PHOTOPHOBIC? The University of Delaware administration has pulled its residential reeducation treatments pending a review.

While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.

Upon the recommendation of Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Director of Residence Life Kathleen Kerr, I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.

Vice President Gilbert will work with the University Faculty Senate and others to determine the proper means by which residence life programs may support the intellectual, cultural and ethical development of our students.

A commenter at SCSU Scholars catches an irony in the program objectives.

“Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression”

One oppressive system down, how many more to go?

At least one Delaware graduate is reviewing his donation practices.

If this indoctrination is typical of what current UD students are now routinely exposed to as official University policy, then there would be no useful purpose served by sending the school any of my money.

Thus have I been informing the fundraisers at the University of Wisconsin since early in the Donna Shalala years.

That said, University Diaries located press coverage from the GG-1s' Nest that suggests the residential orientation program is a distortion of a laudable goal.

The training is important to help students understand those who are different from them, said Justin Blair, an 18-year-old sophomore from New Castle.

Freshman orientation has included such an objective for years. A religious college might want to make its students aware of Matt. 25:40, and the more selective colleges of the early 20th century urged their students not to get too full of themselves simply for having been admitted. In those days, faculty and students alike were more likely to view college as a privilege, not an entitlement, and with that privilege came responsibilities. In one of Tom Clancy's early novels (I want to say it's Patriot Games, but the Clancy collection is still in storage) there's a passing reference to a senior gunnery sergeant on the Annapolis staff whose presence is a reminder to cadets: You must be worthy of commanding men such as this. A little empathy for people less favored than you is not a bad thing. (Part of the success of The Phantom Professor site is the author's keen eye for what happens when trustafarians have not been cautioned against getting too full of themselves.)

At Delaware, however, the recommended treatment appears not to include the Approved University Answer ("It depends...") among the options offered either to trainers or students.

[Delaware freshman Brooke] Aldrich said other exercises made many students feel uncomfortable. In one, she said, students were asked if they approved of such things as affirmative action or gay marriage. If they did, they would join students on one side of the room. If they didn't, they would join students on the other side of the room. They were not permitted to explain their reasons or to answer "I don't know," she said.

"We had a strong urge to debate back and forth, tell each other why we chose this and sort out each other's views," she said. "But at the end, we were told the exercise was designed so that we could not have debate, that a lot of times in life you don't have the opportunity to express your opinion. There was a lot of pent-up tension from that."

It appears as if the default position is "The existing social order is oppressive." Or: "You may not question affirmative action." I read some of the Delaware materials (some memory holes are less thorough than others) and much of the training material takes as beyond debate that concepts such as merit or dependability are arbitrary with far more potential to destroy than to shape. Fine. Show me the evidence that what I refer to as the Habits of Highly Effective People have blighted more lives than some alternative regime, including but not limited to the Experimental Prefigurative Communities of Transformation that the Diversity Boondoggle would like to make of higher education.