Somebody please tell me why Princeton University — Princeton University! — is admitting women who need to be continually pushed to speak more. In the 21st century. They don't deserve the seats they fill. They shouldn't be coddled. They should be flunked out. You get into Princeton and you sit there too timid — or too withholding — to speak?
It's about time someone said this. Please, please read the whole thing. If you think it was written by some Ivy League guy, then you really need to read the whole article and the weblog, too.
When I was at old PU, the only topic that made the women students loquacious was the re-working of some moldy points of feminism from the generation before or claiming to be a victim of some institutional process. The time I pointed out to my colleagues [doctoral candidates, I might add, of some mature experience with the world] that the nature of institutions is often to treat all people poorly, I was regarded like Richard Speck. One of the women started to cry because I wasn't helping to "legitimate her grief as a marginalized person". I realized that this was what feminism had become by the mid-1990's: anger, blaming, tears. You died for nothing, Bloomer.
Professor Althouse's comments about the role of betas in the university community is precise, too. It could easily be expanded to The Church, which is Beta Central.