Harvard Student Blasts School’s Insane COVID Policies, Conformity and Condescension

 

“We may be the future decision makers, but most of us aren’t leaders” writes Julie Hartman in the Wall Street Journal

College students have de minimis risk from COVID.  Yet universities have imposed irrational and draconian mask and vaccination policies on students with harsh consequences for those who do not obey, or even speak up, against administration edicts.

One Yale student likened life on campus to that of a “surveillance state.”  At the University of Chicago students were forced to sign a “Required COVID-19 Attestation” in direct contradiction to the school’s academic freedom policies. 

Hartman writes that all this insanity has infantilized her generation of college students. 

More concerning than the administration’s heavy-handedness has been the zombielike response of the student body. I ask my friends, “Why do young, fully vaccinated students continue to tolerate these irrational Covid restrictions?” While many of my peers acknowledge the excess, they shrug it off. The prevailing mood on campus is resignation, learned helplessness and reluctance to dissent.

These policies have also empowered groups of students to act as self-appointed enforcers who use COVID policies to bludgeon their fellow students.   

There is a smaller group at Harvard that apparently find pleasure in these restrictions. These students will chastise you for not wearing a mask correctly and called one of my brave peers who publicly denounced Harvard’s Covid restrictions a “eugenicist” because he supposedly showed insufficient sensitivity to immunocompromised people. They love Covid for the moral high ground it gives them to condescend to and control others.

Red Guards in training?  Don’t be so quick to dismiss.  The unfortunate truth is that events in early life, including those during the college experience, have an important role in forming our outlook and behaviors in later life. 

For many, that means sheepish, unquestioning adherence to edicts of the elites no matter how silly or irrational. 

For others, that means becoming hectoring, humorless bureaucrats, politicians and bosses. 

What does that mean for America?  As Hartman puts it: “My peers and I are often told that we are the future leaders of America. We may be the future decision makers, but most of us aren’t leaders. The inability of Harvard students to question or oppose these irrational bureaucratic excesses bodes ill for our ability to meet future challenges.”

Indeed.

Polling Shows Opportunities for Republicans Among Young Voters in 2022

 

The latest Economist/YouGov poll shows young people disillusioned with the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party.  But can Republicans make the sale?

The Economist/YouGov polled 1500 Americans on their views on the Biden Administration and the ideological positioning of the two major parties.

Americans overall, and young Americans in particular, are not optimistic on the outlook for the next three years under Joe Biden.  Just over a third of young Americans are optimistic about the remaining Biden presidency.   The same number of Americans aged 18 to 29 are pessimistic.

  It is important to remember that exit polls found that Biden received 60 percent of the vote among 18 to 29 year-olds ion the 2020 election.  Clearly large numbers of young voters have become disillusioned with the failures, corruption and big government policies of the Biden Administration.    

Biden does slightly better among 30 to 44 year-olds.  Still, a substantial majority of Americans under the age of 45 are either pessimistic or unsure.  The Biden Administration has not endeared itself with young people in America. 

Young Americans are more likely to see the Democratic party as too far to the left than want to see the Democratic party continue to move left.  By a 3 to 2 margin, 18 to 29 year-olds view the Democratic Party as more left wing than they are.  The margin increases to two-to-one among 30 to 44 year-olds. 

Nevertheless, the Republican party also needs to do a lot of work to appeal to young voters.  Young voters are more likely to see Republicans as too far to the right than not conservative enough.  However, older voters are more likely to view the Democratic party as too extreme.  Almost half of Americans 65 and over see the Democratic party as much father to the left than they are while less than a third find Republicans too far right. 

The fact that voters overall are marginally more likely to find the Democrats too far to the left (33 percent versus 29 percent for the Republicans) is in stark contrast to the corporate media narrative which routinely characterizes Republicans as “far right” but never, ever characterizes Democrats as “far left”).

Republicans need to make the case that the free market system and smaller government are in the best interest of young people.  It is younger Americans, who have more of their lives and careers ahead of them, who have the most to gain from a pro-growth, pro-opportunity economic program for America.