And then there's this: "Connecticut College Cancels Classes Over Racist Graffiti"

A bathroom stall is not a safe place.

Safe Spaces, Microaggressions, and Trigger Warnings

(Or, "A Little Dirt is Good for You")

Okay.  This has been bothering me for a while, and I want to know what you think.

It started with this article on "micro-aggressions".  Then this one on "trauma warnings".  And this morning, an op-ed about "safe spaces".

The "money quote" (if you'll pardon the expression):  A key passage:

Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals — mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. This new bureaucracy may be exacerbating students’ “self-infantilization,” as Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College, suggested in an essay for Inside Higher Ed.

But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”

The subject of germs came up the other day in Block 2, and I suggested, only half-tongue-in-cheek, that we're getting too sanitized these days: a little dirt is good for you.  It helps you build up immunities. Are we over-protecting ourselves?

At the same time, I am sympathetic to those people who have experienced psychological trauma, and I don't mean to belittle their sufferings.

So what do you think?  Read any or all of the articles linked-to above, and respond below.  (Or, directly to the in-basket, if you'd prefer.)  By "respond", I mean a lectio.  So, pick a passage from one of the articles, identify it, and respond to it.  [Hat tip to Jacob Burns.]

Due Date: Monday, March 30.

Bizarre at the Bazaar

Finally, our narrator has arrived at Araby!  But things are not working out as they were supposed to.  (How rarely they do!)  Joyce gives us this ending:

Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation.

"O, I never said such a thing!"

"O, but you did!"

"O, but I didn't!"

"Didn't she say that?"

"Yes. I heard her."

"O, there's a... fib!"

Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:

"No, thank you."

The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

What do you make of this.  Please share your thoughts with me and your classmates.  As we did over the summer, please feel free to interact with earlier posts.