You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Attend the University Near Here…

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Sorry to mutate the saying adorning millions of workplace mugs and cubicle walls—for example our Amazon Product du Jour—but that's what leapt to mind when I noticed the story at the Eagle-Tribune website, with a headline screaming the dire news: University system struggles with mental health.

Well, as it turns out, it's the students, not the system, who are struggling.

Shari Robinson, assistant vice provost for student life at the University of New Hampshire, has a perspective on the mental health crisis confronting educators that comes from years on the front lines.

She’s been an active therapist for the past two decades, counseling students since 2004.

“We’ve always seen stress, anxiety and depression,” she says. “But now we are seeing more severe depression, bipolar disorders and psychosis, and more developmental disorders like autism. Those students can do well in college, but they need more supportive services.”

Psychosis!

Rank speculation: this is a "gimme more money" campaign by USNH/UNH "mental health" activists, shopped to a friendly journalist. Shari Robinson's department, Student Life, has been a hotbed of Wokism for decades—we used to call it the Department of Political Correctness. There's not the slightest hint of introspection. Nobody's wondering, hey, maybe the policies demanded by our ideology have actually been making things worse for students.

As another indicator, near as I can tell, nothing about the "struggle" appears at UNH's own website; nor has this "struggle" been reported in our dreadful local newspaper. The story seems to have bypassed the usual channel of UNH's Pravda News Bureau.

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I might suggest an airdrop of a few hundred copies of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Amazon link at right) onto USNH campuses. But that's unlikely to happen.

Not that it matters, but: I thought of the Eagle-Tribune as a newspaper local to Lawrence, Massachusetts. So it seemed an odd choice for a New Hampshire story. But they've expanded their circulation area to cover "the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire." So, fair game.

Briefly noted:

  • J.D. Tuccille treats recent presidential meanderings with deserved contempt: Biden Wants to Ban ‘Semiautomatic Weapons’? Dream On.

    There's always a question as to whether President Joe Biden really means what he says or if he even understands the words coming from his mouth. That conceded, it's wise to take seriously the threats of powerful people who have the means to at least attempt to impose their will on others.

    And that brings us to the president's recent vow to ban semiautomatic firearms, a vast category covering some of the country's most popular guns. It's a bold goal, not only in its scope, but also because it's probably unconstitutional and bound to alienate millions of Americans.

    Reader, suppose you were a doddering old fool, and suppose you were President of the United States; but I repeat myself.

  • David Hebert at AIER on Taxes, Spending, and Powerball Winnings.

    Imagine for a minute that you had a credit card, that you were allowed to set your own credit limit, that you were viewed as a hero for using and vilified for not using, and for which you would never have to pay the bill. What would you do with this mythical credit card?

    Washington politicians do not have to imagine, because this is their day-to-day reality. Congress can set its own debt limit, and can raise it at any time by any amount. In fact, the House Committee on the Budget has even argued that we should “abolish the debt limit” altogether

    Today, it is widely believed that federal spending creates jobs. And it is common practice to express federal spending with figures such as “jobs created” or “jobs supported.” For example, using the average personal income in the U.S. of $63,214, the $73 billion of education spending could be said to support approximately 1.1 million jobs in education. Thus, the incentives that elected officials face is clear: more spending means more jobs. To do so is to be an economic hero. To suggest otherwise is to be accused of not caring about people.

    Finally, today’s Washington politicians will not be held responsible for such profligate spending. Future elected officials will instead inherit the fiscal mess today’s officials create, just as today’s have inherited the fiscal mess caused by past officials. 

    Now if only this could be brought to the attention of voters, somehow…

  • Just a reminder from Charles C. W. Cooke: New York’s Bid to Police Online Comments Is Illegal and Ridiculous.

    On Monday, the State of New York will debut a new statute — the Social Media Hate Speech Accountability Act — which, impressively enough, manages to violate the First Amendment in two discrete ways. As Eugene Volokh notes in the Journal, New York’s law requires any website that features comments to contrive a policy for dealing with material that might “‘vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group’ based on ‘race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression,’” and demands that its owner must “give readers a way to complain about” it if they see it. This is doubly illegal. Not only is there no such thing as “hate speech” under American law — and thereby no categorical basis for the government of New York to demand anything of those who supposedly host it. But, by insisting that website owners publish explanations of their moderation rules and promise to respond to cavilers, the state is engaging in compelled speech.

    The response to this from any self-respecting American must be no less than, “Oh yeah — how about you shove it?” What the private owners of social networks, blogs, message boards, and so forth choose to do with their users’ content is up to them, not to the State of New York — or any other government, for that matter. At the bleeding edges of the First Amendment, there exist a handful of exceptions to the right to free speech: incitement to imminent illegal action, defamation, and true threats, for example. But the United States already has rules governing those oddities, and the operators of community-driven websites are already obliged to follow them. As a matter of taste, it may well behoove America’s online moderators to frown upon comments that “vilify” or “humiliate” others, to disdain users who disparage their fellow citizens based on their “race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression,” and to build mechanisms via which customers can flag abuse. But they don’t have to.

    We looked at this a few days ago. Deserves a second look, doesn't it.

  • And finally, a pungent query from Alan Jacobs: and then?

    As I mentioned in earlier posts, Noah Smith wants to outsource much of the process of writing, and Derek Thompson wants to outsource his research. In other news, Marina Koren is bothered by the slowness of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and her partner wants to watch the movie at 2X speed. Perhaps he also participates in the TikTok practice of listening to songs at double-speed.

    My question about all this is: And then? You rush through the writing, the researching, the watching, the listening, you’re done with it, you get it behind you — and what is in front of you? Well, death, for one thing. For the main thing.

    But in the more immediate future: you’re zipping through all these experiences in order to do what, exactly? Listen to another song at double-speed? Produce a bullet-point outline of another post that AI can finish for you?

    The whole attitude seems to be: Let me get through this thing I don’t especially enjoy so I can do another thing just like it, which I won’t enjoy either. This is precisely what Paul Virilio means when he talks about living at a “frenetic standstill” and what Hartmut Rosa means when he talks about “social acceleration.”

    I say: If you’re trying to get through your work as quickly as you can, then maybe you should see if you can find a different line of work. And if you’re trying to get through your leisure-time reading and watching and listening as quickly as you can, then you definitely do not understand the meaning of leisure and should do a thorough rethink. And in both cases maybe it would be useful to read Mark Helprin on “The Acceleration of Tranquility.”

    I usually do excerpts; that's his whole post. But you might want to click through and explore.


Last Modified 2024-01-17 12:29 PM EDT