As someone about to send a daughter off to college next year, I can only shake my head at the type of coddled, whiny brats she will encounter there. The latest example is a mealy-mouthed apologia from the Middlebury school newspaper for having displayed The Ultimate Horror: a photo of Charles Murray. From the editor-in-chief:

I wish to explain the photograph on page A1 to the readers. I recognize that it may be especially jarring, particularly for students of color who feel that Charles Murray’s rhetoric poses a threat to their very humanity. I also recognize that Murray’s visit to campus last March is an open wound for a campus trying desperately to move forward from it.

During a heated debate in the newsroom on Tuesday night, most of the section editors, and the managing editor, said that running this photograph would be inappropriate. Though I deeply respect the input of my editors, I decided to run the photograph anyway. I take full responsibility for this decision. It was mine alone, and any criticism should be directed at me alone.

This photograph is not meant to troll, or to cause pain, but to ask how that protest still lives with us today, one year later. For many, this image is burned in our collective memory. As much as we try to distance ourselves from that moment, we are made from it.

Let’s place to one side the absurd notion that “Charles Murray’s rhetoric poses a threat to the[] very humanity” of, well, anyone. As an admirer of Murray’s, I can confidently say that there is an inverse correlation between holding such a belief and being familiar with his actual writings. The better you know Murray’s work, the more you know that such comments are laughable.

But never mind that, for now. Here’s my real question:

They’re triggered . . . by a photo?

What babies.

I could understand the converse: Murray being triggered by a picture of Middlebury students. I could understand Professor Allison Stanger, who was set to debate him, being triggered by such a picture. After all, Middlebury students assaulted Murray and Stanger, leaving her in a neck brace. But they still wouldn’t get “triggered” because, well, they’re adults.

These students are not adults. They are whiny, entitled, spoiled children, whose immaturity is enabled by the co-dependents running the school.

And it’s not just Middlebury. This is how it is everywhere.

My daughter is level-headed. She’ll be fine. But the environment she’s going to walk into next year is a joke. An absolute joke.

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