Princeton students less comfortable expressing themselves than a year ago | Hacker News Reader

Princeton students less comfortable expressing themselves than a year ago

thefire.org

11 pointsDig1t12 comments

>Just 30% said “all speech that would be protected by the First Amendment should be allowed.”

>many students showed a surprising willingness to punish their fellow students for expressing unpopular opinions.

Why is this surprising? While cultural can somewhat amplify and repress parts of human nature, human nature hasn't changed. There's a reason US students are assigned to read "The Scarlet Letter" and similar works in middle and high schools.

Even princeton students don't understand the first amendment, it seems.

That amendment only applies to the federal, state, and subsidiary governments (with some exceptions for military personnel and other government employees).

Yes, which is why it's unrelated to whether students punish other students.

I think things all day long that I dont say out loud. No one cares about GPA or class load or how drunk you got. The purpose of college is gaining a credential which provides social proof. The credential now includes the ability not to say certain things in front of certain obvious people. It's easy to do that. People who want to "be authentic" instead of just "getting a degree" will suffer.

It's easy to close your mouth and just avoid people who want to tattle on you and shit talk them later in smaller/anonymous groups. We've been doing it for millennia.

People who want to "be authentic" instead of just "getting a degree" will suffer.

This is exactly how civilizations (eventually) collapse.

It wasn't always this way and people weren't always so fearful as they are now.

It has always been this way, and people were often more fearful than they are now. Worse case scenario today is you have to make a living as a grunt worker or move on to another town. You aren't getting lynched[1], thrown in the stocks, tarred and feathered, or crucified anymore.

[1] -okay, much more rarely.

I'm talking about living memory. Up until about 15 years ago in fact.

Dungeons and Dragons Satanic Panic.

You would think that students at such a "prestigious" institution would understand that freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences.

You would think that such a "prestigious" institution would be a community with a standard for free expression that was at least as tolerant as the constitutional minimum, but hothouse academia in the US is it's own thing.

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