June 15, 2020

Why are college students ever trusted to run their own lives?

I'm reading "Expecting Students to Play It Safe if Colleges Reopen Is a Fantasy/Safety plans border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff" by Laurence Steinberg (a psychology professor who wrote a book called "Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence').
Most types of risky behavior — reckless driving, criminal activity, fighting, unsafe sex and binge drinking, to name just a few — peak during the late teens and early 20s.... Under calm conditions, college-age individuals can control their impulses as well as their elders, but when they are emotionally aroused, they evince the poor self-control of teenagers.... But it’s hard to think of an age during which risky behavior is more common and harder to deter than between 18 and 24....

My pessimistic prediction is that the college and university reopening strategies under consideration will work for a few weeks before their effectiveness fizzles out. By then, many students will have become cavalier about wearing masks and sanitizing their hands. They will ignore social distancing guidelines when they want to hug old friends they run into on the way to class. They will venture out of their “families” and begin partying in their hallways with classmates from other clusters, and soon after, with those who live on other floors, in other dorms, or off campus. They will get drunk and hang out and hook up with people they don’t know well. And infections on campus — not only among students, but among the adults who come into contact with them — will begin to increase....

[U]niversities must be informed by what developmental science has taught us about how adolescents and young adults think. As someone who is well-versed in this literature, I will ask to teach remotely for the time being.
We need to keep these little monsters locked up until they're 25. Who knows what they will do with their freedom? They might party in their hallways and become cavalier about wearing masks and sanitizing their hands. There's no end to the dangers of freedom. You really cannot trust people to put safety first, week after week, month after month. At some point, they will hang out and hook up.

105 comments:

alanc709 said...

Same people want to reduce the voting age to 16. Liberals are nothing if not hypocrites.

n.n said...

Those paper masks have a short lifetime and fit under optimal conditions. Partying with masks is a bad idea. Also, wear goggles around symptomatic (e.g. coughing, sneezing, spitting) people... persons. The eyes are a window to [viral] contagion. Better yet, wear a full body condom to cover all your choices.

Automatic_Wing said...

A wordy justification for this guy to keep teleworking. Hey, I get the sentiment. After 3 months of this, I too would prefer to never come into the office again.

TreeJoe said...

Little things like voting and military age and maybe drivers licenses should OBVIOUSLY be suspended by 7 years or so.

lgv said...

"..At some point, they will hang out and hook up."

or protest something that offends them. Then they will get the flu and be sick for several days, after which they will return to their normal life, immune from this virus.

Readering said...

How did things turn out at Liberty U?

Crimso said...

Great. Now do protests.

Martin said...

"Most types of risky behavior — reckless driving, criminal activity, fighting, unsafe sex and binge drinking, to name just a few — peak during the late teens and early 20s.... Under calm conditions, college-age individuals can control their impulses as well as their elders, but when they are emotionally aroused, they evince the poor self-control of teenagers.... But it’s hard to think of an age during which risky behavior is more common and harder to deter than between 18 and 24...."

So, of course, contrary to a couple of hundred years of practice and copious wisdom and scientific kowledge, we mandate that 18 yr olds can vote.

We, as a society, are SOOOO stupid.

daskol said...

I will defer to Althouse's expertise on constitutional law and teenagers, and in particular the intersection of the two. I think you forgot the part about where they shouldn't be allowed to vote, either, until 25.

buwaya said...

Since these whimsical youths are extremely unlikely to suffer ill effects from Covid, then college is perhaps where they should be, infecting each other and not their elders.

Old and creaky professors should stay home to avoid the virus miasma, and leave the teaching to the spry sprouts in their field.

Not that anyone is likely to be doing anything productive or virtuous in colleges anyway, these being at best a waste of time.

Nonapod said...

We need to keep these little monsters locked up until they're 25.

There's been studies that suggest that neural development may not fully complete until the mid 20s. And of course there's certainly no shortage of anecdotal evidence regarding the behavior and impulsivity of young adults. What were you like when you were 20? Would you say that you were less or more likley to engage in risky behavoir at that age than you are today?

In general though, I suspect that most people feel that it's probably more important to let young adults make mistakes rather than to attempt to shield them from the world.

With regards to the pandemic, I'm think that by the fall semester it won't be as much of as issue as people seem to believe anyway. Of course I could be wrong, but I'm seeing a general trend of the virus becoming less lethal over time.

Rory said...

I'm sure others have said by now, it seems like a good way to build herd immunity: let the kids infect each other en masse, get the sniffles, then see Grandma at Thanksgiving long after the illness has run its course.

Danno said...

And that professor would likely be the first to allow people younger than 18 to vote.

Jeff Brokaw said...

To reinforce your good point on risks, the documented COVID19 risk for college kids who are otherwise healthy (strong immune systems, etc) is essentially ZERO. Same for elementary and high school kids.

Worrying about it is a complete waste of time, and leaders of universities should demonstrate better leadership and understanding of real risks. All this kind of thing does is give us LESS reason to trust them on other issues.

Kevin said...

Are you kidding? Colleges don't expect students to feed themselves.

Let alone buy their own health insurance.

RNB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mccullough said...

Lot of Millennials have never grown up.

Expect more out of people and they will meet those expectations.

We haven’t sent our military home. Let college students grow up, too.

Mark said...

Honest question:

Would you feel the same if you were teaching on campus daily and you were sharing facilities with them?

robother said...

Average age of COVID fatalities: 80. But by all means, lets keep 18 year olds locked up until...79?

The Vault Dweller said...

Our society can not afford to delay adulthood any further than it already has. Yes college kids will do stupid risky things. Young humans have always done that. Wisdom comes from experiencing both success and failure. This necessarily requires some risk. Plus it is generally better to experience the loss when you are younger. Not only does this mean you get a longer time period to benefit from the lessons you learned by experiencing the loss, but generally the losses are less costly at a younger age. If a college kid screws around for a semester and does terribly in his courses, that is painful lesson but one he can recover from. If a 28 year old screws around for six months and messes up a big project at work, he is probably going to get fired, and then maybe not get rehired for quite some time. This might not only harm him but perhaps he has a young family as well. Let the kids mess up, they'll be alright.

readering said...

College dorms are like nursing homes.

J. Farmer said...

Here’s one of those radical centrist ideas that make sense but will never happen: let’s just raise the age of majority to 25 across the board.

Howard said...

The kids will be fine. The only people that will get sick and die will be oldsters with one foot on a banana peel and one in the crematorium. No harm no foul.

MadisonMan said...

University Bureaucrats are nothing if not Control Freaks. I hear so often from them in an abundance of caution -- as if they think that a good thing. Always substitute "control" in for "caution", because that's the reality of their actions.

Tomcc said...

Beneath the veneer of professorial language: "I'm not gonna let those little bastards infect me!"

traditionalguy said...

The 18 to 24 crowd are chosen to fight our wars just because they will risk a dangerous act. They also re- populated the earth from taking the risk of sex with pretty girls, before abortions became free of any costs. Now we import hispanic Catholic’s to replace those babies. And we raise the age of responsibility to 24 from 18. Just to enrich the EDU gang. Brave new world afraid of flu and young men.

Lewis Wetzel said...

As of June 10, there have been a total of 137 deaths of people aged 0-24 attributed to covid-19 in the United States.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku

I R A Darth Aggie said...

We also need to raise the voting age to 25.

Bruce Hayden said...

But why is that bad? College kids aren’t going to die from COVID-19. I think that one way of maybe creating decent herd immunity might be to infect the college crowd, then those of their age cohort, then moving the line up and down in age, just keeping them away from the older generations as long as possible. The danger for those under 18 is mostly for their parents, so once the virus passes through their parents’ generation they should be safe to put together.

Dr. Zoom said...

Sadly, colleges have been go this way in our country for awhile. Some of it has to do with the out of control legal system. Colleges are sued for choices that “adult” college students make. If our citizens don’t want to take responsibility for their actions and choices, then some will work to take away the freedom to make choices.

mikee said...

At my enormous state university in the 1980s, a newly hired anti-sexual-harassment administrator presented a lengthy training session to the deans and VPs and other higher-ups in the school administration. When it ended, a dean leaned over and said to the university president, "Now if we can just get the students to stop trying to fuck like minks in heat, this will work!"

Clayton Cramer said...

And we let them vote? But it is for Bernie so I guess that is okay.

Pianoman said...

We must stop treating college students like adults, and start treating them as veal.

We need to encase them in warm vats of Jello until they turn 35.

Heavens, who knows what they'll get into. I mean, they'll be having sex without wearing masks!!

Fatality rate of Covid for people aged 10-39: 0.2%

I have a relative who isn't letting her son be an adult. The kid is 21, and has no driver's license, isn't going to college, doesn't have a job, doesn't have a girlfriend. It's the classic Jungian archetype of the Devouring Mother.

You have a lot of Devouring Mothers that are in charge of elementary schools and junior high schools too.

Fortunately, it seems like common sense is starting to prevail. Karens of all stripes are still shrieking about THE INCREASE IN CASES, ZOMG!!!, but fatalities continue to drop. People are going back to their normal lives.

I don't remember who pointed it out (Insty?), but someone recently said that the lockdowns were going to end with or without government approval. Here in lovely SoCal, some county health drone recently said that masks are no longer needed outside. Nobody that I know was wearing masks outside anyway (because it's completely psychotic). Great example of "leading from behind".

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Enough. Live with it. Time to accept it. There is no other way but forward through it while accepting that a tiny handful relative to the population won’t survive it. No one gets put of here alive anyway and we can’t sit in our houses and wait for the boogeyman to go away.

Gospace said...

Lewis Wetzel said...
As of June 10, there have been a total of 137 deaths of people aged 0-24 attributed to covid-19 in the United States.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku


And odds are, >50% of those deaths have easily identifiable co-morbidities.

gerry said...

Why worry about it? The whole COVID thing was politicized and gaslighting.

Scott M said...

One of two things will happen. One - there will be a massive spike in new Covid19 cases as a direct result of the large protests/marches over the past couple of weeks. This will prove that we're still dealing with a serious viral problem and more lockdowns will be the result. Schools at all levels will not reopen in the fall. Two - (far more likely, imho) there will be no spike in Covid19 cases and the "experts" involved will have effectively lost the hearts and minds of the population. This won't stop the cavalcade of CYA policy, designed less for public safety and more for preemptive/anti-lawsuit maneuvering.

Renee said...

We didn't have these issues when people married at the age of 19/20.

Big Mike said...

When my sons went off to college, not quite two decades ago, we parents were informed that in loco parentis had been done away with years before. Now this dingbat wants to resume it just like that? I don’t think so!

n.n said...

re- populated the earth from taking the risk of sex with pretty girls,

To be fair, it's boy chases girl chases boy... a normal distribution.

I Callahan said...

How did things turn out at Liberty U?

Asked and answered:

<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/liberty-university-wrongly-declared-a-virus-disaster-now-the-model-to-follow-falwell>Liberty University</a>

Kevin said...

I don't understand what they think the alternative is. There may never be a vaccine. There may never be a cure. What then? Just no more colleges and universities? Just pave them all over?

If online courses become the sum total of what college is, then there is going to end up being Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, maybe Johns Hopkins for med school, what else would survive? Each of those would have a million students each and everything else will shut down, and there is no need for physical campuses for even those.

LYNNDH said...

He and others like him make it sound like getting the Wuhan Virus is a death sentence. Its here and it is going to stay here. Live your life, not live the life of others for them.

Daniel said...

Since these young people are so irresponsible about their own behavior that they might endanger their own health and those of their dear friends, perhaps we should wonder about their decision making about other things, such as our government. Does this author believe that restricting choice of our leaders, by voting should be permitted to people who are this prone to harming themselves? I imagine he would favor restricting the vote to those at least 30 years old, if only to protect young people from harm caused by their own folly.

Big Mike said...

And, of course, people on that age group outside of college are trusted to marry, hold down jobs, perhaps start a family, possibly buy a home, and generally act as responsible adults. But the act of registering for classes renders one incapable of adult judgement. Interesting.

Temujin said...

The data does not match the hysteria.

William said...

If you keep them off campus will they behave with more prudence and restraint?

Mike Sylwester said...

Compel all professors to retire at age 66.

Old professors are the real danger in this epidemic. Get them off the campuses and keep them off the campuses.

Hire younger people to be the professors.

Temujin said...

Why aren't we worried about keeping those youngins' in check when they're protesting by the thousands, shoulder to shoulder, in the streets?

I swear to God I'm living in the bizarro times.

Mary Beth said...

Good. Have them get busy and build up that herd immunity.

Birkel said...

Leftist Collectivism is about exerting control.

Let's find more examples of this fact.

Francisco D said...

We need to keep these little monsters locked up until they're 25.

There is a good reason why auto insurance companies lower rates at age 26. It is a data driven decision, but neuropsychologists believe that brain development is not complete until age 26.

The area of development that is lacking = judgment.

Inga said...

“How did things turn out at Liberty U?”

Oh that’s because those religious right youths partied in hallways and then hooked up...wait...

Rick said...

Under calm conditions, college-age individuals can control their impulses as well as their elders, but when they are emotionally aroused, they evince the poor self-control of teenagers....

Isn't this the most important reveal? For decades left wingers have been recruiting this exact group using these exact techniques all while insistent others defer to them. They were intentionally creating the leftist version of Stepford Wives. And now they're admitting they understood these psychological weaknesses the entire time. The second these weaknesses aren't advancing leftism administrators try to re-exert control.

They intentionally wound up these kids because they believed it would help the cause, but they never cared about their well being. They used them is the worst sense of the word.

rehajm said...

As of June 10, there have been a total of 137 deaths of people aged 0-24 attributed to covid-19 in the United States.

...and that's what needs to be said. We can't just assume a 'vaccine' is inevitable. If we ever want to act like humans again a better way to do it: have the least vulnerable amongst us venture out, acquire antibodies spread slows because its harder find someone to infect, and so on...

What's most disappointing is the 'experts' being trumped by the armchair epidemiologists.

The Mouse that Roared said...

The courts ruled that they are adults with full constitutional rights in the 1970s. See Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri (S. Ct. 1973) and Bradshaw v. Rawlings (2d Cir. 1979).

Until the courts rule otherwise, Professor Steinberg is out of luck.

PJ57 said...

I wish I could contribute to herd immunity by convincing young women to hook up with me. I'd tell them it is their civic duty.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

is this about health or legal liability?

Bruce Hayden said...

“As of June 10, there have been a total of 137 deaths of people aged 0-24 attributed to covid-19 in the United States.”

This reinforces my suggestion, that somehow seems to have disappeared, that we might as well just let college kids be college kids, but keep them on college campuses as much as possible. They aren’t going to die from this - or at least the number dying would be a small fraction of the college kids killed every year from alcohol, drugs jumping off cliffs, etc. Then move the ages of those infected slowly up. That should do a decent job at building herd immunity.

Michael K said...

eadering said...
College dorms are like nursing homes.


Only with meningococcemia. Same with army basic training barracks. IN the Civil War it was measles. In WWI it was flu. Started at Fort Riley. Wilson killed 25 million people by sending the AEF to Europe in 1918.

WuFlu is almost harmless to those under 30. A few Cytokine Storm cases. One got a lung transplant last week.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Honest question:

Would you feel the same if you were teaching on campus daily and you were sharing facilities with them?”

If your job terrifies you, get a different line of work. Funny how the professions perceived as snowflakey have gone out of their way during the KungFlu to confirm the stereotype. Professor, librarian, Congress....

Static Ping said...

I believe we discussed a similar issue about students suing their colleges for fraud. For instance, if a college knowingly admitted a student ill-prepared for their school while telling that student that they were qualified, and said student then fails to graduate, is that fraud? (Yes, it is.) And there's not a lot of difference in student maturity at 18 than at 22, especially if said students now have greater availability to alcohol and drugs.

In the past, societies have dealt with this immaturity in different ways. One way is to force responsibilities on teenagers as young as 13 and mold them that way. Another is to force them into the army or the church where you can discipline them into something good for society. On the more extreme end of it, if you had too many young men to absorb, you start a war and either kill off a sufficient number of them or grant them the spoils of their victories. Unfortunately, we have decided to go for the worst of both worlds by shielding young adults from responsibilities while teaching them little and praising the nothing that they do. It's pretty much the business model for colleges now.

Gahrie said...

Perhaps because they are adults, and are expected to behave that way?

rhhardin said...

They're endangering others than themselves. As for instance they get nailed for drunk driving without any special disparagement about infringing their experience of life.

Here the difference is that they raise the reinfection rate R0 which otherwise might fall below 1.0, killing the disease entirely. Which is of no importance to them because they won't die of the disease, but others will.

Tom T. said...

Liberty University stayed open and had no cases.

h said...

Cass Sunstein and others would not put an age 25 limit on people who need to have their self-destructive behavior regulated by government.
"In practice, governments also regulate to address “internalities” – that is, costs we impose on ourselves by taking actions that are not in our own best interest. An internality might arise when agents act to obtain shortterm benefits, or to avoid short-term costs, even though that action produces long-term net costs for those very agents. When this happens, there may be a “behavioral market failure, adding to the standard catalogue of justifications for regulatory action."

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/16150609/RegulatingInternalities-1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

here

Paco Wové said...

"We're going to lock everyone up for their own good!" is pretty much the ne plus ultra of the nanny state.

BlackjohnX said...

Gosh, the need to be in complete control - sorta like moderation.

Bob R said...

If you wanted to devise a system that spared the paying customers and the cheap adjuncts while killing off the old, expensive faculty, you could hardly do better.

Lucien said...

For what age group does timid behavior peak? Did someone decide that timid behavior is good, and risky behavior is bad? I missed the national referendum on that.

doctrev said...

If drug use and promiscuity are THAT BAD, the argument could be made that gay males need to be locked up much, much more than college students.

That said, I completely agree with the article. Universities and colleges must be federally proscribed from letting students on campuses next year. How will the plummeting tuition fees be remedied? That's their fucking problem.

Narr said...

It's no accident I have never regretted not being a teaching faculty. I adjuncted in the history department enough to realize that most of those kids weren't 1) interested or 2) very bright.

The worst were the grade-grubbers--not the dumbasses asking for a D but the entitled little twerps asking for an A.

Narr
Sometimes I was the only thing between them and Law School . . . bwahahahaHA!

bagoh20 said...

Over-priced daycare, with the bonus of indoctrination.

Jaq said...

Brain is not done developing until around 25. Insurance companies have inferred this from their tables.

"As of June 10, there have been a total of 137 deaths of people aged 0-24 attributed to covid-19 in the United States.”

Yes, the lockdowns made zero difference and none of these college students have people in their lives at greater risk than themselves.

It is pretty to think so. We will have better stats in a month or so when all of these protests are digested into the numbers. It is certainly to be hoped that the Greeks have truly departed and we can open the gates to accept this horse they left for us and nothing will go wrong. Nobody should listen to Cassandras.

My dad, who went into the Air Force during WWII as a volunteer at 26 or 27 “because people were looking at him funny for being at home” said that you can "teach an old man to fight, but if you want him to enjoy it, you have to get him at 18."

bagoh20 said...

Covid-19 may be the least damaging thing they spread after the education they are getting.

The things spread by people like this "intellectual" are a thousand times more deadly.

Like in Seattle, the kids should take over the university and start their own new brave system. They couldn't do much worse.

dbp said...

We should want as many college age kids to get infected as possible. The risk to them is minimal and they will be infected and immune before returning home (where there are older people) at their first break, Thanksgiving week.

This is the perfect opportunity to build up some herd immunity at the lowest risk.

Big Mike said...

If online courses become the sum total of what college is, then there is going to end up being Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, maybe Johns Hopkins for med school, what else would survive?

I’d be really happy if none of those badly overrated institutions survived.

Big Mike said...

Well, maybe Johns Hopkins. Considering the neighborhood it’s located in, attending school remotely is a great idea.

n.n said...

Gosh, the need to be in complete control - sorta like moderation.

More like social distancing to control traffic flow.

n.n said...

is this about health or legal liability?

For decades, the entity with capital knew and did not disclose...

gilbar said...

Even IF (not when, IF) we get a vaccine AND/Or a treatment, it won't change the unsafety of kids.

Kids WILL BE kids, and another virus will be coming down the pipeline SOON

Our ONLY two options are:
A) execute and cremate ALL people under the age of thirty
B) admit that we do NOT live in a perfectly safe and sound world

or, i guess
C) all of the above

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

tim in vermont said...

Brain is not done developing until around 25. Insurance companies have inferred this from their tables.

Have they determined that the stupid shit people do between the ages of 18 and 24 has absolutely nothing to do with brain development? Seems to me that it might. And if you keep them locked up until they turn 25 you'll have a bunch of immature 25 year olds running around.

Kind of like what we've got with the CHAZ bunch in Seattle.

Freeman Hunt said...

Quarantine the college students at the colleges. Let the professors teach remotely.

Freeman Hunt said...

You can get a Harvard undergrad education at about $1900 per course through the Extension School. How long will students be willing to pay three times the price for the same thing?

Or are you paying for the name on the paper? Certain foundations of status in American society begin to look a little foolish.

J. Farmer said...

We didn't have these issues when people married at the age of 19/20.

When do you imagine that was?

Sebastian said...

"There's no end to the dangers of freedom. You really cannot trust people to put safety first"

Correct. Freedom itself is dangerous. You can never trust people to put correct priorities first. In fact, you can never trust people.

Therefore, prog control is necessary.

Fernandinande said...

But it’s hard to think of an age during which risky behavior is more common and harder to deter than between 18 and 24....

Apparently that "risky behavior" is very dangerous:


Death rate in the United States in 2017, by age and gender (per 100,000 of population)

Age Group Male Female
All ages* 897.2 831.4
Under 1 year** 618.7 512.8
1-4 27.3 21.1
5-9 12.5 10.6
10-14 18.6 12.3
15-19 72.7 29.4
20-24 137.9 50.9

25-29 171.3 68.8
30-34 196.3 93.5
35-39 227.1 120.5
40-44 273.6 163.9
45-49 387.3 240.6
50-54 604.4 375.5
55-59 919.5 563.4
60-64 1,328.3 795.4
65-69 1,831.8 1,154.5
70-74 2,668.0 1,809.5
75-79 4,193.7 2,973.6
80-84 6,901.6 5,123.9
85 and over 14,689.2 12,966.5

Mrs. X said...

Would you feel the same if you were teaching on campus daily and you were sharing facilities with them?

I’m 60+, I teach at a college, and yes, I’d go back tomorrow. I’d have gone back in April. In fact, I’d have never stopped in person instruction.

paminwi said...

Who cares if these young, immature college aged kids get sick.
Let them infect all the others in their dorms or commons.
I am an old far and know how to stay away from the places those kids (and yes they are kids) frequent unless they frequent supper clubs in northern Wisconsin

DavidUW said...

All that sex.
sooo much sex.

Brian said...

Colleges that don't open back up do so at their own peril. I know of many incoming freshman that have said they will take a gap year if campus is not open. Before long there's a preference cascade and a serious loss of revenue. That sweet Professor gig may be going by the wayside.

If a kid is going to be stuck with her parents as a RA, they might as well get a job and make some money.

n.n said...

Death rate by age and sex in the US

Male and female, interesting.

Anonymous said...

They will ignore social distancing guidelines...begin partying...They will get drunk and hang out and hook up with people they don’t know well.

Everything the article author says is right. Which means this will happen whether or not they are on campus. 18-24 year olds will be 18-24 year olds.

And infections on campus — not only among students, but among the adults who come into contact with them — will begin to increase

And, when the above happens on campus, those same people will have access to high(er) quality health care. And will be more isolated from vulnerable populations (i.e., their parents and grandparents).

Let's all admit it, sending these kids home in March was a serious public policy mistake.

Big Mike said...

Renee said...

We didn't have these issues when people married at the age of 19/20.


And Farmer wants to know ...

When do you imagine that was?

Answer: 1960s, lasting into the early 1970s. I know, because I was there. I'd estimate that at least a third, possibly as much as a half, of my high school class was married within a couple years of completing high school. FWIW the wife and I were married in our mid-twenties and this was thought to be pretty late. Wife graduated from a Catholic girls school in the 1960s and she was probably among the last to get married, in part because she was one of the few to attend college and the only to go to graduate school.

wildswan said...

It's well known that anyone in touch with students is exposed to every disease going round. If we reopen the schools and colleges the students will spread covid 19; and the older folks, lefty professors and teachers who are monopolizing the jobs will get it and die. They think. Before covid 19, you got germs and viruses as they came along as a natural part of living in society and nothing was a really big threat. But covid 19 has a lot of leftys thinking that they haven't built up semi-immunity and so are likely to die if they go back into the schools, infection pits that they are. If they don't go back the schools will change irrevocably and they'll lose their jobs; if they do go back, they'll die like indigenous peoples getting measles (they think). From their place of privilege, they're opting not to go back, even in the 27 states where covid 19 was not as bad as flu. And they're making it plain that they don't trust DeBlasio's NYC Health Department and similar departments in similar cities to warn, protect or cure. Well, why should they? Who knows more than they do about lefty suppression of the truth?

Amadeus 48 said...

And they will get sick and then they will get better.

I was a college student during the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-1969.

Sebastian said...

Gilligan: "And, when the above happens on campus, those same people will have access to high(er) quality health care. And will be more isolated from vulnerable populations (i.e., their parents and grandparents). Let's all admit it, sending these kids home in March was a serious public policy mistake."

Exactly. Those college shutdowns were and are weird: apparently no one thought about what would be happening off campus and the net benefit of keeping students away.

DavidUW said...

Getting married at 19/20 happened for a brief window of time in the early boomer stages.

As long as Census records went back before WWII, the median age at first marriage was 26 or so for men and 23 or so for women.

Just one of those things about conventional wisdom (everybody got married at 18 in the olden days) that turns out to be totally wrong.

GingerBeer said...

Universities could simply hire antifa & BLM to enforce "social distancing guidelines."

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

Answer: 1960s, lasting into the early 1970s. I know, because I was there

Yes, the median age at first marriage drifted down a bit during the mid-20th century, though never to 19/20. The median age for first marriage in the late 19th century was 26.1 for men and 22 for women. In 2010, it was 28.2 for men and 26.1 for women. If anything, the period from 1960 to 1970, was rather anomalous in terms of marriage behavior.

I think the story is not that people are delaying marriage by a few years, but that people are not even getting married in the first place.

Readering said...

talked to a law school dean who is planning to have students return and professors teach them remotely. Use bigger rooms to allow for separation. Median age of faculty around 60.

Michael K said...

I was a college student during the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-1969.

I was in the 1957 Asian flu. My fraternity did our rushing from bed.

RigelDog said...

I'd like to see the age of majority applied across the board at one specific age, not 18 for this, and 21 for that. How about 19? This way those who take a little longer to get out of high school would be in the protected category as they turn 18.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Most of them should probably skip college and learn a trade. They'll be more useful to society, and probably happier too.

Big Mike said...

@Farmer, that’s the median. Now look at the mode.