Robert Paulick: A ‘self-centered’ generation

In the April 7 standalone photo “As protest continues, Duke says it will raise minimum wage,” one sentence in the caption under the picture of the Allen Building on the Duke campus spoke volumes.

Apparently a small group of privileged protesters, their motives notwithstanding, chose to occupy a campus building for almost a week and disrupt the lives and work of many Duke faculty, students and staff, who had to find other venues to engage in the teaching mission of a great university.

However, one protester apparently found that this continued occupation caused too much inconvenience to his/her personal life and left to “participate in a national poetry contest in Texas.” This seems all too common these days when privileged elitists think nothing of interrupting the daily lives of everyone else, but woe to anyone who interrupts theirs.

Perhaps it is time for the self-centered attitude of this generation to take a hiatus and allow them to develop a more outward vision of the rest of the world.

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Robert Paulick: A ‘self-centered’ generation."