lives into a concatenation of faux pas from which they cannot escape or mature. Women are different, and certainly not weaker.
When the sap rises, bad things can happen. Alas, now everyone is watching.
2
In 2005, as an undergrad, I was arrested for doing something stupid, worse than vandalism but not a sex offense or murder. My mugshot was online within 24 hours. I was on the local news and still on the local news website today, despite me asking and begging for removal. No breaks were given to me as a white male and I served time in prison. Luckily, I wasn't kicked out of school and finished before going to prison. I went back to law school after a few years and passed the bar but was not admitted due to character and fitness for a 10 year old youthful indiscretion. The longevity and availibility of information online has made it near impossible to get a "decent" job. I recently only broke $20/hour. Its a cruel world for those of us that made mistakes as teens.
9
Part of the change is that while your spray painted declaration might have had an audience of a few hundred locals, a gesture is now INTENDED to be witnessed by millions. There is a misplaced idea that the louder one shouts, the more the message will resonate. And it does, so now we just shout at each other.
1
You appear to be nostalgic for dumb mistakes made in college. While yours may have been done with spray paint, today's are done with the internet. Nobody forces anybody to use it. In 99% of the cases, email is a very good alternative. Somebody has to go to much effort to hack email. So, let today's students make the dumb mistakes they want to make.
At the start of this article, author Jim Reische initially describes his spray-painting “Corporate Deathburgers” across a McDonald’s as a “lack of judgement” and as a “bad decision”. By the end of the article, he’s lamenting our unwillingness to tolerate “innocent mistakes”.
As chief communications officer at Williams College, Reische knows how words matter. A bad decision is definitely not the same as an innocent mistake. Reische’s bad decision (graffiti vandalism) was not an innocent mistake; he did it knowingly.
Mistakes aren’t limited to children and college kids. We adults make them too, quite often. If they hurt someone else, we may suffer consequences. We sometimes learn that even our most well-intended actions were mistakes. Some of us learn to apologize to whoever’s been hurt by our action and/or make amends.
I agree with the author’s point about giving students room to make mistakes. Employers have similarly learned to allow their employees the freedom to take risks and make mistakes. Parents, of course, do this with children all the time. And we have the banksters whose bad decisions crashed the economy.
There’s a big difference between an honest mistake and a considered action that harmed another person, between a social faux pas and a crime. There’s a wide range of mistakes. Both the actor’s intent and the effect on others vary widely.
Let’s allow room for the small mistakes and do our best to prevent the big ones.
While I whole heartedly agree that youth should be a safe time of trial and error, the “good ol days” as presented were not safe or tolerant by any means. Long before any social media technology, the college speech and protests of my era (late 1960s and early seventies) were met with extreme civil penalty (arrest) and even violence and death. I do not long for a return to those times.
4
Americans live in a fish bowl. They are less free than in any time I can think of in my lifetime.
53
I don't agree with the case of a lack of freedom. Between access to information (internet), travel (17 hour non-stop flights), finances (cryptocurrencies), and even things like firearms (conceal carry nearly anywhere in your home state of Texas), there is a lot of freedom to do what you want. What is different now is the freedom to make mistakes, learn from them, pay the consequences, and clear the slate, is gone. Now you have a greater freedom to make mistakes, but a greater chance of the consequences haunting you.
Any society that is constantly being monitored is NOT free. There is an ILLUSION that it is. Privacy is critical to freedom of thought and for exploration of new ideas. You cannot build a house in the middle of a hurricane.
What you fail to understand is that the social practices and legal framework dramatically lags the technology. And, given the current political environment, there is no will to correct this issue.
Radical transparency does not resolve what are essentially basic political, economic and cultural issues. The belief that technology can resolve them is a misunderstanding of how the world functions.
1
This article was well written, our children are being given felony charges for even bar fights
Also it’s even most unfortunate when racism plays a factor. Our black college men of today are not able to experience a jovial college life, they cannot skip a beat fearing of repercussions.
6
Dear Jim,
this piece is very well-written, and I particularly liked the quote by Miles to underscore your point.
3
Mr. Reische, I'm not quite sure of the point of this column, let alone the proposed solution. But I'd love to present when you tell the righteous scholars who run the Wellesley student paper that they're not fully formed human beings.
Riding my motorcycle into the Academic Dean's Office
and letting him know with a certain finger that I would
'Catch You on the Flip Slide'
[ I was rather overly fond of "Easy Rider" at the time. ]
after he had made it known that this college was
not for me nor would it ever be !
lead to rather difficult letters of non-recommendation
to explain at the next few colleges I applied to.
But as I rode down the marble stairs
of the Administration Building
on my way to my new future
it all made sense
to my 17 year old mind.
1
"Were the authors’ arguments entirely mature and well reasoned? No. But students deserve the chance to try out ideas." So what you seem to be saying is that students deserve the chance to be immature and to practice poor reasoning. We should indulge them, is what you're saying. We have. We do. What some of us -non-students- are having problems with is that tell-tale word "deserve."
2
Who could disagree with the premise of this article...guarding the privacy to make mistakes...Now, having said that, we all have to understand and then adjust our behaviors to accommodate shifts in culture. Presently, we are all trying to adjust to a social media culture that each day presents us with the unforeseen consequences of the ubiquitous IPhone, tweets, Instagram, email...But this is the new world we live in, one as yet with little regulation---as we found out in the last election. As these unforeseen consequences become more foreseen the appropriate adjustments will be made, as painful as that process maybe.
Shouldn't we also be at least as generous in the same way to the vast majority of young people you are not admitted to college when they make life mistakes like substance abuse and assault? Often these types of young people pay for their mistakes with years in jail and loss of any hope of a decent job.
125
Assault has victims. Don't they have rights?
1
That's right -- 70% of Americans decide that USA colleges have no meaningful value. Never hear about them, in these op-eds.
Thanks especially for asking for gentle understanding for all young people. My youthful mistakes were forgiven, sometimes by the police, and I have always been grateful to them for their kindness even though they made me shake with fear. I have always been grateful for my white privilege, too, and it is a privilege that we need to extend to everyone. Fortunately, I was a teenager before the age of "zero tolerance," which is a concept that sounds tough, at first, and then nonsensical if you think about it.
8
As a parent of three responsible young adults, all in their twenties, it is clear to me that their generation is well ahead of where my generation was at the same age. Thanks to social media, their ideas were tested at an earlier age, beginning in middle school. By the time they got to college—or in the case of my 20-year-old son, the Marine Corps—they had developed solid values of their own, reinforced by networks of close friends. Sure, they made their share of mistakes, but they learned from them at an earlier age than I did.
Another factor worth mentioning is that I made a conscious effort to improve on the parenting strategy used by my parents. My children were not raised with a rigid system of rules that begged to be broken. Instead, we taught them values.
5
It's the infamous Permanent Record-- the one used to threaten kids in school.
Except now it's real.
33
Thank you! I have grandchildren in their teens and I was just pondering this whole situation in their lives today. Young people don't have the luxury of making mistakes and learning from them. It is posted on the internet for everyone to see. Even adults - and heaven knows we all make mistakes we regret later - have to live with reminders..publicly. Many times we don't even know we've been captured on a phone camera until it shows up on Facebook or YouTube.
Let's give each other a break!
19
Another relevant quote from a musician, by clarinetist Artie Shaw about the Glenn Miller band in its heyday in the 1940s (not exact, as I'm remembering it off the top of my head):
"The problem was that they made no mistakes. If you make no mistakes, you're not trying to get better."
20
How is this relevant to defacing private property? The author of the article described a crime as a "mistake", and not in the sense of playing the wrong note, but intentionally defacing private property.
Thanks for this important exploration of generosity in thinking and acting, growth, and personal change in an era of ceaseless surveillance. I see some of the other commenters missed your clear, "A commitment to learning isn't synonymous with freedom from accountability." Perhaps they're reading too quickly. Certainly that too can be forgiven. I appreciate your insights here, and believe they carry well beyond college students. We all need to reimagine how we think about singular utterances and experimenting with ideas if we're going to allow one another error, growth, forgiveness, change, and regeneration.
23
I didn’t go to a war protest a few years after the author of this piece made his innocent mistake and avoided the consequences. When I was a college freshman my roommate, daughter of someone in a position to know, warned me that the FBI would be at the protest taking pictures and who knew whether that would affect my future career? It wouldn’t have mattered, given the career I eventually chose, but I knew then that actions have consequences and I had better be prepared to own anything I said and did publicly. I believe in second chances and leniency for first time offenders and forgiveness for doing or saying something foolhardy, but eighteen year olds are legal adults.
9
I hope you have chosen to not be so easily dissuaded from things in your life, to add another quote, most of the regrets I have are not what I did but what I did NOT do.
1
Now, doesn’t that strike you as just wrong in so many ways in this country (or at least what this country is supposed to be and stand for?)?
Sad! You let fear of the State watching you prevent you from protesting the military imperialism of the State!
That's both cowardice and reflective of a Police State.
Your first amendment rights protect you. Just because the FBI might have taken your picture didn't mean that you would have been arrested, jailed, or gotten a record.
We want to encourage the opposite -- for young people (and old) to get out on the streets, to do community organizing, to do voter registration drives, and to gather in mass protests against oppression, violence, racism, and fascism.
Otherwise, we are giving up before we even start -- and allowing evil to triumph.
Cultures evolve, and along with this so too does our concept of privacy. Personally, I wince at the lack of privacy that young people take for granted these days. But, is this digital awareness and remembrance of everything a person has done really any different than spending an entire life in a small village? Perhaps this notion of anonymity, of being able to walk away from a mistake, is just a historical aberration, not really normal at all. The idea that you can make a mistake that people in your life, or future life, will not know about is both historically odd and quite wrong in a modern world. It is simply an artefact that appeared over a few generations of industrial expansion and the growth of cities. What is missing in this modern world, what has been lost from our historical past, is not the ability to hide our mistakes, but the ability to be forgiven for them.
50
Interesting !
First, most of the commenters completely missed the fact that the article is not talking about social media. Students don't get to choose everything that is put online. Local news items are now visible to the world, as are college newspapers, campus announcements, and all sorts of material that used to circulate only on within a small community. Increasingly, faculty are encouraged to have students "engage with real-world issues" by posting their work on a web page for class.
Second, a number of commenters don't seem to understand what a mistake is and earnestly intone that students just shouldn't make any, especially if it might have long-term consequences.
As for students being indoctrinated, that's another illusion of our era. Young people spend 12 years of schooling with almost no opportunity to grapple with actual controversies or voice their opinion on complex subjects. They arrive at college and confront real complexity for the first time and the results are predictable: they don't see nuance, they divide everything into right and wrong. It's a normal, adolescent response, and it doesn't last forever. The more they learn, the more they're able to make more subtle distinctions. Unfortunately, the internet audience is perpetually adolescent and never learns to see nuance or accept that some things are not so simple.
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" .. Unfortunately, the internet audience is perpetually adolescent and never learns to see nuance or accept that some things are not so simple."
Well, that got Michael Moore, a $2MM vacation home. As noted -- "a sucker is born, every minute."
Thank you for this great piece! Eternally grateful my biggest life lessons happened when cameras were not digital and newspapers were only on paper. I love what you wrote about how some expect kids to be fully formed adults upon arrival at college. Thank you for the reminder that we were definitely not, and they are not. Truly enjoyed your prospective on this topic!
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Thank you for this astute and provocative piece. While I agree with the overall argument, I also see reason to help young people who are flailing or whose "experiments" are not so much acts of boldness as acts of conformity or despair. Miles Davis's words have great meaning; yes, it's the note you play afterward that counts, but what if your bad note leads to an entire cascade of them? What if you don't have the wherewithal to find that good note?
That said, I support the idea of giving people room to make mistakes, try out forms of expression, etc. Colleges place such emphasis on "safe spaces" yet have given up a certain kind of safety, the kind where people try to come together over differences, try to see the best in each other, and give each other second and third chances. Today there seems to be less forgiveness in the air, but I don't know for sure that this is so. It's good, in any case, to raise the questions.
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Ditto!
Bush league. At 18 and in college in L.A., my digestion was bullet-proof … until it encountered Tommy’s Famous 1/2-lb. chiliburgers on Hollywood Blvd. What I spray-painted on the back of their shack in retaliation can’t be repeated in a family newspaper, and I revel in the fact that they can’t seek their own revenge due to statutes of limitation and New Jersey’s likely refusal to extradite. But it was a mistake that was important to me, since it was that refusal to take being sicker than a dog in a Hollywood head without a response that caused me to start posting in the New York Times 34 years later (ten years ago).
I firmly support the notion that dumb mistakes in college, provided one survives hanging and manages to put forty years or more between those events and a current incarnation that is infinitely more cautious due to a digestion that long ago ceased being bullet-proof, should be forgiven if not completely forgotten.
I’m also in favor of letting extreme ideas be ventilated in print in college, although that was a Texas ton harder to do when I was in college and the administration had spies in the school paper to be sure that calls to burn down Greco-Roman lecture halls were killed before they ever saw print.
But I must say, if you can’t avoid actually being arrested for spray-painting a McDonald’s, I don’t know why anyone should pay the slightest bit of attention to you now. Early inadequacies will tend to frame a life forever.
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McDonald's Side Salad with Newman's Italian Dressing. I have been having about two per week, since I discovered this recently.
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This gets published rather than my true story?
Talk about bad judgment.
The author has publicly confessed to wrongdoing, and if the trend is as it seems,
he will be terminated from his administrative position because Zero Tolerance is on the march. It's fortunate his long ago transgression was not known to his employers when he applied for the job. It's unfortunate that his admission may end his career, his reputation, his finances and his right to make mistakes.
We may have reached the point where learning from one's mistakes, even apologizing for one's mistakes, even THINKING "mistaken" thoughts will
bring our lives crashing down, not with a whimper, but with a whopping big bang.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
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As a member of an educational institution, doesn't Mr. Reische have a responsibility for teaching students digital literacy? You can't really complain about a lack of training when you represent the most quintessentially advanced training apparatus existent in the modern world. Sorry, you don't get a pass on this one.
My introduction to college was marked by two remarkable events. 1) The entire network was down due to a security issue. We weren't even allowed to plug our computers into a LAN line for the first week. And 2) Everyone was required to attend a seminar on academic resources. The topics also covered web searches and digital presence.
For me, a one hour lecture from an underpaid librarian saved me from making quite a few stupid mistakes in the first place. The mistakes I did make were fortunately obscured by an awareness of digital impact that I was taught when I was a 17 year old pre-frosh. Where is Williams College on this one?
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BAH! Humbug!
I went when 8088's and old macs or apples were occasionally used for typing-this is and remains their prime function. The communication aspect of the (to the great majority) new Internet and World Wide Web was mostly as a waste of time and an experiment in commercial skills.
I got through school without online research and, in fact, when it became SOP, I saw that most student couldn't use it and there was not enough , good or new material online which could not just as easily be obtained from paper books, taken care of by expert librarians who were paid a decent living wage in exchange for their special knowledge.
I believe and , if most older adults took time to think about it, that the book w/pen-pencil and pad model of college- lectures given, papers handed in , tests taken by students IN school-not-never ever-from home via a computer line-was a far superior system and ensured that teachers, assistants and all high mighty muck-a-muck professors, actually knew their students and what they did with their time.
Computers-with-radio phones and gadgets have ruined the special relationships college was meant to foster.
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Jim Reische didn't benefit just from the lack of social media at the time of his 87 prank. He also benefited from the fact that the local police did not inform his college of the prank. The college did not then subject him to their conduct system. Since there was no conduct hearing there was no probation, suspension or expulsion. Sadly, today colleges are informed when their students are arrested. Student then go through the campus conduct system. If they are found responsible, they face some consequence. When they apply to to transfer or to graduate school, the application asks if they have been responsible for a conduct violation that resulted in a sanction, such as probation, suspension or expulsion. They sign a form that gives their college permission to share their records with schools to which they are applying. It's much easier to transfer or go on to grad school if the answer is no and the record supports that answer. Some colleges expunge records at graduation, some expunge them after a period--if the student requests they be expunged. Other colleges just keep them for a number of years. Since minority students are more likely to be randomly stopped by police, they are more likely to get caught up in this trap.
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Colleges routinely violate the constitution when it comes to disciplining bad behavior. For example, true story, the university admins suspend a fraternity without due process. Then they tell fraternity members that they can't associate with pledges.
Where is it the legal right to deny individuals from meeting each other? But colleges have this power.
A college admin will shut down the entire Greek system at a college because of an incident that that happened on one group. From memory, roughly 1400 college kids die per year from alcohol related deaths, Perhaps we should also start throwing RAs and property managers in jail for deaths that occur in their dorms or apartment complexes.
High marks for this article and it really nails it regarding the probabilistic benefit of being BOTH white AND a college student getting caught vandalizing property.
The author both uses the term "privilege" and, probably unintentionally, undermines it at the same time: "But our response to inequality shouldn’t be to strip the privilege of learning from the lucky few who can already enjoy it. We must expand this universal right to develop and grow."
This is a key point. Much of what is termed "white privilege" is a) primarily available to middle and higher class whites and b) should never, ever be termed "privilege". We're talking about rights and common norms. They should always be discussed in a language that makes that clear. The term "privilege" undermines the principle.
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Yes. This. I've grown very fond of saying lately that I'm actually a big fan of privilege- it's great, and everyone should have some!
I have pushed and finagled and encouraged many to attend. One young man was a natural artist-left handed , who spoke as though he had been raised almost by or in an Edwardian apprentice system. I wondered where he had gotten such an accent and often the ability to free himself from the chains of local speech errors and mistakes, far too common to many people his age and color. I begged him to attend college, with me or elsewhere-anyone would have been eager to grab him.I had no idea where or how he obtained his little store of education. Instead, he married a lady already with children and joined her church-Christian fundamentalists of a sort. I too often have found myself left-pushed out out in the cold by people whose addition to the collective intellect of the nation could do us all nothing but good.
Excellent article.
I wish to share other perspectives.
In the Marine Corps it was often said, "The purpose of a lieutenant is to make mistakes. If he doesn't make enough mistakes, he's not trying and he's no good to us."
Once I was present when an amateur photographer showed his large notebook of photographs to an older, good photographer. After careful examination of the prints and the negatives, it was pronounced that these were pretty good, but that the problem was that there weren't enough bad shots. Unless you try for lots of shots that you are unlikely to succeed with, you will be unlikely to get great shots.
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College kids were "allowed to be kids (who make dumb mistakes)" in the past precisely because there remained among college administrators a core of adult authority that was stoutly defended and on which there was general consensus. Neither of those conditions still hold.
Instead, most administrators on most campuses do their utmost to cater to their (the kids') political and rhetorical sentiments, kind of on the ground that they (the kids) "represent the conscience of a generation" or somehow have a purity and clarity that society at large lacks.
They are 19 and 20 year olds. They are nobody's conscience and they are not oracles. They should be treated as kids (or at best as untried, inexperienced young adults), both in appraising their views and in meting out punishment.
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No not on the ground that they represent the conscience of a generation. On the ground that they represent income and fees.
There has been a custom of letting universities handle their own disciplinary issues (short of the really serious crimes) for hundreds of years. Max Weber wrote about it.
The internet pretty randomly descends on people.
Exactly, as learned the hard way by Evergreen State.
1
No they are not being solicitous "on the ground that they (the kids) 'represent the conscience of a generation ...'"
They are being cowed. Case in point:
http://tsl.news/news/5274/
Amid Calls for Resignation, Dean Spellman Steps Down
"Thirty years ago, college students could have tried out radical ideas about limiting free speech in print."
As most people know, free speech is not absolute (e.g., inciting violence, yelling fire in an enclosed space, etc.). A recent column in the Washington Post by Jason Blakely titled "Free-speech absolutists aren’t protecting democracy. They might even be endangering it." argues that allowing enemies of liberal democracies such as Neo Nazis are using the tools of free speech that liberal democracies provide, to undermine liberal democracy.
Below is the URL:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/08/free-sp...
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Blakely's arguments were very empty and satisfied few commenters, left, right, or center. Students need the right to make mistakes, including things others end up finding offensive.
Actually free speech is pretty close to absolute - the ol' Crying Fire has been well documented - you can google it if you truly want to understand why it has nothing to do with free speech.
The folks that cause me the most concern are the ones that claim that free speech is pretty good except...
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
J.S. Mill: On Liberty
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Rather an irony, that in this issue of NY Times, Frank Bruni is criticizing the writings of a college student from Texas State University. See “An Abomination. A Monster. That’s Me?”
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It's could be ironic that the NY Times publishes a piece demanding that we overlook the "mistakes" of the young shortly after a college student publishes an essay that constitutes straight up hate speech. Or it could just be the intent.
I'm in my 60's and I give thanks nearly every day that I have lived the majority of my life in a world without social media. The thought that every stupid thing I've ever done or said or written would be following me around my entire life is horrifying. I'm thankful that my past moments of cluelessness or worse have mostly been either forgotten or are dimly tucked away in a few individual memories. How does a person move on and grow when the past is always present?
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J, not sure what planet the writer and you are opining about.
Many of the BigStateU students that we see on city buses are working 20+ hours/week to pay for college. They're borrowing $10,000/year for college. Just to be eligible to take government civil servant exams.
The past is the past. Working students should be rewarded. Do something dumb -- who's fault is that?
Students -- you're in a country with the worst economic-debt profile since WWII, as Asia is rising. Get serious. You're being left, a huge mess to clean up. Good luck.
I know, but gee, how would we conduct a "sexual harassment" witch hunt of "politicians and folks we don't like" by dredging up every misdeed in their entire lives, even things that are 40 years old, if we don't use social media?
Thanks for a terrific article.
I teach 12th grade in LA, and our curriculum, a Cal State liaison reading writing curriculum, features lots of articles from college faculty espousing this very thing. They explain the importance of failure and honesty, and what challenges and obstacles do for the developing adolescent soul. I'm going to incorporate this one.
From my perspective, Mr. Reische is all too correct- so many of my students don't try anything new- including college- because they're paralyzed by the fear of screwing up, or just the unfamiliar. That fear isn't something I remember; I always screwed up.
I pound the ideas that failure is essential to growth into my kids' heads. Like lifting weights, we don't get stronger unless we actually fail. True spiritual failure is just not continuing.
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Fear of failure is not the same as a wise reluctance not to try illegal substances or damage other people's property to make your political point.
There is a huge difference between being reluctant to take a course that will be challenging and outside your usual comfort level and being reluctant to cause harm to others or possibly oneself by experimenting with drinking too much.
More false equivalence.
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Yes failing at something that might be valuable is a great lesson, failing at doing stupid things is not.
5
" .. There is a huge difference between being reluctant to take a course that will be challenging and outside your usual comfort level and being reluctant to cause harm to others or possibly oneself by experimenting with drinking too much .."
Or opiods. Tell that to parents who have lost a child .. or near-loss, at places like Hamilton College and University of Colorado at Boulder.
http://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/11/bon_jovi_opens_u...
1
A well written and compelling piece about the immaturity of young college students. I agree that today's technology puts a public face on everything; that is not unique, however to college students. And most schools - including elite schools like Williams (my alma mater) - have (or should have) policies in place about what is and is not acceptable behavior to maintain one's place in the school. It certainly pertains to just about everyone in the workplace. If a student chooses not to become aware of these policies - or elects to ignore them - he or she does so at his or her peril. Yes, the experience of attending college has changed dramatically over the decades, but Mr. Reische's statement about the "universal right to develop and grow" must also include the acknowledgment - and learning - of what responsible behavior is all about - even at young ages of college students.
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How true.
3
Pseudonyms - get several.
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Maybe - but it's much easier to spout cruel nonsense when you are hiding behind a pseudonym.
I made so many really stupid mistakes in college (from experimentation with substances - to borderline really illegal stuff). I learned from them and suffered not all all (white girl privilege). I am now a staid married mother of a freshman in college (and, not least, a physician). I hope she isn't as stupid as I was but I hope she breaks out of her good girl persona a bit (but I hope she doesn't tell me about any of it!).
I agree that the digital footprint of our lives has wrecked all the fun. My daughter and her friends are good, smart kids who care about the world. But have some fun.
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Fun, dangerous and illegal drugs? More like something you should have known not to do, and refrained from doing. Your life could have been ruined, you might have gotten pregnant. Sure things to be avoided, not just mistakes.
Nice to read you did not suffer for your mistakes. But I have to wonder if others did not suffer from them. It is so easy to dismiss youthful hi-jinks when you are not the one paying the price.
You were not stupid - you followed a path and learned many things that have produced a parent with a physician in college ... we can never know where the other paths in our lives would have taken us but lessons are lessons.
Spray painting is senseless vandalism and deserves serious punishment. Well, one can always spray paint their own stuff. That is OK.
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Quite right, PaulN. Jim Reische should have gotten 5 years in prison.
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I agree. In elementary school he should have learned that writing on desks is vandalism and by the time a student is 18 he should know that.
You'd be right at home in Saudi Arabia where a thief might have a hand chopped off by the state. 5 years for vandalism? No, the correct punishment would be to pay for removing and repainting, or do it himself, plus a fine.
1
If I were lucky enough to have escaped punishment and shame in my youth, why should I be foolish enough to admit it today, when I'm supposed to be wiser.
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John,
I'm with you there--and this IS the Internet!
2
Agreed.
As a former Academic Instructional Technology professional, I strongly advocated for a secure firewall for students to prevent their online exposure; a barrier between their developing and innocent academic perceptions and opinions and the outside, worldwide digital world. Sadly, I was not entirely successful.
If students cannot make mistakes from which they might learn otherwise valuable lessens without creating a haunting, online legacy, they will have been ill served by accepting a degree from their accredited college or university.
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Personally, I like McDonalds burgers. Apart from that, though, Jim Reische has a good point: college should be a time for intellectual, political, and personal experimentation. I am glad that some of the things I did, said, and wrote when I was young are lost to history, and not archived permanently in cyberspace.
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"Personally, I like McDonalds burgers."
The author's graffiti appears to be a reference to a song by the punk rock band MDC. Google for lyrics.
2017-12-10 01:34:01 UTC
1
Some mistakes go viral and destroy a person's life; others go unnoticed; some are noticed but slide off the Teflon. It's hard to predict in advance which will result.
A good first approximation on how to live your life: Don't put anything on line that you wouldn't want to be quoted for to your friends, schoolmates, workmates, and present or future employers. The Teflon might wear out eventually.
22
Unfortunately, that's not good enough. As a teenager it seems you need to perfectly anticipate exactly how judgements might shift over the next 40 years. As we see in With Hunt USA, behavior that would be laughed off or thought of as goofy a couple of decades ago is now worthy of scorn.
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I don't what "Witch Hunt USA" is, or means. But I hope it isn't some code we'll soon be using against anyone who has the temerity to try to enforce any standard of appropriate or decent interpersonal behavior in a workplace or a school.
1
I always tell the high school students (I'm a substitute teacher during my official retirement) that before doing something at all questionable, ask yourself, what would Mom say?
As much as mistakes should be made to learn from, it is far more fruitful for someone to avoid making a life ruining mistake. If I got arrested for whatever reason, I’d lose out on so many employment opportunities...in this day and age that was enough for me to stay on the straight and narrow line while in college; and all it has done is lead to amazing things....think about it this way too: imagine you are walking down the street and meet the most amazing man/woman. They are smart beautiful, articulate, caring, and have a good head on their shoulders. You go on a date with them and tell them about yourself...do you think they would want to here you got arrested? Dropped out of school? Etc.? they probably would stick it out during the date but that’s about it. Again it’s much better to “do the right things” rather than risk it.
11
Different strokes.
I care about character much more than pedigree. There are plenty of people of low character with squeaky clean pedigrees. There are folks who take no risks, have no edges, and always calculate, but who are not just boring, but selfish. I know plenty of folks with some "odd" backgrounds who are interesting, highly productive, engaging, and of high character.
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Thank you, Jim Reische, for this cogent and compelling piece.
If you don't "push the envelope" a bit in college---and make some foolish choices regarding political expression along the way---it's almost a lost opportunity. Taking risks is part of preparing for life and recognizing that making Big Things happen---in your future career, with your future spouse and family, and arguably most important, in the quest for a better, more just and more humane world---rarely come from those who always played it safe, never bent or broke an institutional rule, and always obediently followed the leader.
Yes, there is always the very real possibility of getting it wrong and inadvertently hurting the very goal you're trying to achieve---particularly when you're away from home for the very first time in your life, thrown into an entirely new, very exciting, and highly stimulating social milieu, populated by a very smart and accomplished new peer group---and you're between the age of 18 and 23.
But mistakes are part of learning, growing and progressing, whether you're an aspiring athlete or musician, a driven entrepreneur, or a bright, young idealistic student. (I'm more concerned with the college students who NEVER overreach a bit for something they believe in; such apathy and disengagement doesn't bode well for their future as citizens in a working democracy.)
It's 2017. And the kids are alright. In fact, I'd argue they might be the best we've ever had.
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There is also the possibility of getting it wrong and really hurting someone, like the frat hazing accidental deaths have shown. More young people pushing the envelopes, not playing it safe, bending and breaking institutional rules, experimentation with substances, and not always obediently following the leader.
If the mistake only hurts oneself-- that is one thing, but when the mistake hurts others....
Some poor probably not so well paid McDonald's underling had to wash off that spray paint message and had to pay for Mr. Reische's derring do and daring political expression (I happen to agree with the content, BTW).
I understand and sympathize with the author's point that the explosion of social media has made it impossible to move forward from youthful mistakes, but there seems to be an obliviousness to the adverse impact on others that I find disturbing.
And I believe you can actually be the opposite of an apathetic citizen as an adult and not act out when you are young. Apathy and disengagement is not the same at all as a reluctance to experiment with illegal substances or damage other people's property to express your political views or to work for a better society. I would not be surprised if the youth of many of the most dedicated and effective movers toward a better world was far more quiet and targeted toward developing the skills and tools that would allow them to make a difference.
" .. in the quest for a better, more just and more humane world---rarely come from those who always played it safe, never bent or broke an institutional rule, and always obediently followed the leader .."
Science relies rules. Journalism relies on style books.
Do you have any proof of that "rarity?" I seriously doubt it.
The Wellesley editorial actually is highly consequential! Not because of the author (who is unlikely to suffer long term consequences in any case, given the orthodoxy of the opinions expressed), but as an example of the sort of ideas that are being widely promoted on American college campuses. America's children are currently being indoctrinated in this new theology to the point where many are coming to see free speech as an obstacle in their quest for a perfect society; if this doesn't count as consequential, then it is hard to see what would.
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John, I understand and agree that there’s cause to be concerned. But how do you or any of us know that that story is indicative of a whole generation’s attitudes? The Dept of Education estimates 20.4 million students enrolled in American colleges and universities this year (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_105.20.asp?current=yes). Even if we take all the incidents we’re familiar with from the news, like Middlebury, Berkeley, etc., how many students is that? Some thousands? Not a meaningful percentage of 20.4 million. I think the introduction of the Internet makes visible things that have often been said and done in the past, in ways that make it easy for us to extrapolate and decide they’re representative of all students when they’re not. I’ve worked at so-called liberal and conservative schools, both, and in my observation the vast majority of students aren’t impressed by or involved with the theatrics of their attention-seeking peers. I’d like to see us lower our blood pressure and deal with this as as a teachable moment to show young people how to more effectively and civilly work for change of whatever political stripe. One doesn’t raise a child solely by punishing them severely every time they do something wrong. We’re hammering students and ruining their lives, when we should be teaching them a better way and, yes, as you suggest, absolutely also holding them accountable for their actions.
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The Wellesley editorial doesn't appear to be about anyone indoctrinating anyone. As the author points out, its about a group of students trying out an idea ON THEIR OWN, not under pressure from some supposedly intolerant faculty or administration, and their plan failed.
I'm tired of reading about examples like this as some plot to indoctrinate the youth of America when most of them go to public schools where ideas are exchanged and argued about, not excluded or forced on everyone.
I urge you and every other person who believes that universities, particularly public ones, are centers of indoctrination to GO TO ONE--whatever one is nearest you, and observe what is actually going--rather than make assumptions based on a few stories of restrictions of hate speech on a few elite private campuses.
Our education system is under enormous financial and political pressures today, and yet without it there would be far fewer opportunities for advancement and a decent life for most Americans. We must demand real evidence of alleged indoctrination and "new theologies" before they become pretexts for shutting down free debate and making college even more unaffordable for ordinary Americans.
3
Yes. The "anti-hate speech" crowd often decries "presenting opposing views."
Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Ho did that .. tens of millions died. Not going there .. ever.
1
Social media has succeeded in capturing so many aspects of our personal lives. Nearly all of my peers' Instagram bio's include their school acronym and graduating class, a gauge for others to measure their own academic endeavors and successes upon. What happens when mistakes are made, or when plans simply change, and university is no longer at the forefront of one's life? Can the change from my school-spirited cover photo to some banal scenery go unnoticed? Will they know what it means when I remove the stethoscope-girl emoji from my bio? How do I explain why mine is the only page void of graduation pics, on the day when old classmates are so publicly celebrating?
It's times like these that I wish I'd never so thoroughly documented my "successes."
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“It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note — it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”
Very sweet, but these days the fact that you are a good person probably won't matter. Can you say Al Franken?
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Um, the article, and certainly Donna's top comment, are speaking about "dumb mistakes" that we make when we're young (e.g. in college).
The "dumb mistakes" that Al made -- the ones that caused 36 of his peers to push him out of the Senate -- he made when he was in his 50s.
Call me crazy, but I believe that if we haven't yet learned from our "dumb childhood mistakes" by the time we're in our 50s, we ain't likely ever learning from them (see, e.g., Al's "I don't remember", "That is false", ...)
[Nothing within the present comment contradicts the facts that this particular commenter loved Al on SNL, loved Al as a Dem Senator, and just might vote for Al if he shows up on a 2020 presidential ticket.]
You are entirely missing the point of the quotation. Regardless of what one thinks about Al Franken's situation, he is at an inflection point in his life and could end up writing a more successful and surprising story than he has so far.
Ah yes, a healthy dose of perspective is in order when making judgement on anyone, young or old.