The transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a particularly difficult one in our society. Traditional adolescence has been extended by the four year sojourn through college for a great many of our young people. Children who have been coddled and cosseted, protected from the demands of reality for 20 plus years, graduate college unprepared for a world that is not only shifting beneath their feet but is suddenly unaccommodating to their feelings in ways which they have become accustomed to through the nurturing ministrations of our elite colleges.
At one time, college was thought of as a refuge, a place where our young people could learn the basic knowledge that supported the great edifice of Western Civilization, and begin the arduous process of learning how to learn. In the increasingly complex work place environment our children are heir to, graduating college with a fund of knowledge and the mental flexibility to adapt to constant change, could well be considered the raison d'etre of our elite universities.
At the same time, creating a safe environment where our adolescents can grow up, fully encounter themselves and learn who they are (establish a stable identity) has always been an important aspect of college life. Part of such development is coming to terms with one's adolescent impulsivity, intense and often poorly contained sexuality, and more primitive omnipotence. The young men and women must learn that behavior has consequences, that passions must be tamed and directed appropriately, that not ever possibility remains open for all time. In this area, assisting our young in becoming adults, our colleges have been negligent. The latest evidence comes from Harvard University: (HT: Horsefeathers)
Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises "Scintillating and Sexy" Talk
[Travis Kavulla]
All Harvard College freshmen received the e-mail below yesterday, and a fair number thought it must be a prank.
It isn't, as it happens. And this must be the first time a Harvard dean has used the dubious term "sexxxxxy" in a mass e-mail to his wards.
***SPECIAL EVENT***
Hooking Up: Hot Hints For Making Your Harvard (or Future) Sex Life Great
Thursday, March 1 7:00 PM Ticknor Lounge
Want to know more about how to access pleasure, how to communicate your desires and how to make sure that you're getting what you want and need from your partner? Do you have questions about sex or sexuality that you've never had answered? You won't want to miss this!
...
After some students complained about the event, they received a response from Susan Marine, the Director of the Harvard College Women's Center, who said she was writing on behalf of the Dean of the College and the Dean of Freshmen. She wrote:
Our role as educators is to enable all students who wish to learn about their own development to have access to accurate, meaningful information.
"Hooking up" is the au courant description of impersonal, promiscuous sex. The following day, this item appeared, proving that other Universities are equally confused about their mission statement:
Indoctrinating TAs in the Queer Agenda [Candace de Russy]
An email by outraged "Anonymous," who fears reprisal as a Rutgers employee or student, has been forwarded to me. He/she is "outraged" about the text below, which has recently been forwarded to Rutgers Teaching Assistants, and which concerns a notice to TAs to attend a "Course Curricula workshop" about how to incorporate a "queer agenda" into their classes:
Integrating Sexual Identity Issues Into Your Course Curricula
This session will help TAs integrate sexual identity issues (i.e., queer, lesbian, gay, bi, homosexual, in-the-life, gender queer, butch, femme, drag, etc.) into their course curricula. TAs may also bring syllabi in which they have integrated the "queer agenda." Cheryl Clarke, who will be facilitating the session, will also be bringing syllabi in which the queer identity subject matter was integrated or in which it occupies the entire course.
Both of these items arise from the same place, from a narcissistic faculty, unable to tolerate their own waning powers, attempting to encourage the vicarious acting out of the young people who depend on them for (a)moral guidance.
These e-mails are a form of child abuse. Adolescents do not need our help to fantasize and act on impersonal sexual fantasies. The very definition of perversity is an act which denies the humanity of the object. What is "hooking up", no matter the nature of the specific sexual act involved, but a denial of the object's humanity? And since when do we need to incorporate omni-sexuality into our curricula?
Becoming an adult is about making choices, which then limit our future choices. That is part of the reality principle. Becoming an adult is also about learning how to become intimate with another person, not the intimacy of two young bodies in congress, but the intimacy of two minds growing together.
Kameron is a student Looking for Love at Harvard University. His Blog reflects a bright young man asking questions of himself:
The Facebook group "People for the Return of Actual Dates" never fails to make me laugh when I see it because it, like all great comedy, rings so pathetically true.
"This is group for people who want to see the return of the 'actual date' to the Harvard social scene," reads the group description. "That means you don't have to know the person, it's not in a dining hall, common room or bedroom, and you don't have to bone afterward unless that's your thing.
"We're for dating for the sake of getting to know if someone is worth your time," it says, and I think, each time I read it, Yeah! -- it would be pretty nice to chat with someone at a party under the mutual understanding that what will ensue will not necessarily be limited to a sloppy 45 minutes in their bed-/common-/bath-room or on the dance floor.
But every time I complain to myself that no one here dates, I catch myself; it's not that no one is dating longterm. They are. They're just not dating me -- at least, the good ones aren't dating me, and that's what matters.
The bigger problem isn't even that it's difficult for me to get a date here; a claim that this is so would be a bit false. I date. Mostly grad students. And it's wholy unsatisfying. Undergrads here lack time for genuine friendships, let alone romantic commitments. Grads here lack humility, many of them; and the most worthwhile grad students are often too old, or married or otherwise unattainable (for student/tf reasons). But there hasn't been a lack of dating. I've kept myself relatively busy with relatively unsatisfying encounters. [Emphasis mine-SW]
Shouldn't Harvard, if it must intervene in such matters, be finding ways to help students actually get to know each other and find ways to get past the facile facades that adolescents construct in order to protect themselves from painful intimacy? These young people need no help finding ways to masturbate together (which is what "hook-ups" essentially amount to, two people acting out their own fantasies together, in parallel play, if you will), they need help in finding ways to relate. As Kameron points out, in another post, The Problem of Pleasure*, decrying his relative inability to have an orgasm during most of his hook-ups:
Mostly, I'm annoyed. If this stuff isn't going to be enjoyable for me, I should just lay off of it, right? Or, maybe, I could keep trying and embark upon the quest for -- gasp -- the perfect hook-up. The options could hardly be more divergent: switch my focus and become celibate (practically), or become infinitely more promiscuous.
At the very least, it's an interesting predicament. Our culture steeps us in the tradition of "Man Must Come." So when he can't, none of us seem to know what to do about it -- least of all, me.
...
I mean, what the f*ck. I want a refund.
* The title of this entry is a half-reference to Gang of Four's song "Natural's Not In It," whose opening lines read: "The problem of leisure / What to do for pleasure." What to do, indeed.
Jonathan, another Harvard student almost gets it:
i don’t necessarily oppose the dissemination of this information for those interested, but i do oppose its being broadcast on official channels. the FDO is effectively endorsing the “hooking up” lifestyle by sponsoring the event and encouraging freshmen to attend. and of all people, freshmen! little lost freshmen, trying to find their niche at college, who look to that very office for guidance and support. what do they get in return? “and now we’ll learn about the clitoris…” oh, and to anticipate the FDO’s likely defense of its actions, putting “or Future” in parenthesis is not a particularly effective way of getting around the administrative endorsement of casual sex.
you may think i’m overreacting, but consider: perhaps the worst part of this is that i know someone, somewhere, got this official word from Harvard College about improving his or her sex life (now or later!) and said, “how can i make my sex life great if i don’t have one? well, if the Dean of Freshmen is telling me i need to be “hooking up at Harvard,” then there must be something wrong with me if i’m not. maybe i don’t belong here…” i don’t know whether our administration was trying to be “hip” or “ahead of the curve” or what, but all they succeeded in accomplishing was showing gross insensitivity to the needs of some of those very students whom they are charged with guiding through their first year at Harvard. [Emphasis mine-SW]
If the best our elite universities can do is to encourage the denial of reality that is inherent in unencumbered impersonal (ie, perverse) sex, our children do, indeed, deserve a refund.
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