Everett Piper
Washington Times, July 23, 2023
“At this university, we will teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge.”
This past week, Gallup released a poll showing public confidence in American higher education is plummeting. A national survey conducted in June found that only 36% of Americans now say they have confidence in our colleges and universities.
That number was 57% in 2015. That’s a 21-point drop in just eight years! Why?
I invite you to walk with me down memory lane to answer that question.
In 2015, while in my second decade as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, something disturbing began happening at various colleges and universities nationwide. From Berkeley to Brown and dozens of schools in between, students were literally weeping and wailing on their respective campuses simply because someone wore a Halloween costume they didn’t like.
This movement quickly became known as the snowflake rebellion because of the apparent emotional fragility of its proponents. For a variety of reasons, I believed it needed to be confronted.
Frankly, I was disgusted with the foolishness of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and the intolerant “tolerance” of the alphabet soup mafia. The corresponding call for censorship was alarming.
The suggestion that a bunch of 18-year-olds (who, by definition, know nothing and desperately need an education) should be empowered to dictate what could be discussed on campus was laughable. The spineless capitulation of other educational administrators across the county was frightening.
My concern was that the ivory tower was becoming the Tower of Babel almost overnight, and I was determined that this would not happen on my campus. So, I decided to write an open letter to my students.
In my letter, I confronted the self-absorption that characterized the millennial generation. I reminded my students that the goal of a classical liberal arts education is not a participation trophy, but rather to pursue truth.
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