When the going gets tough, the tough get Legos.
That’s the lesson some of our top universities are teaching our kids after the presidential election. Elite schools like Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown were offering everything from optional attendance to milk and cookies for students to deal with Donald Trump’s victory.
At Harvard, several professors reportedly canceled classes, and a physics instructor offered her office as a “space to process” for people who were “fearful for the future” or “embarrassed to face our international colleagues.” She also added that she “stress-baked lemon bars to share.”
Lemon bars?
At Georgetown University’s prestigious McCourt School of Public Policy, a “self-care suite” was opened in which students could color, have snacks and play with Legos.
This, by the way, is a graduate school.
Columbia and Penn universities, roundly criticized for inaction on antisemitism earlier this year, reportedly had no issue with professors canceling classes so students could deal with Donald Trump winning the presidency.
And in Tacoma, Washington, the University of Puget Sound gave a full week for students to engage in “self care,” including walking through a labyrinth of calming music, an arts and crafts corner and a place to make a collage.
Not sure if finger paint is on the menu.
Fowl play
Perhaps you think this is a joke. I wish. Sadly, it is becoming more the rule than the exception, with college and graduate students paying upwards of $70,000-80,000 per year to be told, whenever real-life stress infringes on their day, that “healing” is needed, that safe spaces must be available, that reverting to playful activities you did as a grade-schooler is coping.
Never mind the political edge to all this, that, had Kamala Harris won Tuesday instead of Trump, the idea of canceling class “to grieve the presidential election results” — as a Michigan State professor wrote and did last week — would have likely bought a firestorm of criticism. It shouldn’t matter who won or lost. That’s the point.
It’s an election. It happens every four years. And no matter what the result, we get up and get on with our day.
Most adults have no choice. And once they graduate, these college students won’t, either.
Which is what we should be teaching them now. You cope with things by accepting reality, respecting others, and finding mature, productive ways to channel your reactions. You don’t demand a bag of Chips Ahoy.
Or a duck. The University of Oregon actually offered students “Quacktavious the Therapy Duck” last week, along with hot cocoa and cider, as a way to deal with the election. This is the same university that recently saw its assistant director of fraternity and sorority life post a message that people who voted for Donald Trump should “go f—k yourselves” and “jump off a f—ing bridge.”
Apparently, he didn’t hold the duck long enough.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Real life hits hard
Now, I’m not going to do the predictable thing, make a comparison with my own college experience. Instead, I’ll go back a generation. Back to my mother, who dreamed of going to college and becoming a doctor, only to walk outside when she was 16 years old and see her father had dropped dead of a heart attack at a picnic table.
Her mother, my grandmother, went into shock and couldn’t function. My mother had to become the head of the household. Her college dreams were over. My father, who had just begun dating her, became the unofficial man of the house while still in high school. Eventually, he got a chance at higher education, but only while commuting and working to support himself.
He was the first one in our family to earn a degree. And he never would have considered skipping a class, no matter how hard his day had been.
What they faced were real-life problems — health, money, family issues — the same problems most Americans still face today. The lucky young people who get to attend elite universities should, you’d figure, appreciate their opportunity that much more and rise to its challenge with increased maturity.
Instead, they act as if stress is a dragon, and pressure the devil himself. And these schools, perhaps loathe to lose their insane tuition, coddle them like infants.
And if you think this is an issue limited to the college years, consider this: 41% of senior or midlevel staffers in the Biden-Harris administration came from Ivy League schools like Harvard, Columbia and Princeton. Forty-one percent! Which means today’s safe-spacers are tomorrow’s policymakers. They are being groomed for their jobs by learning that a free and Democratic election result warrants days off, hot cocoa and comfort toys.
You think of all the nations on this planet where voting means taking your life in your hands, and you wonder what they think about Lego therapy.
It’s time to grow up. Young and old alike. This country is bigger than any one man, bigger than any one election, and our national temperament should be bigger than running to safe spaces or throwing hissy fits.
Tougher times are likely ahead. Our children will need to buckle up and face them. Our universities owe them that education. So do we.
Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press. His column is distributed by Tribune Content Agency.