> At Carnegie Mellon, for example, an NCO can be obtained by anyone who claims to be “the recipient of persistent unwanted or harassing contact by another student” and includes “indirect contact through third parties.”
> NCOs requested by one student after her roommate allegedly stole her bagels, by participants in a group project gone awry, by members of rival student organizations caught up in a dispute and by aggrieved parties in a social-media skirmish.
So you just have to make something up. I am not too surprised there. It's not like prestigious University students somehow select only honest and moral students, they'll get all kinds of characters.
What is surprising is the administrators. Nobody thought of this potential for abuse. Were they so naive?
I wonder if being in the same course means a "contact". If that's the case, the most "enterprising" students could be using these to simply block students from the same courses. Sometimes registrations are competitive and there are not enough slots. How can you ensure you have a spot? -- file a bunch of NCOs against people in the same major and then as soon as it comes time to sign up, tell the administration to kick them out because of NCOs. Now what if the NCOs are mutual? Things can get interesting. Who is forced to drop out of the class then? Maybe flip a coin, or each NCO gets a score for "gravity". The more grave on wins and force the other party to yield.
Imo they’re not even particularly compelling
> Karp recalled an instance when he was a dean of student affairs at Skidmore College in which a drunken student lost his key and climbed through the open dorm window of a female student, mistaking it for a friend’s room. She screamed, and he immediately retreated, but he was nonetheless served a no contact order.
This girl definitely expected she was about to be raped by an unknown man climbing through her window. The article seems to imply that it should be cool because he didn’t intend to do it because he was drunk. I think that’s crazy.
I don't know about "be cool", but what's the desired outcome here? Avoid a repeat occurrence? Sounds like that would likely happen with or without the order. So what's the use of this tool? Some sort of semi-punitive punishment? "Don't climb in this particular person's window again or else"?
The no contact order being a response to unintentional contact is just blatantly the wrong tool for the job.
Again, I see the "fragility" narrative here in exactly the opposite way the WSJ article does: what's fragile to me is having a temper tantrum over being told that there's a mutual no-contact order in place between you and a student who doesn't want to be in contact with you.
Part of being a young adult is learning how to operate in a society composed of people, something that developing teenage brains are not innately good at. And part of that learning process is not having all whims indulged, especially when they may be harmful to others.
No Contact orders are a useful tool. This isn't a case where they were the correct one to use.
Universities here are simply doing what requires the least possible amount of administrative effort to protect the university from legal liability. Not uncommon among schools in the US, university or otherwise.
Wouldn't it be better, in many of these cases, to actually talk it out? When I was young and there was a conflict of this sort, we were taught to apologize and shake hands, as a sign of future goodwill.
There is a reason why non-reciprocal altruism (you can say assumption of good intent) is a thing in humans. If we are all only thinking reciprocally, then with errors and mistakes, nobody would communicate with anybody, and no relationship would ever come about.
On the one hand, we live in a busy word and if you consider drunken characters a waste of time, you should have a way of distancing yourself from them.
On the other hand, and far, far more important, not having such a way leaves the door wide open for abuse. "Oh sorry"... "Oh, Oh sorry again, may shake you hand again?"... "Oh, oh, oh..." FT.
He told me that one of the most common problems he faces when trying to organize the logistics of a class, is that kids will just block each other from everything, with no notice. They won't even try handle a conflict, straight to blocking and ghosting. So every semester there last-minute conflicts with group projects, lab work, etc. where these things happen.
Anyway, as for me, the only incidents we have/had tend to revolve around feedback to interns and fresh grads. Some of these kids will have what seems like a small breakdown the first time they receive poor (or below average) feedback on something. We had one intern that received a "Need improvement", and the person ghosted the manager, and went straight above - teary eyed - to plead their case.
I suspect that some of these kids have never actually experienced a real conflict before, or been in a position where they had to actually face one.
I'm not denying it, but it might be variable.
RobotToaster•5h ago
iamtheworstdev•5h ago
throwaway894345•5h ago
I don’t really know what group you’re referencing, so I don’t mean this to be apologia for any particular group, but those aren’t mutually inconsistent viewpoints; they’re both consistent with free speech (making fun of censorship and then objecting to it).
castwide•4h ago
orwin•4h ago
I was quite surprised in the 2010s when 'safe place' started to be made fun of online and somehow considered censorship. I always thought it was useful tools to engage in free discussions about extremely sensitive topics.
tiahura•5h ago
intended•5h ago
Article also was more strict in its view in the first half, but then explains the cause and effect in a more sympathetic manner.
mcphage•5h ago