Entitlements Pending

I work with college students.  Over the course of these 21 years, I’ve noticed a  remarkable difference in their expectations for how they should be treated and what they believe is owed to them.  Gone are the days when a catered event was a simple thing.  In ancient times (15 years ago) students with dietary restrictions simply brought their own food or navigated the food line skipping the foods that didn’t suit them.  Today, a catered event had better provide a vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, and peanut free option or there will be hell to pay.  If only the new sense of entitlement with this generation ended with food options. In many ways, I would have to say that this new generation of students is a bit fragile.  They are less mature, are easily offended, avoid conflict at all costs, are flakey, and they don’t accept the consequences of their actions.  On the other side, they are service-oriented and more compassionate.  But they expect the world to revolve around them and not the other way around.  I don’t blame them, though.  They came by their values and sense of entitlement honestly.

These are the students raised by generation X.  I’ve heard from generation X parents and colleagues over the last few weeks and I’m beginning to understand why these students feel so entitled.  These are the children who all received trophies for participation.  The parents of a new student who was disciplined for a housing violation remained near campus until their “guilty” child was moved into another residence hall.  After a raffle during an event where not everyone received prizes, a beloved colleague from that generation asked if next year, I could have a prize for all the students and she was willing to pay the difference.  My answer was, “no”.  Another generation X colleague came to my office to ask if I would accept the applications of some of the students he knew who had neglected to read the email for a program and missed the deadline to apply.  My answer was, “no”.  A generation X faculty member actually sent me a copy of a planned assignment to ensure the wording wouldn’t be offensive to any of his students.  As a courtesy, I looked it over.

But should we really help to create a society where people are entitled to always feel like they won and never feel the pain of losing?  Is a society where consequences for wrongful actions are mitigated so as to ease the embarrassment of the actor a good thing?  Do we want a society where deadlines don’t matter and missing a deadline has no consequences except to the entity who set the deadline in the first place?  Is a society where everyone is afraid to offend a particular group (and therefore silenced) the way to better education and learning?

I think we have to be very careful about creating these kinds of entitlements among our youth.  Shielding this generation against the pain of loss and consequences makes them weak, not strong.  And today, we need strong people who can bring their own vegan gluten free hot dish to a catered event and invite others to at least try it.  We need them to work for the kinds of entitlements that actually build people up, like healthcare.  I wish they would fight for that and give these lawmakers who are willing to let people go without healthcare the hell they deserve.