PSU protesters blindly ignore real victims
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Unless they're prepping for that extra-credit question on a philosophy midterm, most college students don't do a whole lot of thinking about morality.
Maintaining a decent grade point average while navigating the more libidinous temptations of college life is about as deep as it gets. It has been books-versus-bacchanalia ever since the days of Socrates.
Students usually learn a university's definition of morality sometime near the end of first semester of their freshman year. That's when bills are sent to their parents warning that their young scholars won't be allowed to enroll the following semester unless the next installment of the shakedown known as college tuition is remitted before sundown.
At least colleges and universities are honest about being cash-hungry businesses. The extent that they are also idea factories and molders of morality ranks far down on their hierarchy of values.
Contrary to society's most sentimental myths about higher education, colleges aren't set up to instill students with a conscience. Those who arrive on campus without fully functioning empathy chips aren't likely to develop a taste for moral inquiry by sitting in a lecture hall or by playing beer pong.
That's why no one should be shocked by what happened at State College when news spread Wednesday night that longtime head football coach Joe Paterno had been fired. Up to 5,000 young people took to the streets around Penn State University for several hours to protest the sacking of their beloved "JoePa" and to vent their rage at the trustees who denied their hero the dignity of going out on his own terms.
After flipping over a TV news van, the students made it clear that larger questions of morality in what is easily the biggest scandal in the school's history were beside the point.
Petulant chants of "One more game" and "We want JoePa" united the crowd in a bond of youthful stupidity and shortsightedness that is only possible when mom and dad are paying the bills.
The only thing more naive than the misplaced chants of support for an 84-year-old football coach is the question indignant viewers asked while watching the riot footage on cable news: What exactly are they teaching those kids at Penn State?
Isn't it obvious? Penn State isn't teaching the kids anything they didn't already learn at home. It isn't the university's job to inculcate kids with values such as empathy for young rape victims. That's a moral blind spot that represents the absence of good parenting, not bad teaching at Penn State.
First Published November 11, 2011 12:00 am
