University students have long felt that the university was a replica of the existing social and political order. Thus the impulse to "do battle with the system," is like a simulation for the "real world" where they would presumably lead small revolts or institute grandiose changes to society at large. It was a silly notion, and remains as such. As it was then, the desire to utilize the era's confrontation politics tends to overrun any desire to use them for causes that matter, or presumably matter more. Instead of 'sitting in' when police would beat young African Americans wanting the right to vote and exercise their right to be in the public square, university students would use the sit-in to prevent the university from operating, because they did not like that a few professors were being financed by the United States government to do research into defense technology or policy. It was also useful to prevent someone with a contrary opinion from being present in the university system-ordinarily presumed to be the marketplace of intellectuality.
In this era, we are using 'trigger warnings' and 'safe spaces,' ordinarily used in discrete places to secure persons from re-experiencing very real trauma and stigma (whether because they were victims of sexual assault or abuse, had mental health issues related to or stemming from previous traumas, or were gay, bisexual, transgendered, etc.), to shelter young minds from all instances of contrary viewpoints or even intellectual and vicarious exposure to trauma (so as to educate or train the populace about those issues). This ranges from protesting speakers, class reading materials, someone's otherwise forgettable Halloween party, or God forbid, the use of cafeteria food. While some would say that the disadvantaged and the vulnerable have been through enough and that they don't need to be exposed to more, in the university, it is also their time to be able to develop thicker skin and even better intellectuality so as to challenge the existing reality that they find so disturbing. If one wants to change society for the better, one has to first understand where the opposition is coming from and then work to find ways to either convince them otherwise, or to exploit their weaknesses. Without that sort of exposure, the likelihood that the existing protections found in the university would then expand into society at large is so miniscule that shielding them from hurtful thoughts would damage rather than help that young person. General society cares little about your feelings, and thus an inability to 'rise above' one's own trauma or social inequities would ensure that the status-quo will remain and will likely harm one's ability to adjust to adult life.
This has become so faddish that one can hardly argue that it's being used solely by the disadvantaged, as it can also be found among the privileged and the "oppressors." Already concerned about 'creeping Marxism' and 'white guilt,' these poor souls have and will continue to use these mechanisms of "hurt feelings" in order to prevent their own intellectual and moral growth, and diminish the authority of the already oppressed. Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch is purported to be a vaccine for the Leftism of the existing university, but it is hardly any better than the disease itself.
Then there's the cost to the marketplace of ideas, itself. Being stymied by political correctness, whether it's a right-wing variant or a left-wing one, academics and teachers alike cannot advance each other's minds, let alone the minds of the young, for fear of offending. The university is where one must be exposed to controversial and innocuous ideas alike. It must not comfort or coddle. It must challenge the young. Right wingers must sit through Marx, Foucault, and Said. Left-wingers must be confronted with Burke, Kirk, Jon Edwards, Niebuhr, and so on. Living descendents of their thought must be given optional audience, free from uncivil interruption or emotional refuge outside.
Young people need to toughen up and be serious.
