December 12, 2013--Meow Lion, Meow

What's happening up at Columbia University, my old college? The Lions, instead of roaring, as our fight song says, are meowing. At the Law School.

It is rare that I agree with anything in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid rag, the New York Post. Actually, I never agree with him or the editorial positions of his newspapers or Fox news outlets. But this one time I do wholeheartedly concur with Tuesday's front page that bellowed--"Poor Babies! Cop Rulings 'Traumatize' Columbia Kids."

The story that followed claimed that the acting dean of the Law School announced that any students so upset by the grand jury rulings in Ferguson, MO and on Staten Island could arrange to delay taking their end-of-semester exams.

Of course skeptical that this could possibly be true (the Post relishes having or creating opportunities to bash liberal elites), I turned to the New York Times where, to my dismay, I found, buried on page A-26, virtually the same report with the more temperate headline--"Columbia Law Lets Students Delay Exams After Garner and Brown Decisions."

Between you and me, I prefer the Post's "Poor Babies!" That does a better job of getting to the essence of the matter.

The acting dean, Robert E. Scott, in an email to students actually did use the T-word: he wrote that following existing policies for "trauma during exam period" students who felt their performance on final exams would suffer because of the grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers who killed alleged African-American perpetrators, could defer taking the exams.

Refusing to say how many sought delays, a Law School spokesperson said a "small number" had.

To me, even one student seeking such a deferment is one too many.

Yes, the decisions not to indicate are upsetting, deeply upsetting, but unless the "small number" of students who are delaying their finals are members of Eric Garner's or Michael Brown's immediate families (I doubt it), it is hard to imagine being so traumatized that they can't study or concentrate.

This is particularly pathetic behavior for law students who presumably are being prepared to deal with just these kinds of circumstances. Actually, even worse circumstances. Say, like what happened exactly two years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 five- and six-year-olds were slaughtered.

I could sputter on about this--how we are over-pampering our young people, even those in top-ten law schools; how no one these days wants to take responsibility for anything; how we have lost moral fiber and what my father used to call "intestinal fortitude"; how for too many it's all about getting and spending; how the world has become Oprah-ized; how . . .

But I will resist and allow the Post front page to have the final word.