by James A. Bacon
Four students who participated in the pro-Gaza encampment protest May 4 are complaining that the University of Virginia is withholding their degrees pending the outcome of University Judiciary Committee hearings into their cases.
Go ahead and berate me for my cold, cold heart but I feel zero sympathy for their plight. When you engage in civil disobedience — the protesters defied repeated orders to break up the encampment — you take the consequences.
In this instance, it appears that the consequences have been exceptionally light: Local lefty prosecutors have declined to press charges against a single protester in the municipal courts. The problem is that school is out and the student judiciary is not in session, and it may not be able to adjudicate university complaints until students return in August.
The Daily Progress article exudes sympathy for the four protesters, among 11 whose fates are in limbo, because they can’t get a sheepskin. It is difficult, the newspaper avers, “to find work in a job market in which employers often require a bachelor’s degree.”
Maybe they should have thought about that when they defied repeated warnings to disperse their gathering. But, no, we live in an era in which vast swaths of the population, especially those on the ideological left, feel entitled to consequence-free conduct.
“I did everything to fulfill my degree,” Cady de la Cruz, told The Daily Progress, which helpfully added that she is a “first-generation college student,” as if her socioeconomic status should make a difference. “The only reason UVA has stalled the process is to make an example out of me.”
It’s good to see that UVA administrators are showing some backbone. Complaints against the students were filed by Donovan Golich and Elizabeth Ortiz, both employees of UVa’s Division of Student Affairs.
“Students would not face trial, and degrees would not be withheld if Ortiz and Golich withdrew their complaints,” states The Daily Progress.
Of course, the students would not face their predicament if they’d dispersed May 4.
I don’t often find myself in agreement with UVA President Jim Ryan, but he made a legitimate point when defending his decision to have police break up the encampment. There is a long tradition in America, he said, of civil disobedience, of breaking the law in order to make a point. Moral authority comes from the fact that protesters are willing to accept punishment as a sign of commitment to their cause.
Today’s protesters want to defy authority and suffer no punishment.
As for the “dozens of faculty members,” referred to in the article, who urged Student Affairs to drop their complaints against the 11, they have no shame. Not one raised a finger in defense of Morgan Bettinger when she was dragged before the student judiciary on the basis of fabricated allegations, was required to perform community service, was subjected to other acts of penance, and was unable to clear her record until she filed a lawsuit against the University. She couldn’t get on with her life either — for some two years, not one summer. That was a genuine injustice, and not a single faculty member spoke out.
If it weren’t for double standards, as the saying goes, those people would have no standards at all.
James A. Bacon is contributing editor to The Jefferson Council. The views expressed here are his own.