In 2015 there were a number of student protests against the cases of microaggression across the US colleges in Missouri, upstate New York, California, and Yale. Some of the young people went on hunger strikes. All this led to increased media attention to the issue of verbal offence in colleges and resulted in resignation of several administrators in those colleges. Now, even the minor unintentional insults are considered serious issues. This suggests the emergence of the new morality among the young generation of people.
Professors Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have been researching microaggressions and moral cultures. They have compared the treatment of verbal insults in the past with the present-day situation. They observed that, while verbal abuse used to result in duels with the fatal outcome, such behavior was later considered unreasonable. Still, it looks like everything is changing on the US campuses. After an incident when a group of students made a racial comment towards their fellow student, the entire University of Missouri started a series of protests, including the football team strike, a hunger strike, and resignation of several administrative figures.
Not only racial comments are below toleration for the present-day students. Any educational content that is sensitive and can trigger stress reactions in students is getting omitted from the program. Thus, books like The Great Gatsby and Things Fall Apart contain sensitive material such as depictions of misogyny or racial intolerance. Now they are optional for students whose psyche might be affected by such material. The other topics of concern, apart from racial discrimination, violence, and misogyny, are sex, religion, and many more. Even the harmless issues of consultancy on Halloween costumes might face harsh criticism from students.
Colleges are trying now to create a safe space where different kinds of students would not feel threatened or offended. Along with the college program, extracurricular activities have also been subject to change. For example, comedians like Bill Maher, Chris Rock, and lots of other, less popular ones, will not perform on campuses, as their jokes might provoke unpleasant reactions in students. Humor, as a socially accepted and encouraged form of microaggression, has also been affected by the new morality.
Bradley and Manning point out that students don’t just demonstrate their strong feelings regarding the occasions of microaggression publicly, but they also demand that administrators intervene and bring everything in order. The researchers express their bewilderment over this situation and question the roots of such strong moral dependency in contemporary students, which comes in pair with moral vulnerability.
This all might be the result of emotional reasoning where feelings are used to explain the reality. It seems like this is the case with the present-day students. It would be more beneficial if the college administrations aimed their efforts at dealing with emotional reasoning, rather than encouraging it by taking measures against everything that might be sensitive to some. All in all, while the cases of intentional verbal offenses should be minimized, all the classic books and bright sarcastic performances should not suffer from this.