College Students Are Using 'No Contact Orders' to Block Each Other in Real Life | Hacker News Reader

College Students Are Using 'No Contact Orders' to Block Each Other in Real Life

wsj.com

> At Carnegie Mellon, for example, an NCO can be obtained by anyone who claims to be “the recipient of persistent unwanted or harassing contact by another student” and includes “indirect contact through third parties.”

> NCOs requested by one student after her roommate allegedly stole her bagels, by participants in a group project gone awry, by members of rival student organizations caught up in a dispute and by aggrieved parties in a social-media skirmish.

So you just have to make something up. I am not too surprised there. It's not like prestigious University students somehow select only honest and moral students, they'll get all kinds of characters.

What is surprising is the administrators. Nobody thought of this potential for abuse. Were they so naive?

I wonder if being in the same course means a "contact". If that's the case, the most "enterprising" students could be using these to simply block students from the same courses. Sometimes registrations are competitive and there are not enough slots. How can you ensure you have a spot? -- file a bunch of NCOs against people in the same major and then as soon as it comes time to sign up, tell the administration to kick them out because of NCOs. Now what if the NCOs are mutual? Things can get interesting. Who is forced to drop out of the class then? Maybe flip a coin, or each NCO gets a score for "gravity". The more grave on wins and force the other party to yield.

> What is surprising is the administrators. Nobody thought of this potential for abuse. Were they so naive?

In woke politics, implying that anti-harassment policies can be abused is a mortal sin.

I call that the zealotry ratchet. The way it works is someone with more radical views can propose some stricter policies to the particular org. If the general group loosely aligns with that ideology, they'll always publicly agree. If they disagree, they'll be pointed at and accused of being a traitor, infidel, some kind of -ist and so on. So, in private participants can understand the policy will lead to disaster, but there is no way they'll say anything publicly. Then, it looks like there is unanimous support and the proposal passes. That's one crank of the ratchet. If that worked, there is the next crank and so on.

I don't have to deal too much with college-aged people, other than some interns every now and then - but a friend of mine from college is now a professor, and has to deal with this kind of stuff on seemingly a weekly basis.

He told me that one of the most common problems he faces when trying to organize the logistics of a class, is that kids will just block each other from everything, with no notice. They won't even try handle a conflict, straight to blocking and ghosting. So every semester there last-minute conflicts with group projects, lab work, etc. where these things happen.

Anyway, as for me, the only incidents we have/had tend to revolve around feedback to interns and fresh grads. Some of these kids will have what seems like a small breakdown the first time they receive poor (or below average) feedback on something. We had one intern that received a "Need improvement", and the person ghosted the manager, and went straight above - teary eyed - to plead their case.

I suspect that some of these kids have never actually experienced a real conflict before, or been in a position where they had to actually face one.

It might depend on the place. At the university where I teach, I haven't seen any such conflicts on group projects. There is strife, but it seems on the same level as when I was in college 30 years ago.

I'm not denying it, but it might be variable.

Mediating personal issues is not a professors job. If they can’t handle that themselves they don’t deserve to pass

Man, they will have a hard time when they start working. There is no blocking if you have to collaborate with someone, if they don't learn how solve conflicts they will suffer a lot.

The article doesn’t seem to suggest more than a few anecdotes of this happening.

Imo they’re not even particularly compelling

> Karp recalled an instance when he was a dean of student affairs at Skidmore College in which a drunken student lost his key and climbed through the open dorm window of a female student, mistaking it for a friend’s room. She screamed, and he immediately retreated, but he was nonetheless served a no contact order.

This girl definitely expected she was about to be raped by an unknown man climbing through her window. The article seems to imply that it should be cool because he didn’t intend to do it because he was drunk. I think that’s crazy.

> This girl definitely expected she was about to be raped by an unknown man climbing through her window. The article seems to imply that it should be cool because he didn’t intend to do it because he was drunk. I think that’s crazy.

I don't know about "be cool", but what's the desired outcome here? Avoid a repeat occurrence? Sounds like that would likely happen with or without the order. So what's the use of this tool? Some sort of semi-punitive punishment? "Don't climb in this particular person's window again or else"?

No, as the article points out, the orders are mutual. They're intended to stabilize volatile situations and prevent escalation. Schools have other processes they run in parallel to evaluate things like assault accusations.

Thank you for pointing out the orders are mutual; this strengthens my point. What is the use of one in the described situation? To stabilize and avoid escalation of the situation of "oh shit I'm so sorry I thought this was my friends room I am immediately leaving now"? Now neither of them can accidentally climb into the incorrect window that the other happens to be behind?

The no contact order being a response to unintentional contact is just blatantly the wrong tool for the job.

Presumably after an event like that one of those two students would have strong preferences to avoid the other, and it's hard to see any cognizable interest for the school in overriding that preference; meanwhile, honoring that preference stands a good chance of foreclosing on future conflicts between the two. A college has a mission, and should draft and enforce rules that further that mission. Students at colleges should get used to the idea that joining most mission-oriented organizations will involve complying with some set of rules, because that will certainly be expected of them in the workforce.

Again, I see the "fragility" narrative here in exactly the opposite way the WSJ article does: what's fragile to me is having a temper tantrum over being told that there's a mutual no-contact order in place between you and a student who doesn't want to be in contact with you.

Presumably after an event like that, both of the two students will have lots of thoughts, opinions, and feelings about the event and one another. Not all of these should be indulged, and it's entirely possible that doing so would in fact get in the way of the university's mission by adding new roadblocks and considerations to the day to day life of multiple students.

Part of being a young adult is learning how to operate in a society composed of people, something that developing teenage brains are not innately good at. And part of that learning process is not having all whims indulged, especially when they may be harmful to others.

Students at universities are not necessarily young adults. It makes sense to me that the institutions would enact policies that safeguard their core mission at the least possible expense.

Should we take bets as to whether the two students in this particular story were young adults?

No Contact orders are a useful tool. This isn't a case where they were the correct one to use.

Universities here are simply doing what requires the least possible amount of administrative effort to protect the university from legal liability. Not uncommon among schools in the US, university or otherwise.

It's not clear to me that there's an inappropriate time to use an NCO, so long as they're mutual and institution reasonably believes continued contact is going to cause drama, and thus expense. That's really all there is to the analysis as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of people in adult society would shoot that guy dead on the spot or sue him penniless

Not in the civilized world generally, no.

> They're intended to stabilize volatile situations and prevent escalation.

Wouldn't it be better, in many of these cases, to actually talk it out? When I was young and there was a conflict of this sort, we were taught to apologize and shake hands, as a sign of future goodwill.

There is a reason why non-reciprocal altruism (you can say assumption of good intent) is a thing in humans. If we are all only thinking reciprocally, then with errors and mistakes, nobody would communicate with anybody, and no relationship would ever come about.

Depends on what you think the mission of the school is, but, importantly, that's for the school to decide.

Talk it out? Why would an intruder, whatever his "cool" drunken motives were, deserve her attention or anyone's for that matter? Why should anyone assume that such a person is a good boy, adept at 18 century manners? The risk isn't worth the bother.

On the one hand, we live in a busy word and if you consider drunken characters a waste of time, you should have a way of distancing yourself from them.

On the other hand, and far, far more important, not having such a way leaves the door wide open for abuse. "Oh sorry"... "Oh, Oh sorry again, may shake you hand again?"... "Oh, oh, oh..." FT.

When you were young, sexual assault of women was more ok too

Without any actual numbers given, this reads like any number of other hit pieces on younger generations that have been written up through the years. Especially coming from the editorial pages.

I don't see what's so weird about this. Conflicts between college students living on campus are a perennial problem; it's not some new fragility in today's students. Students attend (and live at) colleges contingent on rules of conduct set by the colleges themselves. If one of those rules is "you must complete with no-contact orders", and no-contact orders are granted liberally, who cares? The college has a greater interest in avoiding conflicts between its users than a student has in maintaining contact with someone who doesn't want to interact with them.

It took me several long, very confusing seconds to realize "No Contact Orders" didn't mean no-contact doordash delivery but instead a court order.

A tool originally meant to protect the vulnerable being abused by Machiavellian narcissists, a story as old as time.

feels like when the same kids that made fun of "safe spaces" on college campuses started crying that they weren't allowed to speak their minds.

> feels like when the same kids that made fun of "safe spaces" on college campuses started crying that they weren't allowed to speak their minds.

I don’t really know what group you’re referencing, so I don’t mean this to be apologia for any particular group, but those aren’t mutually inconsistent viewpoints; they’re both consistent with free speech (making fun of censorship and then objecting to it).

Safe spaces aren't really censorship. People are allowed to make fun of them. The hypocrisy comes into play when the ones who claim they're not allowed to speak their minds seem more like they really just want the entire world around them to be their safe space.

The safe spaces I’m familiar with were on American universities (specifically public universities) and typically prohibited debate or other forms of speech.

I see a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to people criticizing the idea of a private safe space while the critics themselves engage in their own private safe space (there’s a certain subreddit that loves to call others “snowflakes” while the subreddit itself aggressively and formally censors). I think hypocrisy with respect to public safety spaces (in which government censorship concerns are relevant) is rarer, but I’m sure it exists.

In my country, the idea of safe place were meeting where you could talk to other without fear of being judged or made fun of. Of course, it started with AA, but in the 2000 in my area a rape survivors group created a safe place, which expended to sexual aggression safe place.

I was quite surprised in the 2010s when 'safe place' started to be made fun of online and somehow considered censorship. I always thought it was useful tools to engage in free discussions about extremely sensitive topics.

I think the idea entered the popular discourse around public universities providing designated, debate-free spaces on a public campus which certainly seems like government censorship.

Tensions were exacerbated because those universities frequently tried to reserve those spaces specifically for students of certain identity categories (obvious discrimination), and they were also trying to create designated "free speech zones" on campus, suggesting free speech was not permitted elsewhere.

They’ve been an abused power play from the beginning.

Article is consistent in stating that this trend started around 8-10 years ago.

Article also was more strict in its view in the first half, but then explains the cause and effect in a more sympathetic manner.

A media channel mostly read by older people complaining that the youths are doing life wrong, regardless if it’s real or not, is also a story as old as time.

hah - judicial restraining orders are handed out like candy in California today.. (clarification) welcome to the future

These aren't judicial restraining orders.

This is White Christmas becomming real

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