So Providence College President Reverend Brian Shanley did make his college’s race-grievance agitators wait for a bit, and his resolution wasn’t so much a capitulation as a diplomatic delay, but I worry about the attitude we’re teaching the current generation of college students:

After a 13-hour sit-in outside President Rev. Brian J. Shanley’s office, about 50 Providence College students protesting what they called “anti-blackness and racism on campus” ended their demonstration when Shanley agreed to make progress on the demands.

Senior Mary-Murphy Walsh, one of the sit-in’s organizers, said late Tuesday night that Shanley “did promise today that he would do everything in his capacity. We will see within 20 days, we will see what he comes up with.”

From what outside readers can tell, the students’ complaints have mainly to do with an off-campus party and a number of unconfirmed incidents over which the college cannot be expected to have any control anyway.  At best, the organization can only offset the inappropriate behavior of individuals (if that behavior actually exists) with handouts to special interests, although the protesters’ demands go as far as rewriting the Western Civilization curriculum, which may be tantamount to rewriting history, and mandating “cultural-sensitivity training,” which is essentially forced reeducation, in contrast to, say, forums for public discussion of different views.

To the young protesters — shown in the Providence Journal photograph enjoying the comfortable area outside the president’s office, with its conditioned air and complimentary wifi — there is no such thing as differing views.  The intellectual landscape consists of their worldview surrounded by inexcusable racism and failure to capitulate.

Complaining that Shanley didn’t rush back from Florida to address a minor he-said-she-said incident off campus, Providence NAACP representative Pilar McCloud said:

“By staying away and coming back at his scheduled time, to me it’s an open handed slap in the face and the students already had a list of demands for the president prior to that,” McCloud said. “This incident is just the icing on the cake.”

“Nothing gets resolved, nothing gets done and people feel like they are not being respected or heard,” she added. “So what did you expect them to do? It is their God given right to express themselves. PC, as much as they would like to, can’t take that away from them.”

Note what McCloud is saying, here.  The students’ “right to express themselves” entails a requirement that others prove that they are “respected or heard,” which is proven by acceding to a list of demands.  Failure to respond to the children’s stomping feet is “an open handed slap in the face.”

Again, what happens when these students leave the comforts of the expensive university setting?  What happens to them, and what will they do to our society?