Generation Snowflake Is Mentally Ill

Generation Snowflake is real. Today’s college students are so stressed out that more and more of them are suffering from mental illness. They are so anxious and depressed that they cannot take exams in the allotted time. They need extra time, calmer rooms, better lighting… what have you. Otherwise many of them would flunk out.

How many students require extra coddling at exam time? Upwards of 25%. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

As many as one in four students at some elite U.S. colleges are now classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams.

Under federal law, students can be considered disabled if they have a note from a doctor. That label requires schools to offer accommodations depending on the student’s needs. A blind student, for example, would have access to specialized software or a reader for an exam.

The rise in disability notes for mental-health issues such as depression and anxiety has led to a surge in the number of students who take their exams in low-distraction testing centers, are allowed to get up and walk around during class or bring a comfort animal to school, among other measures.

You read that right. Some of these students need to bring a comfort animal with them to school. You might find this slightly puzzling. Haven't we all been told by our psycho professionals that we possess wondrous medications that can treat all manner of mental health conditions... beginning with depression and anxiety? Something is wrong somewhere.

It’s become something of an epidemic:

At Pomona, 22% of students were considered disabled this year, up from 5% in 2014. Other elite schools have also seen a startling jump in disabilities, according to data from the federal government and from the schools. At Hampshire, Amherst and Smith colleges in Massachusetts and Yeshiva University in New York, one in five students are classified as disabled. At Oberlin College in Ohio, it is one in four. At Marlboro College in Vermont, it is one in three.

Is it fair? Of course, it isn’t. Other students resent those who get extra special consideration.

The most common accommodations come during testing. Students who receive extended time may get twice as long as their classmates to take an exam.

Some professors question how this affects the fairness of exams.

“If you grade on a curve, does it disadvantage the rest of the class?” asks Ari Trachtenberg, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University who is critical of the rise in accommodations. “There’s no calibration between how much extra time they want me to give and any sense how that would actually affect the exam.”

It’s not just professors?

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, an attorney who has represented public schools in special-education and disability law and has written several books about accommodations, said that giving some test takers extended time on the SAT is “like lowering the basket from 10 feet to 8 feet; you’re changing the game.”

“The reason we pay all this money for the test is so that we can compare someone from South Dakota to someone from California,” she says. “If the test is no longer standardized, then what are we paying for?”

But, why does Generation Snowflake suffer from so much mental illness?

Psychologists have many theories to explain the rise in mental-health diagnoses among college-age students, from social-media habits to less stigma around mental illness.

Could it be that their mental health was seriously compromised by a school system that doles out unearned praise, the better to raise their self-esteem? Have they been undermined by permissive parenting and a teenage culture that introduces them to too much sex and drugs before they can handle it? Have their minds be so completely warped by the politically correct thought police that they live in a constant state of anxiety over saying the wrong thing? Or are they depressed because they are no longer allowed to express pride in their country, given as they have been taught that America is a vast criminal conspiracy and thus that they must feel guilty for white privilege all the time?

I know what you are thinking. Once Generation Snowflake hits the job market reality will bite. And it will bite hard. They will discover that their managers are not going to disorganize the work flow because one or two people feel that they are special and require special considerations and accommodations. They will learn that they have to leave their pet llamas at home and that their comfort goats cannot accompany them on business trips.