The day after the election, Georgetown University set up a “Self-Care Suite” to help students cope, offering Legos, crayons for coloring, and milk and cookies “in recognition of these stressful times.” The setup was meant to support students - many of whom identified strongly with Kamala Harris’s demographic - in processing the reality that Donald Trump would soon be president.
But Georgetown was far from the only campus providing this kind of support. Across the country, universities responded to Trump’s victory with what essentially became a collective “mental health day” for students and faculty.
Northwestern University created a “post-election wellness space” with “puzzles, crafts, games, snacks, and a variety of brain break activities,” as reported by The College Fix.
Meanwhile, Princeton students active in the climate advocacy group Sunrise Princeton sent out an email on Wednesday, inviting peers to a “combined art-build and processing space” to help them cope with the news.
“Last night was devastating to watch,” read the email, “and many of us are feeling frustrated, scared, uncertain—a whole mishmash of (mostly not good) emotions.”
At Michigan State University, assistant professor Shlagha Borah informed her freshman students that she was canceling class in light of the election outcome. “As a queer, immigrant woman of colour [sic], I cannot, in good conscience, go on about my day like everything is alright,” Borah wrote in an email to students.
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, described these university responses as the “infantilizing definition of safe spaces.”
“Far from achieving therapeutic goals,” Lukianoff explained, “it tells students they are fragile, helpless, and childish, none of which can be expected to honestly help with mental health. And a more serious higher education industry would understand this immediately.”
He suggested that this approach only adds to the frustration felt by Trump supporters toward what they see as excessive “woke” culture on campuses.
* The Free Press contributed to this article.