I spent about half a year in Bellingham when I was college aged, and while I didn't attend WWU I knew a lot of their students. It was pretty far to the left even then, so this doesn't surprise me, even though in fairness it does probably represent a vocal fringe rather than the sense of most students.
I am never sure whether to be amused by these sort of antics or if I should actually be saddened. On the one hand, I kind of get it. Fresh out of high school you're trying on your adult wings and getting indignant and angry over all the great injustices of the world. But I can't help but feel that this sort of thing is connected to things like the young woman who was fired from Yelp after posting the open letter to her CEO about how he should pay her and her colleagues more. So, you go from high school (do what we tell you, we are not equals, you will listen to us) to college (shared governance, you have a right to be heard) to, presumably, the world of being an employed adult (do what we tell you, we are not equals, you will listen to us). I feel that, years ago, that young woman might have learned a valuable lesson. Publicly shaming her CEO got her fired. So, perhaps, that isn't the appropriate course of action in the future. Lesson learned. Instead, her fellow activists around the web rally to her side and tell her what a good warrior for social justice she is and then urge us all to "Feel the Bern." When I see college organizations taking positions like this, it tells me that soon even more former students will be released into the workforce with an inflated sense of their value to said workforce and this poisonous seed planted in their brains that, if the world doesn't deliver to you everything you may desire, you should protest and agitate until you get it rather than working hard and having to adjust your own expectations, and behavior, for the workplace. But I also once shared that I had a former employee attempt to stage a "walk-out" only to leave the building alone. I certainly don't think it all students. But I do feel that universities do a disservice in not dissuading this sort of behavior. Want to protest? Plenty of places off-campus to do that legally as well. Plenty of causes and injustices outside the university gates. Maybe within the university gates it should be a place of learning.
