The cycle continues

I receive dozens of e-mails every week more or less written in this format: "I feel very upset about _________. It amazes me students on this campus are capable of ______. This is a reflection of deeper cultural issues like __________." Most are well written and fairly insightful. Many run in the paper, and deservedly so.

I do wonder, from time to time, what the authors of said letters hope to gain by writing. It is no doubt a great feeling to have your words publicized on the web or physical paper. And it's always admirable to initiate discussion about important issues.

That said, altering student conduct—be it minimizing inappropriate fraternity authored emails or reforming attitudes around gender or sexuality—is difficult, if impossible. Students tend to forget that offensive behavior from the college aged has been an issue for several centuries. It's a fixture of campuses across the nation. Most of it generally is kept under wraps, but every once and a while, as has been the case at Duke recently, several issues swell up at once, and suddenly we have a problem.

Colleges have struggled with the same issues for years, and the problems won't be any different into perpetuity. It belies an understanding of history to claim that the recent controversies surrounding Duke reveal something larger about the University.

As Joan Didion noted several decades ago in an essay about the Central Park Incident, we conveniently use news stories to plead the relevance of our own causes.

And the cycle continues.

Ben Brostoff is the Editorial Pages Editor.