[littletimmy]

This is the end result of a culture that treats children like dainty chinadolls that are going to shatter at the first fracture.

These kids are coddled since they are born to make sure they are "safe" and ferried endlessly from one constructive activity to another so they don't take any risk. Of course it will also be that they need "safe spaces" in college (basically extended high school) whenever they hear something tangentially against their worldview.

The assertion that a discussion of "rape culture" can be "too distressing" such as to require a trauma room is absolutely ridiculous. A part of it, I'm sure, is that the administrator needs to justify her unnecessary employment by creating work.

What farce.

[tunesmith]

I've always rolled my eyes at complaints about the "trophy generation" (Adam Carolla had a particularly brain-deadening rant about it), but this article honestly did get me wondering about how people like that would be able to cope with actual professional atmospheres after college. On the other hand, this article is an editorial that doesn't really try to quantify the problem, so maybe "people like that" aren't really a measurable population.

It's probably not so much the "trauma rooms" that are the problem, as it is using them as reason to censor the "traumatic discussions".

It'd be nice if there were more mechanisms in place to both teach and encourage actual reasoned discussion aka dialectic. There's too much debate out there, too much ethos and pathos crowding out logos.

[washadjeffmad]

They've been taught, whether or not they realize it, how to morally ransom others, guiltlessly. To ignore them is to marginalize them, to disagree with them is to threaten them, and to oppose them is assault. It's incredibly hypocritical and self-centered behavior, especially for an adult.

And what I fear is that they'll shape whatever environments that will allow it because everyone else has kowtowed to their feelings, and if you don't let them have their way, you'll become the toxic old guard who enables the victimizers-- quite a step away from "big, fat meanie head".

In a business environment, after making their way into a managerial role, it may mean over-promoting people who agree with them and reassigning those who don't. It might be some form of constant ostracism, like not getting invited along with everyone else to drinks after work, having negative rumors circulated about what a secret creep you are ("I heard they tried to pick up someone who was drunk." "I'd believe it, they don't think rape is real." "What a shitlord.", or not being put on jobs you're best at. And if you aren't having work that could make you look better withheld, you might have your career slowly poisoned by having things put in your file that indicate you're not a good candidate for promotion, which is all for the best, since you could be a closet oppressor who undoes a lifetime of progressive equality.

That's a bit hyperbolic, but those are all things that I've witnessed individually in varying degrees over the years, with different labels. It can be incredibly difficult to hold people to task for their actions, especially if they're not forthright in what they're doing and you're in the minority.

Perhaps it help to solve this problem if we included one more warning about life early on: "Safety is not guaranteed."

[tunesmith]

"To ignore them is to marginalize them, to disagree with them is to threaten them, and to oppose them is assault."

Sort of off topic, but what's interesting is that this sounds a lot like indicators of borderline personality disorder.

At any rate though, these sorts of articles basically ascribe a narrative to an entire generation, which isn't really fair. Those sorts of impulses are easily grown out of for most people, and people who are diagnosed borderline come from all generations. I think the current thinking is that borderline has both nature and nurture components - some from environment, some genetic.

[ams6110]

Your business manager examples sounds to me like standard office politics, same as forever.

[eigenvector]

As someone who graduated from university in the last few years and has observed the drastic and gaping difference between school and workplace environment, people adapt to their new circumstances pretty quickly.

Keep in mind that 99% of the "trigger warning" generation is just following along with what is presented to them in university as unassailable orthodoxy. When they get to the workplace and are presented with another, altogether different, unassailable orthodoxy (STFU and fit in with company culture), they fall in line pretty quickly.

[busterarm]

Don't worry. The coddled masses are slowly changing workplace culture to suit them...at least up until the point it affects a business' bottom line.

I feel like we're approaching some sort of new, self-imposed dark age.

[eli_gottlieb]

>I feel like we're approaching some sort of new, self-imposed dark age.

What's the statistical rate at which incitements to moral panic turn out to have been correct?

[analog31]

An amusing anecdote about the "trophy generation." There is a tradition of not keeping score at soccer games for little kids. My kids were in these soccer leagues for a while, so I attended quite a number of games.

The adults didn't keep score. Whether they knew the score or not depended on whether they cared about sports or not.

The kids kept score. At the end of the game, every last kid knew the score, who won, who kicked the most goals, had the most saves, etc.

Likewise with "every kid gets a ribbon." The kids know the score. They know if it's one of those ribbons that every kid gets, or a ribbon that's actually a prize for something.

[throwaway9324]

I don't see how geeks aren't as much of a "trophy generation" as it gets. So I think you know the answer o your question. Yes, there are exception. But the ration between opportunity and chip on their shoulder seems pretty high.

[s_kilk]

> how people like that would be able to cope with actual professional atmospheres after college.

From my own experience, I tend to agree with this passage from the article:

""" Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them? """

[cadlin]

You know that it was a student who wanted the trauma room, not an administrator, right? The entire article is a string of anecdotes of decisions by students and student groups, save for the one about Oxford, which isn't in the United States.

Here's my theory: college students are well-meaning, overzealous, and inexperienced. Therefore they make bad bad decisions, and even good decisions they make are often framed or communicated poorly. Like all adults, only moreso.

FTA: "Still, it’s disconcerting to see students clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls."

Is there anything more tired and myopic than "kids these days?" But the Hacker News commentariat, a bastion of reason and rationality, has correctly identified these students' actions of civilization's imminent destruction by "rabid third wave feminists."

[oulipo]

I'm not sure it is the problem of a culture treating children particularly -- I think it has much more to do with the fact that:

- in America you can sue someone for almost anything

- universities in the US made students pay so much for their educations, that basically they got fucked up because students now ask to be the boss since Universities would be at a loss without them, so they must comply to their every demand

On the contrary, in Europe, teachers are "the boss" and students come to them to learn, so there is a respect for the institution and the teaching, and people learn to manage their every whim

[ObviousScience]

Then why did several examples come from UK universities?

[oulipo]

I'm not aware of those, but there may be some indeed -- I'd say the culture is close between US & UK so it can permeate, but how I see it, the problem is rather that University deans do not play their roles (they should protect teachers except in the case of a mistake from the teacher's part) and explain to students they have to be open to debate opinions, but in practice they are so scared of lawsuits or losing students who pay so much that they'd rather fire the teacher than make students become better citizens

[eli_gottlieb]

UK universities have been transformed into businesses just as aggressively as American ones.