Old Sexual Morality Out, New Environmental Morality In

Candace de Russy

"Get ready for Gender-Neutral Housing, but Don't Poster about It" reads a headline at Bwog, the blog of the Blue and White, a student magazine at Columbia University. Winfield Myers's ironic commentary on this and other mutation of regulations on campuses concludes:

Some conservatives lament the disappearance of in loco parentis or a benevolent paternalism from the post-1960s American campus. In fact, both are strong as ever, but grossly misplaced. From odious speech codes to pc in the classroom to the confused new rules at Columbia, proof abounds that today’s administrators exert as much coercive power over their charges as their predecessors. But unlike those old fogies of yesteryear, contemporary bureaucrats enforce a morality based on a gnostic conception of human nature and creation. As is often the case with academic “reforms,” the youngest and most vulnerable members of the community will be the losers.
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