For Formation as Adults, Avoid Connecticut Higher Ed

My entire life, the mainstream message has been that conservative Republicans, particularly the Christians among them, are so uptight and scared of sex that they want to “put the government in our bedrooms.”  I don’t know if that was always and everywhere baloney, or if the sorts of people who used to gravitate toward that political position because it empowered them to be busybodies are simply now gravitating to the progressive Democrat side.  Or maybe the loose family policies and social aesthetics that progressives have preferred since the ’60s have created so much cultural insecurity that progressives now feel they must patch the holes they’ve put in Western civilization’s zeppelin.

Whatever the case, legislation that passed the Connecticut House last week is wrong in a variety ways and, if it makes its way into law, should signal to parents and students the world ’round that Connecticut colleges are not the place to go in order to find formation as a young adult:

“It clarifies that a yes-means-yes policy will be the policy for the state of Connecticut for all public and private colleges,” said Rep. Gregory Haddad, D-Mansfield, who serves on the legislature’s Higher Education Committee and who introduced the bill. “The presence of ‘yes’ is required rather than just the lack of ‘no’ ” in determining consensual sexual activity.

Apparently in keeping with the politicians’ rhetoric, the article goes on to cite bogus sexual assault statistics.  Using false information and propaganda is hardly a new development among those who want to control our lives for us.

But to the manifest wrongness of the legislation:  The state government of Connecticut is presuming to dictate policy for the operation of every college and university, whether public or private.  I’d be interested to know what the progressives think is the difference between the two types of organization, because they don’t tend to respect distinctions.  Indeed, it’s beginning to seem that progressives think of private organizations, including businesses, as slightly less heavily controlled charter schools.

That attitude makes sense, of course, from people who insist that young adults are still “children” for health care purposes well into their 20s and who believe it’s the duty of the government to protect those grown children from uncomfortable incidents of intimacy.  Those of us who are actually grown up, however, should reject this assertion of authority.

Laws against actual criminal behavior are appropriate, to be sure, with standards of evidence and adjudication, but this new assault from the would-be nannies goes well beyond that, into a realm that is best handled at the level of the individual, the social group, and (where consumers desire it) the individual institution.  Given their power as consumers, then, young adults who believe that they can and should make their own way in the world — and parents hoping to foster that sense — should apparently look elsewhere than Connecticut for higher education.

Who knows how much the creepy overseers will slip into your bedroom and your life?

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