This month, my oldest son will graduate from a college in the US. There has not been any indication that his graduation ceremony will be disrupted or that it will become the venue for anti-Israel speeches, which feature in the controversies roiling campuses like Columbia University, NYU or the University of Southern California. Our hope, if you can call it that, is that his graduation ceremony will be like hundreds of others over the years, boring.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of my son and eager to see him graduate. I am far less excited about the graduation ceremony though. That might be because I see college graduations through the lens of my own when I sat in an arena surrounded by thousands of students I didn’t know waiting to stand up with the hundreds from the school of business to be recognized for a moment. Afterward, I took a picture in my cap and gown with my parents, a photo that is sitting in an album somewhere in my house, and that was that.
In the years that have passed I hardly ever reflect on graduation from college, especially not as a meaningful event in life. I do, however, think often about the things I learned in college and the people who taught me.
One of the most critical lessons was junior year from the instructor in my organizational management class who said that our main objective as students was not to perform well academically. Instead, we had to find some way to make ourselves stand out from the crowd in order to be remembered by him so that years later, he could recall us to write a letter of recommendation for graduate school or a job. Taking that to heart, I ambushed him with a water pistol and drenched him before class.
In response to his annoyance, I reminded him of his admonishment that we make ourselves memorable without saying exactly how we should do it. Years later, he wrote one of my academic recommendations to rabbinical school when I reminded him of the episode.
What purpose does college serve? Theoretically, college is about becoming educated, although as my teacher made clear, the lessons learned are not necessarily those embedded in the curriculum.
The college experience is also an opportunity for emerging adults to gather eye-opening intelligence about their peers. For example, when I was a student at CU-Boulder, a street march against the first Gulf War went by my apartment the same night that Iraqi SCUD missiles fell on Tel Aviv. What were those marchers protesting for? Did they favor Saddam Hussein annexing neighboring countries?
The ridiculousness of that protest over 30 years ago is mirrored in the ridiculousness of the protest movements that are currently invading college campuses.
Campus morons demonstrate, harass and intimidate in the name of promoting what? Terrorism? Murder?
Then, as now, the main thing that we are learning about the college experience is that young minds lacking guidance in critical thought are drawn toward unthinking radicalism because the educators who are supposed to be in charge of these institutions are unwilling to teach the lesson of accountability for one’s actions.
The institutions that struggle the most with containing student misbehavior in the current conflict are also those that make us question the value of higher education in general. If Columbia or NYU want to be venues for teaching that the mob has a right to assert power, then students who were duped into thinking they were there to acquire degrees that might lead to productive careers should be refunded their tuition.
If such colleges want to maintain instead that they have the authority to establish requirements for earning a diploma or even that there are correct answers on examinations, then it is time to do more of what we saw the last week of April, which is to tell the protestors to shut up, go to class, and study. You know, fulfill the purpose for which a school is intended.
Of course, I realize that the college experience is also about growing as a person. We want students to explore ideas and find their voices. We want them to challenge authority rather than blindly accept the rule of those who are elevated to positions of power regardless of their intelligence, skill or decency.
Educators are charged with creating opportunities for students to grow in these ways and sometimes that requires standing aside while students behave obnoxiously so that they can learn organically the limits of how to advocate for priorities or change. That differs substantially, though, from complete abdication of the role of mentor or behavioral guardrail.
While some colleges feel that the right to speak freely means a total absence of accountability for students, faculty or administrators for the things they say or teach, allowing for such behavior only undermines the value of a college education at these universities and in general.
I draw on my own college experience as a reminder that there was not some bygone heyday when student movements were less idiotic. I remember my teacher as well for having given a less than complete instruction for how he wanted us to make an impression and ended up all wet. While it was a harmless prank at the time, it serves to show that educators who do not provide appropriate boundaries do not achieve the educational goals they intended. This is what makes college less educational and more dangerous.
If my son’s graduation this month turns out to be the boring affair that it appears poised to be, I will take some joy in that.
I suppose it would be nice for a rite of passage to hold some kind of meaning and to be poignant enough to evoke an emotional response, but it would be better to simply have a moment in time at an American college when the only thing that happens is a student who spent four years in study is rewarded, absent any interference, with a degree.
