May 14^th

George Will has today commented on helicopter parenting; this is parenting where the parent is said to hover (get it?) over their children. His theme begins with the parents Meitivs who live in suburban Montgomery County and let their six and ten year old children walk about a mile home from a neighborhood park. Neighbors reported this presumed neglect, a squad car arrived and the children were not released until eleven o’clock that night. The Meitivs were obviously not over protective,, not helicopter parents and good for them.

According to Will overprotective parenting morphs into colleges protecting students from speakers the students don’t wish to hear.  He means, of course, speakers whose sermons are cancelled if rebellious students object to giving them a campus platform. He also claims that colleges have largely abandoned in loco parentis (acting in place of the parent) because “they have decided that students are possessors of mature moral agency.”  Well maybe, but this was mightily assisted by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a very militant group asserting student rights, and rulings by SCOTUS which also asserted student’s rights under the constitution regarding illegal searches of their rooms by college authorities.

Dr. Will may not know that Liberty University still functions very much in loco parentis. Liberty may be at the extreme end of this continuum but it is the very favorite spot for Republicans to announce their candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. So it is entirely relevant to Will’s argument. Liberty is also in the business of protecting students from disagreeable ideas, not ideas that conflict with the student’s ideas, but ideas inimical to the universities’ mission. In fact Liberty is so vigilant about this that they eliminated the student Democratic club from the roster of approved organizations. Their rationale was that this organization supported views on abortion and same sex marriage with which the university disagreed. Will takes no notice of this interesting view of academic freedom.

A Republican, Senator McDonnell, was so upset by Notre Dame’s offer of a platform for President Obama’s views and for giving him an honorary degree that he wrote to Notre Dame’s president complaining about it. You see the President’s views on abortion and same sex marriage differed from this senator’s and from Catholic doctrine and therefore The University should not permit him to speak. The President spoke anyway and Notre Dame survived. Whether or not the Senator now contributes to his Alma Mater is not recorded.

Will asserts that college’s rules now assume that, “… undergraduates can cope with hormones and intoxicants...” say what George? You do know that many colleges ban any drinking on campus and Liberty bans students from any expression of affection between students except for holding hands. Moreover, they are not allowed even to be with a member of the opposite sex after dark in any private place, particularly a dark private place. That doesn’t sound like Liberty believes undergraduates can cope with their hormones. I don’t know whether or not these rules apply only to mixed couples or also to pairs of male students. If they do not apply to male students then it seems that Liberty is encouraging homosexual affection. I would find that quite surprising but I see no rules about two male students sitting in a car in a dark parking lot. Maybe they’ll soon edit their handbook although I believe that they’ll find even the suggestion of homosexual affection on their campus so appalling that they won’t consider it possible.