When I entered Syracuse University in 1959, the doctrine of in loco parentis, from the Latin, in place of the parent, ruled. Never openly admitted, but crystal clear was the aim of thwarting sex, so freshmen women were required live in dorms with strict curfews while being allowed to visit male-only dorms a few hours a week (and never at night) where the doors had to be half open, and if women sat on a man’s bed, one foot had to be one the floor. Nor were there any tales of drunken sexuality in the “Greek” fraternity/sorority system. To emphasize this anti-sex mentality, all male first year students had to dutifully listen to Dean Noble (his actual name) lecture us on the perils of masturbation. No wonder many married shortly after graduation.

By contrast, today’s campuses are “sex positive.” Co-ed dorms and bathrooms are commonplace, student health centers provide free contraception and, if necessary, help secure abortions. “Sex weeks”  showcase every imaginable sexual activity including many unthinkable on the college campus of 1959—sex toys, anal sex, bondage, and even sex for the disabled. Significantly, administrations ignore alcohol infused parties where inebriated undergraduates routinely copulate. For these self-blinded administrators, their only worry is whether everything is “consensual” according to the latest feminist wooly-headed definition of “consent.” Sex per se, however, is irrelevant.

A Martian visitor might falsely conclude that universities are bastions of freedom. No. In loco parentis is now even stronger, and while today’s undergraduates gain in sexual liberation, they have unconsciously surrendered their intellectual freedom. In the late 1950s undergraduate libidos might have been bottled up, but horny freshmen could freely discuss any idea, no matter how “controversial,”  and joke at anybody’s expense. Limits were self-imposed so ethnic jokes were widely appreciated but only if they were funny. In other words, censorship was enforced via peers versus from on high. School administrators might stop fornication, but they did not control the life of the mind.

To take but one example of this new in loco parentis, Northwestern University now has a policy that bans,

discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ethnicity, caste, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, parental status, marital status, age, disability, citizenship status, veteran status, genetic information, reproductive health decision making, height, weight, or any other classification protected by law.

This policy is also highly inclusive and applies to students, faculty, and staff, as well as University vendors, contractors, visitors, guests, volunteers, interns, and third parties. Moreover, injury can also only be in the eye of those (allegedly) harmed, so the most thin-skinned becomes the legal standard. Jokes are included in this menu of what might harm protected groups.

Penalties for infraction include verbal or written warnings, forced counseling and re-training, probation, and expulsion. Guilty tenured professors may even be fired.

This is a breathtaking expansion of university power to control private behavior in private settings, even non-university personnel, on a scale unthinkable to previous anti-sex warriors. Suppressing hanky-panky among youngsters is one thing, but quite another for them to punish all behavior, verbal and non-verbal, correctly or incorrectly interpreted across all campus life. Not even the Saudi morality police, no slouches at imposing sharia, would launch such a grand totalitarian under-taking.

This policy invites a dictatorship of the self-identified virtuous. For one, its make-work-for-lawyers legal complexity renders it almost incomprehensible save to university functionaries pushing a political agenda. Few will read this 46-page document, let alone gain clear guidance if they do, and those accused of “crimes” will spend a fortune on legal fees. Consider the key term “harassment”:

[An] unwelcome verbal, physical, written, or visual conduct or conduct using technology based on an actual or perceived protected characteristic that when based on the totality of circumstances is subjectively and objectively offensive and so severe or pervasive that it limits or denies a person’s ability to participate in or benefit from the education program or activity or has the purpose or effect of creating an academic or working environment that a reasonable person would consider to be intimidating, hostile, or offensive.

Being unable to take an exam due to a professor’s lame joke about obesity may now be proof of debilitating harassment.

This utopian quest also infantilizes everyone by assuming that lacking written, enforceable guidance from above, people are incapable of navigating human relationships.  Must student comedians consult a dean before cracking the joke and then receive written permission to tell it? Surely none of that is necessary—the lesson is better learned by telling the inappropriate joke and then suffering rebuke. It’s called “growing up.”  Should Northwestern co-eds carry a little cheat sheet to consult when their drunk date starts pawing them?  Humans learn more from unpleasant experiences than unread legalistic student handbooks.

This long code of conduct also guarantees that everyone will violate some provision or another and thus render them vulnerable to extortion. Can anyone be safe from enemies scrutinizing hundreds of social media posts to uncover a single crude Polish joke? An offhand remark about “angry childless cat ladies” can be career ending. Heather MacDonald’s Diversity Delusion recounts how men can find themselves accused of rape despite everything initially appearing consensual thanks to women changing their minds months after the experience. Will there be a statute of limitations on harassment?

There is also the problem of selective enforcement. It all depends on which way the wind is blowing, so “Jews Go Back to Poland” may be tolerated free speech but “Jews are fat money-grubbers” risks accusations of being offensive. Will heterosexual white males organize to protest their demonization in Gender Study courses?

These guidelines, if enforced, will undermine all campus social interaction save those among the closest friends. Why risk forwarding an email joking about the unintelligible Indian accent of your calculus TA? Imagine surviving a life on 100% bland language? Jokes, sarcastic comments, biting criticism, and similar unflattering comments are part of human discourse, a staple in literature and the theater. To remove them in the name of minimizing harm is to sanitize human existence and as is true for all utopian schemes, defies human nature. Indeed, given Shakespeare’s bawdy depiction of women and characterization of usurious Jews, assigning Shakespeare to undergraduates may be defined as “hate mongering,” and thus grounds for terminating the instructor. Shades of Anthony Comstock’s quixotic war on smut.

Northwestern University is hardly unique in its quest to expunge “offensiveness” and boorish behavior from the campus. Speech codes, rules about microaggressions, and bans on hostile learning environments are ubiquitous on today’s campus. The lesson from Northwestern should be that attempts to purify the campus will invariably destroy the university’s core mission of finding and disseminating knowledge. Purification is not part of the university’s mission and humans, by their very nature, are inclined to be vulgar and insulting, so efforts to eliminate these hard-wired traits will fail regardless of how many administrators are hired to execute this task.

This utopian and totally unnecessary quest is a pathology albeit one draped in feel good rhetoric. A better idea would be to take the funds now squandered on eliminating fat jokes and instead spend it on how to eliminate deadly obesity. American universities built world-class intellectual reputations without worrying about people being offended by jokes or harmful stereotypes, and it is time to return to that era.

Image generated by AI.