The American Spectator

Special Report

"A sad commentary is that when one of these individuals was arrested, he inquired as to whether or not his arrest and incarceration would have an effect on his becoming a federal law enforcement officer," reported the DEA's Ralph Partridge, describing one of the 96 arrestees in the recent San Diego State University drug sweep.

It is a sad commentary on many aspects of higher ed, and it gets sadder. Two students have died of drug overdoses on SDSU's campus in the past year. The DEA was surprised by the extent of the campus drug ring, which is believed to have a direct connection through a Pomona gang member and SDSU health-sciences student to Tijuana's brutal Arellano-Felix cartel.

In other words, this wasn't a few neo-hippie tokers mellowing out in an off-campus garret. The DEA discovered organized drug sales operating out of seven fraternities; in some of them, "most" of the fraternity members were aware of the ongoing sales. There was a major health and security problem at SDSU. It's a little difficult to study to become, say, a federal law enforcement officer when you're coked to the gills and baked out of your gourd, text-messaging your suppliers and customers, while your frathouse maintains a small arsenal to protect its stash, and co-eds are OD'ing in the basements.

p>There are plenty of villains in this story but one hero stands out -- a college president who had the rare good judgment to do something about it. Though encomiums in The American Spectator probably don't help a college president's esteem among his colleagues, SDSU's president Stephen Weber deserves a good word for doing the right thing and allowing the DEA to investigate the problem : br> /p>

Weber, the university's president, said he did not hesitate to allow undercover officers on campus, even if that decision sparked ire. [Earlier versions of the story quoted Weber as specifying faculty ire.]

"We did the right thing," he said. "I think, frankly, more universities should step up and take these kinds of actions."

br> Alas, they won't.

UNIVERSITIES TODAY BUILD mushy cocoons around their students to insulate them from the consequences of their actions. They throw contraceptives at entering freshmen like latex confetti, and then subsidize abortion services if things don't work out. They police for political incorrectness, to defend students' sacred right not to be offended by opinions too far outside the campus political mainstream. Colleges regard their students both as fully enfranchised adults, encouraged to experiment with sex and (tacitly) drugs, and yet at the same time as children who need to be protected from those decisions. What exacerbates the problem is that this license is usually granted in a climate hostile not merely to traditional morality, but to the very concept of judgment and discrimination.

One of the most memorable passages of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind dealt with Bloom's surprise that his colleague at the University of Chicago saw his professorial mission to be removing all the prejudices from his students. Bloom saw his role as instead inculcating the right prejudices in his students, moral lessons drawn from the best works civilization had to offer. An educated person should discriminate -- between good and evil, false and true, success and failure, for starters.

Otherwise, what's the point of all this expensive education? You can learn "who are you to judge me?" on daytime television, and skip the tuition.

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Taxes, Education, Television, Abortion, Law, Military