STOP CRYING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL.

Originally I wanted to tag Inside Higher Ed designated race lady Wendi Williams with the Dumbest Short Take of a couple weeks ago for "The pandemic has laid bare the syndemics of racism, disease, sexism, economic indifference and a general disregard for our humanity that is deeply ingrained in our society." As if that is somehow worse than destroying, in a year, the past thirty years of increased prosperity in the third world.  As if that destruction didn't have knock-on effects, in making it more difficult for those countries to produce their own vaccines, or to buy from the countries that have.

I want to stay on topic.  I also want to note that those difficulties bring more "how DARE you be rich" caterwauling from the usual suspects, as well as yet another power grab by the corona tyrants, never mind that less dangerous yet more contagious variants are, you guessed it, evolutionarily stable for viruses.  "The virus, like all life forms, wants to reproduce to survive. But if it kills off its hosts, it can’t do so. That’s why as viruses mutate, they become less lethal and more transmissible."  I'm able to tack back toward topic by noting that it was the Official Response (otherwise known around Cold Spring Shops as the corona tyranny) that actually laid those inequities bare.  "Over a period of 16 months, we have just discovered that governance inspired by Chinese despotism could be practiced in the West in the name of public health. Across the former free world, constitutional rights were enthusiastically violated in the name of saving lives, and the vast majority of people complied happily or even became zealous enforcers themselves."  It wasn't women and minorities hardest hit, either.

Expendable workers also included many small-business owners and entrepreneurs who operate locally and in person, rather than on the Internet. It included highly skilled workers such as airline pilots, many of whom, during the lockdowns, lost their certification to fly, and who are now being rushed back to work through recertification of their credentials. These workers and businesses have been sustained by the closest thing we’ve tried to a universal basic income. And the industries that are trying to hire them back are having trouble scaling up because of a labor shortage and the slowness of customers to return to their old habits.

Since the end of slavery and indentures, the burdens of class membership in the United States have traditionally been softened by the possibility of class mobility and the informal nature of our classes, which are not legal classes. But, for the better part of a year and half, these classes were partly formalized, and the economic dislocation of the pandemic is likely to create further separation between them.

If you're a designated race lady for Inside Higher Ed, though, those aren't the real big deal.  Something called "emotional labor" is.  "Imagine having to perform extra emotional labor due to the effects of the pandemic on your students’ lives while also navigating the inherent challenges of confronting your own issues of race, gender and class identity within the dynamics of historically white institutions, and you can perhaps begin to empathize with BIPOC and/or women faculty."

In case you're wondering what that emotional labor is, dear reader, let the deanlet explain.

While emotional labor is an aspect of college-level teaching that many faculty members, regardless of race or ethnicity, often have to perform (especially now), BIPOC faculty consistently find themselves bearing a disproportionate burden -- both in terms of classroom teaching and faculty-student interactions outside classes. This is often due to the amount of emotional labor that BIPOC students have to perform, as well, especially in historically white institutions. They face an inordinate degree of physical and psychological risks this year due both to the pandemic and the steady stream of racially traumatic images in the media of violence, particularly against Black and Asian communities. Students across college campuses have reported heightened feelings of anger, anxiety, depression and stress, as well as an urgent call to activism. BIPOC faculty, in particular, are faced with the additional expectations to perform emotional labor as it is aligned with traditional gender norms characteristic of race and gender intersections and role expectations for caretaking.

Cut through the jargon and the word-noise and what she's grousing about is just part of the job description, in any responsible job involving human interaction, particularly if there is an element of having to say no and uphold standards.

In the military, the Colonel suggests that five to ten percent of your troops take up ninety percent of your time.  This seems to be true of platoon sergeant or corps commander alike.  That's probably true in sports coaching as well, and that's an environment where the coaches get to choose the players (either recruiting them, or advising the general manager about draft choices.)  At university, healthy students never fail exams, and happy students never miss assignments.  It's on the faculty members to set boundaries, and to the deanlets to support them, not to undermine the faculty.

Somehow, though, there are faculty who never grasp that they're getting paid to say no and uphold standards, and thus they whine about this unpaid emotional labor.  It's even true if you've risen to your level of incompetence at Yale Law.  "There are a lot of mediocre students at Yale who were superstars in their little county fairs, and now they’re in the Kentucky Derby and they’re not winning their races and they feel like it’s unfair because other students are doing better." He got lit up by Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan for "pointless cruelty."  Among the more militant Normals, he gets slagged both for what appears to be another coastal snob dig at the interior, and he's clearly not aware of the career ladder in horse racing.  Thoroughbreds on the county fair circuit will at best run in an undercard at Churchill Downs, that's where the Rising Stars among the riders and trainers do their apprenticeships.  At Yale Law (or college sports or the Special Forces) it's more commonly that some of the people who didn't have to really push themselves to make the dean's list or all-conference in high school or sometimes college now discover that the level of performance is now higher for everyone, and the best thing for the commander or coach or professor to do is to encourage but not coddle.  Too much emotional labor, evidently, for that Yale Law guy.

If you've risen three levels above your level of incompetence, as this Wendi Williams apparently has, that's not what you do.

Imagine having to perform extra emotional labor due to the effects of the pandemic on your students’ lives while also navigating the inherent challenges of confronting your own issues of race, gender and class identity within the dynamics of historically white institutions, and you can perhaps begin to empathize with BIPOC and/or women faculty. Faculty members, like their students, are also grappling with the same challenges of managing the teaching, advising, scholarship and service workloads typical of academic life, with women academics facing the “maternal wall” blocking their productivity in significant ways.

Want some hard cheese to go with that whine?

It doesn't help, though, that the people selling higher education, whether at Mills or Yale or your local subprime party school, might be selling a no-efforts experience.  Craig Ross says the quiet part out loud.

Most higher education professionals -- myself included, having spent more than seven years working in a residential life office -- can attest that we spend a significant amount of time and resources dealing with bad student behaviors. Those behaviors are not predisposed by socioeconomic status, race or gender. Rather, they are born from the popular opinion that the college experience is not the college experience without shenanigans. I have not had a conversation with anyone my age who did not have a story of partying in college. They surely did not talk about perfect attendance or their amazing English literature professor or how they graduated in 3.5 years. Except my wife, of course.

The popular media, such as the movies Old School and Animal House, glorifies college shenanigans, and generations have been exposed to the behaviors expected of them when they attend college. Over time, higher education has increased its focus on mitigating the bad behaviors through an expansion of the student affairs profession and an explosion of corresponding expenses.

Put another way, you could crack down, and stop coddling the snowflakes. But that's not how you get columns at Inside Higher Ed.

I have struggled with how to change this narrative and to align good student behaviors that lead to student success and help to control costs. However, it was not until 2019 that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang put forth a novel idea that I felt might help resolve the behavior problem that plagues higher education. Yang proposed a social credit system, in which citizens can earn, trade or redeem social credits for good behaviors like volunteering or helping their neighbors. In a similar college system, students could earn social credits for good behaviors.

The details he proposes will cause Chinese casualties, when the commissars see all the emotional labor their Stateside counterparts will have to engage in as students grub to have good credits added and bad credits expunged.