Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article some recent events at Swarthmore College. The administration of the college has announced that it may discipline five students for taking over an administration building for four hours last month. The students have responded with disappointment and confusion.
The article reports:
The demonstrating students are part of Swarthmore’s Mountain Justice group, a campus organization which is perpetually demanding that Swarthmore’s trustees sell all the fossil-fuel stocks in the school’s luxurious $1.9 billion endowment portfolio.
The latest divestment protest occurred on Swarthmore’s campus on Feb. 24, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.
…Then, on March 17, Swarthmore’s administration sent disciplinary citations to five of the students. The quintet of protesters now faces punishments ranging from a mere warning to possible probation.
In a statement, Swarthmore president Valerie Smith observed that the college has a long tradition of student protest, but noted that the protesters “crowded into” Amstutz’s (Mark C. Amstutz, the chief investment officer) office and prevented him “from completing all but the most menial of tasks and restricting his movements and rights.”
The students “were warned multiple times that they were in violation of the student conduct policy and were given the chance to move to the hallway to continue their protest,” Smith said.
Turns out, keeping administrators from doing their jobs is a violation of Swarthmore’s student conduct policies.
The students claim that they broke no rules and even helped with shredding some papers in the office. Wow. I wonder if they were papers that Amstutz wanted shredded.
There are a lot of things to think about in this article.
The article reminds us:
Swarthmore costs $63,550 for a single year of tuition, fees and room and board.
By way of comparison, Swarthmore’s $1.9 billion endowment is worth more than the entire annual gross-domestic product of Belize.
The students who attend Swarthmore are either very smart and go there on a scholarship or they are the children of privilege. These students find it disappointing and confusing that they were expected to follow the rules listed in their student handbook. Theoretically, these students would be the leaders of tomorrow. If they cannot even follow the rules in the student handbook, what kind of leaders will they make?
The article concludes with an amazing fact:
In 2014, a then-sophomore at Swarthmore, Erin Ching criticized her school for allowing Christian conservative thinker Robert George to speak on campus. “What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion,” Ching whined — apparently without irony.
Wow.